I jumped aboard the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Program ship back in September, and so far, everything seems A-OK. Sure, Adobe accidentally “misplaced” my user name and password along with millions of other people’s secure info, but as of yet, no one has hacked into my account and I’ve hardly noticed the $9.99 that comes out of my bank account every month.
Really, for what you get, $9.99 is not that much money. You can drop that on two sugar filled coffee shop drinks and have nothing to show for it except a couple hours of jitters. Or, you can get two professional imaging programs that make your photography life that much more efficient. I’m still not in love with the whole monthly software leasing program, but until it changes, that’s what we’re stuck with.
I do like the new features and ramped up processing engine in Lightroom 5 , and I find Photoshop CC to be a powerful upgrade over CS5. (I never made it all the way to CS6.)
The point is that these two programs are essential to my workflow, and if they’re essential to yours, then you only have until December 31 to join the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Program at the special $9.99 price. After that it goes up to $19.99, which is NOT a bargain by any sense of the word.
The way I see it, if you use LR and PS on a regular basis, you don’t have much choice. Even if you’re still on the fence, if you haven’t come up with a viable alternative by now, my advice is to hold your nose and join the Creative Cloud Photography Program for the first year so that you’ll at least get the $9.99 price locked in. Nothing says you have to renew when it expires in 12 months, but if by then you haven’t found a different workflow, you’ll still be under that $9.99 price umbrella.
December 31. Join here.
