I just got through speaking to three different agents at Adobe regarding Creative Cloud (CC) promotions that are in effect right now. You may have seen a deal whereby you could obtain Photoshop CC for $9.99 US/mo for the first year, with no indication as far as I could see about how much it would cost after that. That offer ended 31 August/13. I got different answers from each salesperson but have got to the bottom of what is happening.

If you missed the 31 Aug deadline, all is not lost if you want to jump on the CC bandwagon rather than staying with an earlier CS version of Photoshop. Adobe has announced their "Photoshop Photography Program". See the link here. This is Adobe's answer to the barrage of criticism they received from disgruntled photographers, many of whom do not need the Creative Cloud and all it entails. What they do need is Photoshop and Lightroom. So, in this new plan tailored specifically to photographers, Adobe is offering Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5, software updates, 20GB online storage and a couple of other items for $9.99 US/mo in perpetuity (i.e., not for just the first year, although I am sure the price will creep up over time). The link I give above says the offer starts today but this I was told was a "typo". The offer will be available starting 17 September and will run until 31 December. The number to call to order this is 800-585-0774.

So why would you want to do this? If you are the sort of person who always has to have the latest and greatest then in the old model you would be spending several hundred $$ every time a new version of Photoshop came out. With the new monthly subscription model you pay basically $120 US per year or $600 US for 5 years- the new subscription plan could be cheaper for you. Another reason to move to CC is that Adobe have a nasty habit of adding RAW decoders for new camera bodies to new Adobe Camera Raw versions, but the new versions of ACR eventually lose backward compatibility with older Photoshop versions. The solution to this is to use another RAW converter, of which there are many good ones out there, including the proprietary ones engineered by your camera manufacturer. Finally, as operating systems are upgraded, you will lose compatibility with your older version of Photoshop. So it seems Adobe has you behind the 8-ball on this one.

On a personal note, I really like Photoshop but do not harbour much of a warm fuzzy feeling about Adobe. I think Apple should buy Adobe and offer the full version of Photoshop on the App Store for 50 bucks! That would end all this nonsense!