New Photoshop CC Now Available from Adobe
Adobe’s new version of Photoshop, Photoshop CC, is now available for download through its Creative Cloud subscription service. New features for photographers include a camera-shake-reduction filter, and improved Smart Sharpen and upsampling algorithms.
Adobe announced last month that new versions of Photoshop and other Creative Suite software would only be available via a Creative Cloud subscription. This provoked an outcry amongst some pro and amateur photographers who use only Lightroom and Photoshop, and for whom even a single-product Cloud subscription to Photoshop would be a very large price increase. There was also substantial criticism of the Creative Cloud’s “software-rental” model, where once you stop subscribing, you lose access to the software. (Note that Lightroom will continue to be available as a stand-alone perpetual-license product.)
Adobe has since indicated that while it is committed to the Cloud approach, it is working on a more tailored photographer offering. If you’re not sure if a Creative Cloud solution is for you, I would suggest waiting a month or two to see how this develops. Adobe has reassured customers that it will continue to sell Photoshop CS6 as a perpetual-license product, so there is no hurry to make a decision.
Adobe product manager Tom Hogarty demonstrated last month a Lightroom app in development for our mobile devices, and hinted that we may be able to access at least some part of our main Lightroom catalogs on these devices via the Cloud and Lightroom 5′s new smart previews. This shows us the potential of Adobe’s cloud offering. I’m optimistic that Adobe will come out with an offering that better balances price with value delivered.
