P: Ability to buy Photoshop as a perpetual license, instead of Creative Cloud

You require me to pay a monthly for for just the photoshop software. I'm not doing it. I think you can charge me a one time fee for the software. I don't want the cloud and don't want to pay for it. I just want to pay one time for software and use it indefinitely. Until you comply, I will not buy any of your products.

Adobe can go from charging $10 a month to $25, $55, $105 -- whatever they want -- any time they want.

And once you're locked in to their "subscription" plan, good luck ever getting out:  a company I once worked for bought a subscription for a project.  It took a nasty letter from our corporate lawyer to get the automatic payments to stop after the project was completed.

I'm using CS 6 and will continue to do so until Adobe lets me buy a perpetual license again.  Or until CS 6 stops working, at which point I will switch to the ON1 product.

9.99/mo.....as long as you don't use more than 20 GB worth of storage. Even my old iphone holds more than that!

Over time the cost adds up and will end up costing you more than the standalone desktop versions. 

Lightroom 6 will be the last "box" version, meaning desktop based rather than cloud based. 

> But as I promised in the original post...Adobe will not "rent" me anything!>

Although my workflow means I will rent from Adobe until I can't afford to, and currently thoroughly enjoy the newer features that are only offered through the subscription, I also keep in touch with the apps that offer perpetual licenses (at least for now), in case the time comes when it doesn't make sense for me to stay. I hope that time doesn't come and the Photography plan continues to be very affordable, since I get the best of all worlds — Photoshop's raw power and the 3rd party apps and extensions that make good use of the power built in to PS.

 I have noted that much of the competition will handle my PSD files, as will PSE, of course. So I don't feel I'm losing anything by renting. My files remain viable, and I'd be paying to upgrade regularly anyway.  I expect much of the competition finds it worth their while to stay compatible with PS and will going forward. The computing world isn't quite as proprietarial about their formats as they were when I first started buying personal software.

I know a lot of people who feel just like you about "renting," though. I would prefer the option to buy at least an older version— one that got renewed every so often, so as CS6 falls by the wayside, perhaps CC 2014 takes its place. But no one else offers (yet) what PS offers, so I have adjusted—with an eye on options, as I said.

Thanks, good to read that Smart Objects are no problem in principle for non-Adobe image editors. 

PhotoLine reads and imports PSD files with Smart Objects, and keeps them intact. Of course, PSD *is* a proprietary native Adobe file format, so some things will not be compatible. But PhotoLine's PSD import is one of the best ones around: it keeps most adjustment layers, layer effects, smart objects, text, groups, and so on.

For the record....as the original poster of this thread....I have not purchased (nor do I plan to purchase) an Adobe photo related product since my original post.  I continue to use the products that I OWNED at the time.  If the time comes that it is inoperable...I will look elsewhere...but will not purchase a product with a so-called perpetual license.  Have I missed something?...maybe.  But as a casual (but avid) photographer I can still do everything I feel necessary to enjoy my photography.  Had I been able to purchase an updated version...I probably would have.  But as I promised in the original post...Adobe will not "rent" me anything!

Well, some other applications can read psd-files so it may be possible to edit the files without CC later on but I suspect that this might aversely affect Smart Objects in particular.