Terrible Installation Experience Adobe Creative Cloud

[Nathaniel Mallet]

I just wanted to share my experience with a recent installation of Adobe CC on Windows.

I recently added a new SSD to my computer as I was running out of drive space. As part of that installation, I decided to install Lightroom and Photoshop to that drive. I figured I'd download and install the CC desktop app, and install it from there.

I started by going to the Adobe.com webpage, looking for CC. A bit difficult to find, I had to scroll down to the bottom of the webpage, in the footer, under Products. Not obvious, but not that hard either.

On the CC website, all I can see is Buy Now or Start Free Trial. I'm already a subscriber, so neither of these help. Let's try signing in (which is annoying BTW. There's NO reason not to have a download button somewhere for existing customers. There's absolutely no reason I need to log in to the website, since I don't want to do anything on the website. I want to install my application. Every other desktop app works like this).

Now I'm signed in. I still see Start Your Free Trial. I'm already a subscriber, this is useless.

So I click Your Creative Cloud. Still no CC app download. All I can see are the apps I'm subscribed to. Fine. Let's try Lightroom. Download works, and the installer starts. It doesn't ask me where it should install Lightroom. It just assumes C:\, which is wrong. At least, Adobe CC Desktop is now installed.

Uninstall Lightroom from Adobe CC. Click install again. No dialog, just starts installing on C:\ drive again. Cancel the install. Search Google for How to change lightroom install location. A few YouTube videos come up. I finally get instructions on changing the install location. From other users.

I'm a big fan of Lightroom and Photoshop, they're some of the best application I use. But the installation process is incredibly painful. There should be a download Adobe CC button or link on the Adobe CC mainpage, which does NOT require sign-in, and there should be a dialog popping up asking where Adobe CC should be installed, with C:\ being the default option. This is a solved problem, and it's expected behavior by apps on Windows. Please save your creative energies for making the apps themselves better, not the installer.

Nat

[bucksommerkamp]

This is a public user-to-user forum, not Adobe support, so please understand my reply from that angle (I'm not an Adobe employee). Everything is managed -- uninstalling and installing and updating -- from the CC desktop app. Once you have the desktop app and have signed in, that's where you can say "put these things on my machine" or take them off one at a time. It's managing all of the apps from there, and keeps everything under that structure. I don't think you can specify where you want everything to go. Just think of the CC desktop as your launcher and "add/remove" dialog for all CC products.

[Michael232376114m5k]

I can only agree. Adobe has become one of the most user unfriendly websites, extremely confusing - constantly trying to connect you to your - irrelevant - facebook account (clearly in order to suck of data). I had to log in at least a dozen times and in the end the account started to refuse my - perfectly valid and correct  - password. The 180 Euro my institution has to pay for a subscription is much too much for this. Try to use free alternatives whenever you can!