[Locked] Can you purchase photoshop permanently rather than yearly?

[AbbyLarson30]

I want to buy photoshop, but I don't want to pay for creative cloud every month/year, so is there a way that I can purchase photoshop and pay 1 flat fee?

[Trevor.Dennis]

yes, but only CS6

[AbbyLarson30]

ok thanks! Do you have the link for that? I couldn't find it.

[gardenflower.65]

[Irrelevant link removed by moderator.]

[Semaphoric]

Creative Suite 6

[Noel Carboni]

I'm not trying to influence you one way or another.  Just some things to think about:

Given that Photoshop CS6 is about $700 (Extended is $1000), you may want to think about the $9.99 Photographer's deal as a comparison...

Creative Cloud free trial & plans : Adobe Creative Cloud

If you plunk down $700 now, you get an already outdated version of Photoshop.  Photoshop CS6 works, but there actually are some very good things that have been implemented in Photoshop CC.  And Photoshop CC is more efficient (outside of a few folks who are having problems with it).

If you subscribe to that Creative Cloud deal I mentioned, you plunk down $120 for the first year.  You could save the additional $580 and use it to pay for the subscription in the future, in which case you'll be able to use Photoshop CC for more than 5 years at the current rate.  Or you could invest it in ADBE stock.

The term "Perpetual License" is kind of a misnomer...  You're not really guaranteed to be able to run it forever into the future on the latest operating system release of the day.  How long is your computer going to last?  Will you decide to upgrade to a new version of your OS under which Photoshop CS6 will not run?  Will Adobe one day take their CS6 activation servers offline?  We can't know.  If Adobe were to lose its business it's possible you won't be able to run any version of Photoshop beyond the day that happens.  No one can predict the future, but I'm just pointing out that you're at the mercy of Adobe's online activation process either way.

If you choose to get a computer of the other platform (e.g., Mac vs. PC), your CC license allows you to use Photoshop in both places.  With Photoshop CS6, though Adobe does currently offer a "crossgrade", you can only use it on one platform or the other exclusively.

If Adobe had continued to offer new version releases every couple of years, would you likely have upgraded at some time in the future?  If you've had an older version already, how many versions did you skip between upgrades?

Some folks simply feel negatively about subscribing vs. buying a license to use, and I fully respect that.   I'm just giving some things to think about.

-Noel

[Trevor.Dennis]

I wish that the subscription model detractors would sit down and do the sums, and think about the real differences between a fixed CS6, and ever evolving CC.  I almost wish my own interests did not include video so that I could make do with the Photography deal, because it is a huge bargain.

And what exactly is the problem with a subscription payment model?  Do the same people rant and rave about their cell phone plan?  What do they pay for cable or satellite TV channels?  Medical and other insurances?  How many years will they take to pay off the car that depreciates so fast it is only worth a fraction of what they eventually pay for it?  PSCC continues to get better with time by comparison.  How many years do those people hope to be using Photoshop?  How will CS6 compare to CC 2020 or 2030?

[Noel Carboni]

Good to see you around here again, Trevor.  I've not seen many of your posts lately (not that the forum software makes it easy to see who's posting).

I'm trying to be as objective as possible, and like you I see it as a pretty easy decision.  But hats off to Adobe for being able to make (more than) a few bucks off the old version too.

-Noel

[Semaphoric]

I agree about the Photography plan being a bargain. I just wish they had similar plans for some of the other Cloud apps. For instance, Illustrator has always been notoriously slow to add new features, so I would find it hard to justify paying the single-app price every month, but if it were priced like the Photography plan, I might change my mind.

[noahg55573719]

I don't need the whole ensemble. I really just need Illustrator for laser cutting the plans to my sculptures. It's quite frustrating that I can't do that. I'm a student, I don't always have enough to pay for the plan that has everything when I just need one app (which I use on a simple basic level). As far as I can tell I can't get Illustrator on it's own which is really obnoxious. Why are they making the whole adobe process so "exclusive"? It's frankly insulting.

[D Fosse]

A single application subscription - Ai or any other - is no problem. I think the price is around $20 a month.

But yes, only Photoshop and Lightroom come as a special package at a substantially reduced price.

[Dallas4664]

Just go on ebay, the perpetual AI CS5 & CS6 their are quite pricey, $500 - $600!   But I found this a perpetual CS5 creative suite for $230.  If your just using the basic features you can probably get away with AI CS2 or CS3, they are going for less than $100 on ebay!

[Nancy OShea]

Dallas4664  wrote

Just go on ebay...

That's terrible advice.   These forums are filled with horror stories from eBay buyers who got taken with bogus / pirated / infected software.  You don't know what you're getting from auction sites until you install it and by then the damage is done.  

If you want Adobe genuine software and not a pirated piece of junk, buy directly from Adobe.

[Terri Stevens]

I'd endorse what Nancy has just said-Don't, Don't, Don't buy on eBay or any other non authorised site. Pirates are clever they duplicate DVDs and the boxes and they look perfect but that doesn't make the software genuine. Adobe introduced as validation service last year -it takes a time to work out your software is counterfeit but from then onwards you'll get an annoying popup every couple of minutes telling you to contact Adobe and if you ever need to reinstall the software the serial will be rejected and the software becomes useless.

As Nancy says we get lots of complaints from people saying Adobe should help them as they didn't know it was counterfeit, but do you think Ford would give you a new car if the one you have was impounded by the police because it was stolen? Of course not . Further more there is a new headache with pirated Adobe software and that is 'cryptocurrency mining' The software works just fine, but the installer downloads an app that constantly is active building a bitcoin wallet for the owner. The owner will have thousands of bots doing exactly the same thing all over the world and can make in excess of $30,000 a month this way. All you will see is a computer slowdown as antivirus programs do not detect this kind of malware. The first time an end user knows something is wrong is when they receive their electricity bill as it will have rocketed. Cryptomining apps are very CPU intensive and cause the computer to use up to 5 times as much power as usual  and because most use the graphics card have an almost unlimited amount of wattage on tap.

[Dallas4664]

Well,

As stated all of that is news to me, I've never even heard of pirated software that's unopened with the box and dvd's looking like official above software!  Please excuse me for my ignorance!

[Nancy OShea]

Dallas4664  wrote

I've never even heard of pirated software that's unopened with the box and dvd's looking like official above software!

Well, now you know.  The fakes are so good even the experts can't tell the difference.  Putting the kibosh on piracy was one reason Adobe stopped making boxed DVDs and switched to digital downloads.

[Terri Stevens]

It's not ignorance on your part, the pirates would fool even the greatest expert with the presentation. What they cannot do is access official channels and be authorised resellers. The price of the software is also a giveaway. If you go to a Warez site you'll easily find cracked version of all the Adobe products and it must be tempting to download, but just ask yourself why are these people are offering this for nothing-the answer is because it compromises the users computer and they can potentially get everything from your credit card numbers to your girl friends telephone number and more.....

[stephen7144]

The problem with it is the great difficulty getting detail as to if I can use my Photoshop subscription on a second laptop or not. It just took 2 hours getting Acrobat activated on a second laptop and I don't have another 2 hours trying to do the same for Photoshop. Photoshop is just not that important anymore. I have other programs that will do the same things without aggravation from Adobe.

[Barb Binder]

the great difficulty getting detail as to if I can use my Photoshop subscription on a second laptop or not.

You may install software on up to two computers. These two computers can be Windows, Mac OS, or one each.

If you install on a third computer, it will request you to de-activate on the other two computers.  You can then reactivate one of the previous two computers, and use Creative Cloud apps on it.

—How many computers can I install my Creative Cloud apps on? 

[FordGuy48]

Well, now there is another thing good about the subscriptions, used to be if you switched from a PC to a Mac, or vice versa, you had to buy new software!

[FordGuy48]

I have to agree, the subscription is great, I have Creative Cloud, and every time there's a new version of software, you are able to use it. I still have CS4, and I just out of curiosity tried Illustrator, on my newer Mac, and it's so buggy, wouldn't save anything, when I tried to save, it crashed! (Illustrator). They did have some sort of glitch in my CC, yesterday, kept giving me a message that my license had expired, but they fixed it! I like having the newest versions!

[nobodypanic]

Its not just about how much it costs or how much a subscription costs.  Its about losing control of the software that you use to do your work.  We are giving Adobe al ot more control over how we work.  Its not as critical with photoshop, but Indesign for example,  if you switch to using different software,  you have to pay a premium to open older projects (short term use of the CC cost more)  instead of just having an older version of that software you paid a license for that you can use a long as you please.  Plus part of the way things were before, really forced Adobe to improve their software over time.  I never upgraded every version,  I didnt because Adobe never did enough to validate me spending the extra money.  The minor updates you see each version did not effect my workflow enough to make a difference.  It normally was every other version that I saw enough updated across the suite I purchased to make it worth doing.    And if Adobe does not have to try as hard to get your money each year,  do you really expect them to do so?

What amazes me is that people who do this for a living think that a subscription thing is the best bet for their business.  As a consumer,  you should have control,   awareness of how a subscription based set up effects your business long term as well as short is important.  Its not just about the money you spend to use it (even though it does cost me more based on the fact that I dont upgrade every year).

[Terri Stevens]

I think the point about the subscription model is that it opens up the software to people in business and enjoying a hobby who would never have considered Adobe before and it shows as Adobe according to the company report has over 7 million subscribers now. In the old days when you could buy the products now in Creative Cloud it cost around $3500. Ten years later and taking into account inflation that price today surely would be $5000. There are not many business' prepared to spend that much on software but with subscription it's available for $50 a month and the price draws in new users in consequence. Subscription is a marketing model and works as the number of subscribers shows.

[nobodypanic]

A few things to think about.  Adobe has not given us any options and there were a good number of users that didnt upgrade every year. So sure you will see in increase in yearly subscriptions, they have no other choice if they need to use this software.  So the people that only updated every 2 or 3 years were forced into a yearly system for the software they used every day for their work.

There also have been many cases were people didnt realize once they stop paying they would not have access to the software anymore, assuming that if they paid yearly they would have access to the software but no updates or upgrades.    I was part of a paid focus group about a year ago,  there was 12 of us in the group and it turns out the topic was the creative cloud.  It was more about the marketing campaign they were working on,  but discussion also went into how the creative cloud worked,   and only 4 of the 12 understood how things worked and the nature of the subscription system.   Only 4 of us.   There were a few that were very upset about this as well.

Sure it can be great for someone that is new and wants to try.   But why not give the option for both, subscription and perpetual license?    For what I do, and for many just like me,  licensing is the way to go.    I do not do this as a hobby,  this software is used for my work and livelihood.      I have been using Adobe software for well 20 years now.   I loved my adobe software,  but once they did the CC and subscription only,  I started to look elsewhere.

And I dont know anyone that uses all the software adobe has to offer,  for me it was mostly 4 or 5 applications.   So no, I was not spending 3500 for my software.    To be blunt, if I was doing the CC now, I would be paying about 100-200 more a year then I did when I uses using the licensed  versions.   Plus, I would have nothing at all if I stopped paying for the subscription,  compared to the fact that with a perpetual license, you pay once, and use it as long as you want.

I say make it a choice,  see how many people switch back to the perpetual licenses, I bet it would be a very large number.

[Nancy OShea]

If you want to buy, Photoshop Elements is your only option now.   Be prepared to upgrade it though or you'll be out of luck when your OS makes sweeping changes and/or you buy a new camera.

The beauty of Creative Cloud is that you get free support and upgrades for as long as you remain a member.  Photography Plan (PS + LR + Bridge) is a steal at USD $9.99/month.  It's not platform specific either.  You can install on both Win and Mac.   

Nancy