Adobe products have been a part of my work for the better part of a decade: mostly Flash, Premiere, Photoshop, and Acrobat. I love the capabilities they lend as well as the creative outlet they provide. As technology advances, so does Adobe software.
Of course we love the ability to access nearly every product Adobe makes. This is especially true for those of us relegated to using whatever version our company was willing to pay for (for me, this was usually the Design Standard edition). I remember drooling at the thought of someday having the crown jewel of Adobe Creative Suite packages: the Master Collection. Oh, how times have changed. Now that I’m a Creative Cloud subscriber at work and home, I’ve had plenty of time to consider all the other reasons why I love Creative Cloud:
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Cloud Licensing: bringing Creative Suite to the masses.
I don’t have a lot of money – but I also don’t believe in stealing software. How brilliant that Adobe priced their Master Collection within grasp of an average consumer (around $50/month assuming you’re not eligible for a promo).
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Small business owners
would much rather split their expense over the course of a year. Not only is that money in the small business owner’s pockets, but the banks charge fewer fees if you’re turning money over every month. It’s also nice to have balanced expenses for purposes of tracking estimated taxes.
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Creative Cloud for Teams.
Brilliant! Sorry Adobe, but the customer service on volume license transfers used to really suck. Now with the “for teams” version of Creative Cloud, transferring a license from one user to another is centrally managed by me. This is a no-brainer for companies with multiple Creative Cloud licenses and that reasonably expect to have employee turnover. No more 4-hour phone calls because somebody forgot to deactivate a volume license before they got fired and spite-wiped their machine. You just transfer the license to the replacement’s machine and you’re good-to-go.
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Affordable Single-app Licenses, and the Photography License.
Not everyone uses all of the Creative Cloud offerings. Mrs. BossGorilla takes a lot of pictures. It sure was nice to not have to purchase the full suite for her when all she ever uses is Photoshop. At $20/month, the Single App Licenses are affordable, but the Photography License really is a steal – $10/month is about half what I paid for my fast food dinner the other night.
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Cloud Storage.
In comparison to cloud storage offered by Microsoft and Dropbox, the size of storage provided with Creative Cloud subscriptions seems, well, tiny. Only recently did I learn how powerful Creative Cloud’s integrated cloud storage really is. Anecdote: I recently needed to pen myself a logo of a gorilla* for a sweet blog I was building. I used my iPad and Adobe Sketch to draw the concept. When finished, I simply tapped the upload icon and, voila, my sketch was in Creative Cloud. I seamlessly transitioned the sketch to my desktop PC, where Photoshop is installed, and finished the draft. Without the Adobe cloud feature integrated into my iPad, it would have been a much longer and convoluted process to transfer the image to my desktop PC. For someone as left-brained as I am, it’s important not to have any pause in creative workflows, for fear of losing the small iota of right-brained activity occurring in my head this month.