Adobe Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud

[chevalier]

Anybody want to share their plans/thoughts on it?

I have three beefs:
A.) You can't just go ahead and pay a full year in advance.
B.) Calling this a Cloud service is a stretch. The only thing truly cloud about it is the document sharing feature. I'm ready for the actual processing to be done offsite in some server farm giving me instant reaction/effects. This would really make it OS, platform, and device agnostic.
C.) Where are the new features? Illustrator is still missing features built in to Photoshop and InDesign for multiple generations. It looks like the upgrade is that they finally built the apps to be 64bit native.

The pricing model is interesting. At the $50 per month per year for 2 years that's $1200.00 which is almost perfectly congruent to the normal Adobe upgrade cycle and pricing. I'm curious whether this is a half-step towards an always changing generic Adobe Creative Suite. Could CS6 be the last boxed and numbered version?

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

I agree that there are more things that can be done in Illustrator, and as you say the big thing with AI CS6 is the 64-bit move. (The new pattern creation method is awesome, but does not affect all clients, also the linear gradients is great, but I'm not sure they affect daily work… and with the move to 64-bit it will give developers a fair bit of work to get all plug-ins ready). 64-bit was necessary to make illustrator snappier though.

To work collaboratively has been around for some time, and there is a remarkable resilience to the collaborative tools, and for many it ends up just being file sharing. I'm not sure I would want software to be offsite, things just go crazy when/if there is a break in the net or even just a lag due to dropped bandwidth. I have not decided how I will go with creative cloud though, it will be interesting to hear others points of view.

 

[chevalier]

I spend a lot of time between Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. It is completely obvious that Illustrator is the redheaded step-child inside Adobe (excuse my American colloquialism). It's a shame that Macromedia Freehand wasn't sold off or open sourced. The only alternative on the market to Illustrator that I'm aware of is Autodesk Sketchbook which measures up very poorly.

Zero competition creates near zero innovation. It just feels like the last 3 or 4 versions of Illustrator have been polish, repackage then profit.

 

[dabob]

I spend a lot of time between Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. It is completely obvious that Illustrator is the redheaded step-child inside Adobe (excuse my American colloquialism). It's a shame that Macromedia Freehand wasn't sold off or open sourced. The only alternative on the market to Illustrator that I'm aware of is Autodesk Sketchbook which measures up very poorly.

Zero competition creates near zero innovation. It just feels like the last 3 or 4 versions of Illustrator have been polish, repackage then profit.

chevalier . . . .

I am another one that loves freehand and if you're not aware there is a group of people that are trying to get Adobe to opensource it or sell it off see more here:

Free FreeHand organization

 

[chevalier]

Instead of lobbying to buy or open source Freehand why not start a company and build a truly competitive product from the ground up? The old Freehand codebase hasn't been touched for nearly a decade.

 

[PDL]

This may be totally off thread, but I would like to know (from frequent users perspectives) what features you find lacking in Ai.

 

[james_lebron]

Do we really need to pay Adobe $1200 every 2 years?

I don't know about any of you, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth with the abandonment of the Print Providers program.

I still get the job done with CS3. Wake me up when some real innovation occurs.

BTW what is the advantage to "the cloud" when I have a hard drive the size of St. Louis? I will keep the files to myself until I need to send one to someone who really needs it. Just so much BS

 

[chevalier]

This may be totally off thread, but I would like to know (from frequent users perspectives) what features you find lacking in Ai.

Esko DeskPack provides solutions for many of these shortcomings. I really dig what Esko DeskPack offers but the extra cost is prohibitive for many of us. I just can't fathom why Adobe can build these features into InDesign but doesn't bother with Illustrator. Here are a few...

The entire "layer style" in Photoshop or "object effects" in InDesign. Illustrator has some of these but they are less controllable and comparatively obtuse to work with. Bevel and Emboss is a huge one. I have customers who's designers will use InDesign for some commercial work then I am expected to make the same bevel/emboss effect work in Illustrator for packaging. Needless to say I end up using copy/paste and InDesign files as a crutch to create some elements. Photoshop is also unable to do these effects with spot colors due to the channel only method without serious work arounds.

InDesign-like or Deskpack-like color mapping and reassignment. InDesign does this intelligently while Illustrator has an ancient merge menu option that doesn't work half as well.

InDesign-like text box framing. InDesign offers real control where Illustrator is very basic.

InDesign-like scripting/support. Actions is a joke comparatively.

InDesign-like built-in live preflight.

Pretty much everything boostX does.

Perhaps I was spoiled by the innovations and features constantly built into InDesign when it was my main workhorse. Illustrator is 25 years old and is still the standard software for its purpose. It deserves more R&D attention.

I still get the job done with CS3. Wake me up when some real innovation occurs........

.....BTW what is the advantage to "the cloud" when I have a hard drive the size of St. Louis? I will keep the files to myself until I need to send one to someone who really needs it. Just so much BS

I have to follow what my customers do. If they use CS5 I use CS5. I also have to keep a workstation that doesn't take an hour to process a file. New hardware and operating systems require new software.

I agree with your cloud comment. This 'Creative Cloud' is very feature light and seems like a gimmick but I'm sure it will improve over time. I foresee a future where much more integration between all parties involved in the making of printwork and packaging.

 

[kansasquaker]

Gold star for james_lebron! And to further that point - how long will it take to draw a high res preview of a 300mb psd in indesign when the link is on a server somewhere?

 

[chevalier]

Gold star for james_lebron! And to further that point - how long will it take to draw a high res preview of a 300mb psd in indesign when the link is on a server somewhere?

Did you think your dial-up modem was the end-all be-all too? Huge bandwidth increases are just around the corner.

The REAL connection speeds for Internet users across the world (charts)

 

[FlexoGrunt]

Did you think your dial-up modem was the end-all be-all too? Huge bandwidth increases are just around the corner.

The REAL connection speeds for Internet users across the world (charts)

But what difference will bandwidth increases be if you can only transfer a thimble's worth of data before it's throttled or capped? It almost feels like a scam. "cloud cloud cloud" but then "charge charge charge" when the data cap is hit.


I've been very unhappy with Illustrator since Freehand got gobbled up. They release it and then "think" about fixing bugs in the next release so in essence you are paying for their mistakes every 18 months.

 

[james_lebron]

Hey I have up to and including CS5.5

Not that I'm happy about spending the cash for it.

I just think that Adobe needs to be more aggressive in giving me something new that I can sink my teeth into besides a couple of flirty bells and whistles. That was my point.

Unfortunately you have to get every upgrade to keep up. I get that.

 

[edge2print]

I watched the product launch presentation and enjoyed the "demo" of how CS6 could help the fashion designer lady get her products to market. Here's what I got out of it:

C T P

Yup. CTP. Computer. Tablet. Phone. This is where it's going. Hardly a mention of PRINT. Yikes, what's this world coming to?

For my personal use, I'd like to have a la carte menu selection of software (and priced accordingly) to subscribe to, perhaps for a 90-day period or similar.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

This article may help understand the problems that have caused Illustrator to lag behind. Real World Illustrator: Illustrator CS6 is 64bit: What does it mean? also if you are doing any packaging work even if ESKO has great tools they are not in the price range that all can live with… but you should definitely look at Astute Graphics: Products they have great tools for creation in Vector scribe, Drawscribe and the upcoming Subscribe, and for prepress you should look at Phantasm CS to boost the program (small agile developers with great customer relations are a real asset to the design community).

I think the way that Print has been pushing we are to be kept in the world of PDF. If you don't want to buy into, clouds or suites… just stick with Acrobat Pro.

 

[minch]

SNIPPITY.) Calling this a Cloud service is a stretch. The only thing truly cloud about it is the document sharing feature. I'm ready for the actual processing to be done offsite in some server farm giving me instant reaction/effects. This would really make it OS, platform, and device agnostic.
SNIP

And what happens when Adobe decides this cloud thingy isn't quite working out - lets just drop it?
Many of Apple's customers bought into technologies and services that were dropped later on, leaving said customers disappointed to put it mildly.
At least if you have the old software+hardware you can get yourself out of the mire, but when its on a cloud and the cloud goes pouff...

 

[David Kunkel]

Lousy value

Lousy value

I agree, we bought into CS4 Design Standard in 2008 ($800/seat for the upgrade from single apps) and I had no need for 5 or 5.5. We'll probably buy CS6 in 2012 to preserve upgrade pricing, but the subscription plan sucks at $600 a year every year. This is a real step up in cost and we'll avoid it as long as possible.

Do we really need to pay Adobe $1200 every 2 years?

I don't know about any of you, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth with the abandonment of the Print Providers program.

I still get the job done with CS3. Wake me up when some real innovation occurs.

BTW what is the advantage to "the cloud" when I have a hard drive the size of St. Louis? I will keep the files to myself until I need to send one to someone who really needs it. Just so much BS

 

[prepressguru]

Ok fellow print people we all know we are in a pinch to save money and to make some of it in this economy and a industry in decline. As well Adobe's pricing for what you get on the print side of things leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. So can we move past the complaints about pricing.

Is there anything worth while in the new version, 64 bit aside?

Also the "cloud" it's a joke. I'm not buying into it. Why they just want to hook into your information and collect data on you.
I remember a few years ago when they talk about the "net" computer or light terminals. Never happened.

p

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

For print and preflighting there is still ways to go… now if we talk about the advantage to a publisher it's a different… we have to ask ourselves what is it we are good at, and what is the purpose of what we do. Is print the product… or is communication the abstract product and print just the medium? It's hard work to change our own minds.

If we decide print is OUR product, then we need to be really good at it… or cheap… if you're going for cheap then you don't need to upgrade. If you're going for good, then you may have to consider if your clients will accept you lag behind… or shove the responsibility for development in their laps… and demand PDFx4 that pass your preflight server.

There is always problems when old meets new meets old. The big question is who is paid to do what. If you solve that you will know what is a cost and what is an investment,

 

[wonderings]

Anyone running CS6 on an older Machine? One of our production iMacs is a 24 inch iMac running snow leopard with 3 gigs of ram, which I think is the most it can handle. CS6 says it needs 4 gigs of ram, does this mean it will not run on the iMac with 3 gigs of ram? Or install and just not run the best it could? Main uses is indesign, then illustrator and light photoshop use.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Download the trial and test it

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=master_collection