Adobe brings their subscription model to the US with Creative Sutie 6

This week, Adobe has finally released pricing and other information for their upcoming CS6 packages. I have been eagerly waiting to see the list of new features and how pricing will change with the promise of a subscription model. Here are the things that have jumped out at me:

Adobe has combined Web Premium and Design Premium into a single package. The other packages are “Design Standard”, “Production Premium”, “Master Collection”, and Adobe’s new subscription service “Creative Cloud”. … Although the new price for the Web & Design Premium suite is about $100 more than what I paid for Web Premium last time, I am very happy to see that they have combined these two similar packages. No more having to choose between those last few programs.

Flash Catalyst and Contribute have been dropped from the CS6 lineup. I personally never found either of these programs very useful. But if you rely heavily on them, you should probably hold on to your older versions. Be sure to make a backup copy that includes the updates Adobe has released.

Yearly upgrades got cheaper! Upgrading less often got more expensive. It no longer makes sense to try to save money by waiting 2 or 3 years between upgrades. – Upgrading every other year only saves you a few cents per month (which could easily be eat up by credit card interest if you charge it.) Waiting 3 or more years for about a $5/month difference runs the risk that they will no longer offer upgrades for your old version. (In which case, you could still buy a “full” version and sell your old one to get some of your money back.)

Versions

Creative Suite 6 comes in 5 different collections. Initially, unless you have a student discount or a recent version to upgrade, getting started with anything other than a Cloud subscription can be quite expensive.

• Save Money – If you have not mastered the programs included in smaller packages and you don’t need everything that is included in the more expensive packages, why waste your money? I personally would love to get into the video editing side of things, but overall I can save over $15/month by sticking with Web&Design Premium upgrades. So I will save some money while I spend the next year improving my understanding of Illustrator and Photoshop and improving my skills as a programmer.
• Yours to keep, even if you run into financial difficulties. –