Adobe adds subscription-based service

Adobe Systems is well known for its graphic design, video editing, and web development applications. Whether developed or acquired, all the applications are collected in the San Jose-based company’s “Creative Suite”. Since its initial release in 2003, millions of people have come to rely on the applications in Adobe Creative Suite (CS) and for many they has become an essential tool for their daily lives.

Adobe has released new versions of Creative Suite every one to two years; their latest release was Adobe CS6 in 2011. Because of its popularity and importance, it came as a shock to many when Adobe announced that Creative Suite was being discontinued as of May 6^th. No more physical copies will be produced and Creative Suite has been even been pulled from Adobe’s online store. Adobe announced that they would be replacing Adobe CS with a new distribution service. Now, Adobe will be releasing their applications through Adobe Creative Cloud (CC).

With the new service, users will download applications individually or in a package through Adobe’s online store. Each product will require a Creative Cloud membership and a monthly fee to use. Users will still be able to runs the applications offline but will have to go online and re-validate the products every month.

Adobe’s new desktop companion app will keep every application updated and is integrated with a website, called Behance, that Adobe purchased back in December. Behance is a website that allows artists to present their work and receive feedback from others, definitely a useful tool. As the name implies, Creative Cloud is also enhancing the cloud integration between all of Adobe’s services. However, rather than being cloud-centric, the new features and updates are more for streamlining the interactions between Adobe’s applications and websites.

This new method of distributing their products not only reduces the threat of piracy, but makes their products more accessible to new users. Not to mention the amount of extra money Adobe makes in the long run with a subscriptions service. For those who have purchased Adobe CS3 or higher, Adobe is offering twelve months of discounted subscriptions.