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Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) Pricing and Upgrades

That's capitalism, folks

I'm rather confused at all the griping about how expensive the update is.

1. The basic design package is the same price and pretty much the same setup as CS2, if I'm not mistaken. So if you've been paying any attention, there's no way this could have blind-sided you. And if you want the extended version, you're paying for a beefier program.

2. Speaking of surprises, this wasn't one. How long have we known CS3 was in the pipe? If, like me, you've been stashing your spare change for months so you could get whatever your little heart desired when it was released, there's no problem. If not, well, maybe you should invest in a piggy bank first.

3. As many others have mentioned (yet I can't resist repeating), this is a pro set of tools. I don't rake in serious money from my work, but having these tools is very important to me. Thus, I'll pay what they ask and make it work.

4. As far as Adobe not having competition, even if they did there's no guarantee the prices would be lower. Capitalism says a company can sell a product at any price they can get, competition or not. If you don't like what they charge, the mature response is to not purchase it and work with what you can afford. Save your money for what's really important to you and your work, and if CS3 isn't important enough to cough up, then stop complaining already.

5. Think you're the only one who's been a broke student? $400 is doable with some planning and creativity. So save up, write some papers for people, and have fun.

6. As for the hobbyists who don't want to pay "pro" prices, that's what Photoshop Elements is for. Not powerful enough? Well, let me know when Honda sells you a professional race car at a cut rate because it's just for Sunday drives. I will, however, admit that for some programs there aren't cheaper options. Too bad, and I'm surprised the graphics companies have failed to fill the void. But don't expect Adobe to pick up the slack by lowering their prices--they're here to make money, not to support people's hobbies (no matter how serious).

And I have to squee, because this is exciting! Finally! After dealing with InDesign on an Intel Mac for months (it's hair-tearingly awful for sure), this will make my year. :D
 
yodermk said:
Assuming it's OK to put up with X11, then you can use Inkscape for vector graphics and Scribus for desktop publishing/page layout. They are both Free/Libre/Open Source.
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Yes, thanks. I discovered Inkscape not so long ago. The feature set isn't too far short of what I need, but I'm really struggling with the X11 interface... and performance is cr*p on my iBook. Maybe it'll be better when I upgrade to a MBP.

Not heard of Scribus... I'll check it out, cheers.

SL
 
Analog Kid said:
Why are design types so condescending to amateurs? Is the business so cut-throat that you need to kill the weak and eat the young lest they become competition?
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Actually I'm grateful to the Pros on this forum for putting me in my place.

I have now purchased a tube of glitter, some sticky foil stars, some coloured paper, some water-soluble glue and a pair of plastic rounded-tip scissors. I never knew it before, but I find this more than meets all my graphic design needs.

Thanks again.

SL

PS: I'm still saving up for the crayons.
 
CoreWeb said:
You aren't realizing one small problem however: as Adobe has a monopoly, and everyone (figuratively) will need CS3, you might compare it (if it went MUCH father than it has now) to charging $1,000,000 for a transplant organ. The person will need the organ. It MUST be worth the money. But is it right to charge so much?
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Of course it isn't right to charge $1,000,000 so that your grandma can get her replacement kidney. Stop taking this so personally. Obviously, like I said before, if Adobe's software gets so expensive that pros can't reasonably be expected to pay for it, then a new competitor will emerge. I'd like lower prices too (who wouldn't) but like I've said, I don't feel like people should be complaining about it!
 
Object-X said:
I'll be enrolling in college again. Wow, that's expensive.

I wonder what their policy will be for cross platform upgrades? I have several Macromedia licenses for Windows, but all my Adobe packages are on the Mac. But we wantssss it all Mac precious!
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You're out of luck if you wanted a freebie. Unfortunately, Macromedia (er, Adobe) doesn't allow cross-platform license transfers.
 
TheAnswer said:
Have you seen the price they want for the Crayola Suite 3? :p
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Exactly. Crayons are also twice the price in the UK compared to the US. And since I'm in my mid-thirties I'm not eligible for primary-school pricing either. Heck I might just steal a packet from the corner shop.

SL

EDIT: A helpful Pro user has just mailed me to say that I don't NEED crayons. Apparently I can do everything I need with finger-paints. Thanks again - you guys rock.
 
superleccy said:
Yes, thanks. I discovered Inkscape not so long ago. The feature set isn't too far short of what I need, but I'm really struggling with the X11 interface... and performance is cr*p on my iBook. Maybe it'll be better when I upgrade to a MBP.

Not heard of Scribus... I'll check it out, cheers.

SL
Click to expand...

Cool.

FWIW, Scribus should be native on OS X at some point. It depends on Qt, which in version 4 is GPL licensed on native Mac and Windows. That will allow Scribus to be native after the Qt4 port, which I think is in progress.

For now, it works fine in X11. Being a Linux guy, I don't see that as a disadvantage, but I can see why most here do.
 
NuDarwin said:
Of course it isn't right to charge $1,000,000 so that your grandma can get her replacement kidney. Stop taking this so personally. Obviously, like I said before, if Adobe's software gets so expensive that pros can't reasonably be expected to pay for it, then a new competitor will emerge. I'd like lower prices too (who wouldn't) but like I've said, I don't feel like people should be complaining about it!
Click to expand...

I don't actually mind (too much) personally. I'll be getting it academic (I'm a student - I can't believe that I feel like I have to clarify that), and as it appears I won't need Fireworks (features are in Photoshop) anyway, I won't have to buy Design and Web bundles or Design bundle plus Fireworks. So it doesn't damage ME much.

I'm just trying to make a point - that monopolies are dangerous. Look at Microsoft - they are almost a monopoly in the OS market (practically are, actually), so they can charge $400 for a single copy of an operating system and people will be almost forced to buy it. Actually, people aren't upgrading at all, often - I suppose that's how people fight back against monopolies.

But some people have to upgrade.
 
Westside guy said:
It sure seems to me a lot of the people arguing that using a text editor to manage a real website is viable must be kids who, at best, are working on MySpace pages or somesuch - they can't possibly really be responsible for a big site.
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Seriously, you're kidding, right? I spent 6 years of my life designing and developing (as in programming) for a corporate news site. (I'm not going to name the company, but you'd all know it.) I know what I'm talking about. Dreamweaver is a toy, good for small to medium-small sites. Beyond that, it scales like @#$%& and there's no way to integrate it with a CMS--although I've seen many people try in vain to do.

Westside guy said:
I know I don't want to spend all my time editing simple web pages (as you say, secretary work). I need to spend most of my time writing Perl, working with MySQL, and doing server config/maintenance when necessary. Dreamweaver + Contribute lets me set up templates, then foist off the secretary work on the people who are closer to the information being presented anyway.
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There's the problem. If you're using Dreamweaver, you're fooling yourself that you're not doing "secretary work" but from my perspective setting up templates in DW and Contribute is not much above that. You're still working in flat HTML pages with pseudo-dynamic segments. I'm talking about real programming, making a web site a living, breathing entity. The reality is that DW's templated approach forces you to do a lot of piddly maintenance work, even if you're not the one responsible for the content of the site. I think that's counterproductive. Beyond small sites, the app is utterly worthless and overly complicates things.

Westside guy said:
I use a text editor when I'm creating something new; but that's just the starting point. It goes to Dreamweaver as soon as possible.
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That just baffles me. DW would get in my way. I could actually see going from DW (as a initial design tool) to text editing... maybe. I still think that would be needlessly complicated and slow, but it would make some sense. But the other way around? Huh? :confused:

Whatever works for you, I guess. I think that attitude can limit your growth as a developer.
 
NuDarwin said:
You're out of luck if you wanted a freebie. Unfortunately, Macromedia (er, Adobe) doesn't allow cross-platform license transfers.
Click to expand...

That's disappointing. Even the all-restrictive Autodesk does that (or at least Alias did). For $50, but still - the program is originally $7000, so...
 
inkswamp said:
Seriously, you're kidding, right? I spent 6 years of my life designing and developing (as in programming) for a corporate news site. (I'm not going to name the company, but you'd all know it.) I know what I'm talking about. Dreamweaver is a toy, good for small to medium-small sites. Beyond that, it scales like @#$%& and there's no way to integrate it with a CMS--although I've seen many people try in vain to do.



There's the problem. If you're using Dreamweaver, you're fooling yourself that you're not doing "secretary work" but from my perspective setting up templates in DW and Contribute is not much above that. You're still working in flat HTML pages with pseudo-dynamic segments. I'm talking about real programming, making a web site a living, breathing entity. The reality is that DW's templated approach forces you to do a lot of piddly maintenance work, even if you're not the one responsible for the content of the site. I think that's counterproductive. Beyond small sites, the app is utterly worthless and overly complicates things.



That just baffles me. DW would get in my way. I could actually see going from DW (as a initial design tool) to text editing... maybe. I still think that would be needlessly complicated and slow, but it would make some sense. But the other way around? Huh? :confused:

Whatever works for you, I guess. I think that attitude can limit your growth as a developer.
Click to expand...

I've never used Dreamweaver. GoLive, I have. GoLive wasn't too bad, and handled large amounts of pages pretty well. But lately in my web development I've been trying to make there be very few code files, and a very small amount of code, and make things as simple as possible.

But I didn't use WYSIWYG in GoLive, either. It messes up code! I just used it as a fancy text editor. Very fancy one. Which is why, when it became too slow, I switched to Eclipse. (Basically, I want syntax-highlighting, auto-indentation, code collapsing, and other niceties. Auto-complete I could do without - actually, I want to turn it off, but I keep forgetting...)
 
CoreWeb said:
But I didn't use WYSIWYG in GoLive, either. It messes up code! I just used it as a fancy text editor. Very fancy one. Which is why, when it became too slow, I switched to Eclipse. (Basically, I want syntax-highlighting, auto-indentation, code collapsing, and other niceties. Auto-complete I could do without - actually, I want to turn it off, but I keep forgetting...)
Click to expand...

Cool! Good for you. :)

In a lot of ways WYSIWYG editors can stunt your growth and understanding of the code. There was a time back in 98 or so when I used GoLive too and throwing that out the window was my first step in a really understanding how to code. Digging in and being face-to-face with the actual code is a path to real growth, not just growth in understanding the menu options in some program.

I've see a few people defend DW on the basis that they can manage lots of flat pages, but even BBEdit and good code management skills are better for that. Using GREP searches and BBEdit's multi-page search and replace function, you can manage lots of flat HTML pages faster and more cleanly than any WYSIWYG tool. Not a lot of people understand the value of that.
 
inkswamp said:
Cool! Good for you. :)

In a lot of ways WYSIWYG editors can stunt your growth and understanding of the code. There was a time back in 98 or so when I used GoLive too and throwing that out the window was my first step in a really understanding how to code. Digging in and being face-to-face with the actual code is a path to real growth, not just growth in understanding the menu options in some program.

I've see a few people defend DW on the basis that they can manage lots of flat pages, but even BBEdit and good code management skills are better for that. Using GREP searches and BBEdit's multi-page search and replace function, you can manage lots of flat HTML pages faster and more cleanly than any WYSIWYG tool. Not a lot of people understand the value of that.
Click to expand...

I did use it for preliminary design of websites - but after I got past the beginning design state of a project and began writing the PHP for the website, the WYSIWYG was history. And all the code ended up basically being rewritten anyway.

I did like the Cmd-B and Cmd-I for bold and italic - that was, at least, while I was still hard-coding bold and italic.
 
CoreWeb said:
That's disappointing. Even the all-restrictive Autodesk does that (or at least Alias did). For $50, but still - the program is originally $7000, so...
Click to expand...

I know. In the U.S. anyways, I thought that the DMCA would let you take stuff that you own, and move it around between devices that you own. I currently have a copy of Studio MX 2k4 that a friend gave me collecting dust in a closet somewhere. Why? When he activated, he activated it on a PC. Not his fault or anything, but now it can't be activated on a mac.
 
inkswamp said:
Seriously, you're kidding, right? I spent 6 years of my life designing and developing (as in programming) for a corporate news site. (I'm not going to name the company, but you'd all know it.)
Click to expand...

I suppose that's the difference right there - you were probably dealing with static (d)HTML almost exclusively, and weren't trying to develop new intranet/web apps. But even then I don't see a good reason to have to funnel content through a web person. It just makes more sense to move that responsibility to the people who are actually responsible for that information. With a tool like Contribute, it's no more work for them to post it directly than it is for them to email/IM it to you. It just doesn't make sense to require a web middle-man just for doing something that simple (except from the point of view of that middle-man). For a site like that you could probably pay a design firm 5-10K to put together a visually pleasing site complete with DW templates, and have your in-house non-web folks keep the data up to date (after a one-time training). Outsource the web hosting and you probably don't need that web person at all.

We only started using Dreamweaver about 1.5 years ago - prior to that, I'd been coding exclusively with a text editor since 1995, more or less. I used to be just like you - anyone in our department that needed anything posted on the web either had to learn HTML or else had to send even trivial updates to me. So when I say using Dreamweaver is saving me time, I do know what I'm talking about. :D

Bottom line - now that we're using Dreamweaver/Contribute, I get to spend more of my time doing the interesting stuff.
 
Westside guy said:
I suppose that's the difference right there - you were probably dealing with static (d)HTML almost exclusively, and weren't trying to develop new intranet/web apps. But even then I don't see a good reason to have to funnel content through a web person. It just makes more sense to move that responsibility to the people who are actually responsible for that information. With a tool like Contribute, it's no more work for them to post it directly than it is for them to email/IM it to you. It just doesn't make sense to require a web middle-man just for doing something that simple (except from the point of view of that middle-man). For a site like that you could probably pay a design firm 5-10K to put together a visually pleasing site complete with DW templates, and have your in-house non-web folks keep the data up to date (after a one-time training). Outsource the web hosting and you probably don't need that web person at all.

We only started using Dreamweaver about 1.5 years ago - prior to that, I'd been coding exclusively with a text editor since 1995, more or less. I used to be just like you - anyone in our department that needed anything posted on the web either had to learn HTML or else had to send even trivial updates to me. So when I say using Dreamweaver is saving me time, I do know what I'm talking about. :D

Bottom line - now that we're using Dreamweaver/Contribute, I get to spend more of my time doing the interesting stuff.
Click to expand...

With a larger site, it is Dreamweaver seems like an even worse idea. (At least, in my opinion. And I've never used DreamWeaver, only GoLive.)

I think that the CMS should be online. Having users edit actual files seems like a bad idea to me. Instead, allow them to do inline editing - like they would do for blogs. Having them use a computer program seems like a pretty bad idea...

For an extremely large website that gets several updates each hour, you would NOT want to have users edit actual files, but instead have them edit contents in a database.

I'm just saying how it should probably be done, and how I guess at how it is done by websites such as news websites. These websites will probably also compile the user-entered code into static HTML to make generation times much lower. But then again, I've never worked on one of those sites...
 
CoreWeb said:
With a larger site, it is Dreamweaver seems like an even worse idea. (At least, in my opinion. And I've never used DreamWeaver, only GoLive.)


For an extremely large website that gets several updates each hour, you would NOT want to have users edit actual files, but instead have them edit contents in a database....
Click to expand...

Agreed. Westside, You're probably coming from the perspective of a small firm that just needs a site for clients and potential clients. With large internet firms such as the place I work, Dreamweaver and any other program like that are the last thing we would use to publish with. Custom-built publishing systems have been created specifically for our editors (they call them programmers at work) to put up anything they need, and it's all built using modules. We will use it however for small tasks, or to help with CSS designing (which I use CSSedit & Textmate as well, awesome progs!).

On the freelance side, Dreamweaver is one part of the tools I use, but I certainly don't trust it to code my pages. My 2 cents. Also, lots of people complaining about the pricing here, it's not really much different than it was in the past. Not gonna change, but I'm psyched nonetheless to have it on my Macbook.
 
Assuming the upgrade price for the Design Premium suite is the same as the Web Premium suite....as shown on the MacRumors chart.
It means as a CS2 owner I get new versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, illustrator and Acrobat for $499!
This is a amazing deal and I for one am very happy.:D
The improvements I saw in the new Photoshop alone are almost worth the price.
Just think of all the new tools and added productivity and creativity in all of these pieces of software and then come bitch:p
Sign me up and get 'em to me......I can't wait.
 
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