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Comment by toki5 | Hacker News Reader

I have to admit, the subscription model is way more attractive to me than the one-time model. I'm not someone who uses Photoshop every day, so if I sit down and think "it'd be really handy to use it right now, just this once, for this one thing" ... I'm not going to shell out hundreds to do it. I'm just not. I'll use GIMP if I can or I'll pirate Photoshop if I can't.

I might shell out $50, though, and if I find I'm using it often, great. If not, I'll cancel and I'll have only spent $50 for a legitimate use case.

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That depends on the use case. The subscription model will be significantly more expensive for people who don't need the newest features. At about $50 per month the $1200 for CS Design Standard are payed off after 2 years. Whereas I'm still using the 6 year old InDesign CS3. And a nearby t-shirt printing shop is using Illustrator 10, from 2001.

This is absolutely a fair point regarding the total cost over time, but I'm referring to the first cost, where I don't have the product and am considering purchasing it.

A one-time $1200 fee is a non-starter. There's no way I'm paying that much money for a product that I'm not even sure I'll use next month.

$50 (or, as I've been corrected by others -- thanks) $20 to try it out? That's a much easier decision.

$20 to try it out?

Its $30 without the annual commitment.

I know I'm "supposed" to be against this, but if my livelihood depended on Photoshop, I know I can easily generate more than $50/mo of value from using one of the apps. (Hell, even as a hobbyist, I can justify the cost if one considers how much a hobby or typical weekend night out with friends cost)

It's a better deal than paying $1000 all at once and you can stop paying at any time. From an accounting perspective, nothing really changes because the subscriptions are basically equivalent to depreciating a boxed copy of CS.

Where this model doesn't make sense is for businesses that don't upgrade CS every 2 years. In that case, the subscription model is more expensive.

My problem is the 1 year commitments. I don't feel like I'm "saving" enough to make them worth it. The "introductory" pricing is classic bait-and-switch and I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth each month when I only launch the apps a couple times a week. I guess I'd feel better about buying it if things really felt like a cloud service -- but the apps don't feel as speedy and well-made as Google, they lean more towards the Apple side of the Cloud: It works, just not quite well enough to be fast.

Too bad the $50 plan is only with an annual commitment. It's $75 if you want month to month.

$50/month is for everything. It's $20/month just for Photoshop.

It's $30 without an annual commitment.

learc83 is referring to the "annual commitment" plan (see the drop down) of the "complete" package, which includes all software: https://creative.adobe.com/plans

But you are correct that if someone only wants Photoshop, they only pay $19.99/month with no annual commitment.

>But you are correct that if someone only wants Photoshop, they only pay $19.99/month with no annual commitment.

The $19.99 for photoshop is with an annual commitment, it's $30 without it.

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