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Benefits and Pricing

Let's, talk about the cloud. What the heck is it? What is going on? So we're in a period of glorious change, okay, glorious change right now remember that s o adobe has made some big changes with their software recently, we're now in the realm of rental software like it or not, but that's where we are and folks have had a hard time wrapping their brain around what exactly the creative cloud is? What does it mean and all that kind of good stuff? Largely in part because as much as I love adobe, they have done a pretty terrible job of rolling out all the new changes on how we're going to use the software now, so I don't know if the's stockholders were just pushing, you know, for them to get this new version out, but it is the creative cloud itself does not feel quite ready and there's a lot of confusion about it, but never fear. We're going toe indeed mystify all of that stuff today, so you'll have a good idea of exactly what's changed and how it can benefit you and the rest of your photo...

shop and creative career so first. List istea mystify few things it doesn't run on the internet okay, when you purchase a subscription to the creative cloud and we're going to talk about all the different options that are available to you, you download the software and install it locally on your hard drive just like you always have. Ok, so that's the myth number one a lot of folks think that you have to have a perpetual internet connection to run it and that's just not the case it would be so slow if that were the case that it would be unusable. Okay, so you do install it locally. It does not run on a web browser you don't need at an internet connection to use the software your documents are also saved locally on your hard drive, though they can be stored on the cloud for access on different machines and we're going to take a look at how to do that or how to access your settings and things on different machines here in a moment. So that's another myth so the documents are locally on your hard drive. Also, you can share files even if your client friend colleague what have you does not have a creative cloud memberships you can get your files to them even if they don't have a membership to the creative cloud so that's another big myth also the updates or not installed automatically okay you get notified through the creative cloud app which we're going to look at here in a minute you get notified that there is an update it doesn't automatically start downloading to your machine because you may be in the middle of a project or what have you so that would be kind of a fox passed there if all that stuff to started downloading automatically so that doesn't happen either you get notified when there's an update and you can choose whether or not to install it ok so those are just a few minutes I did talk about you don't need a perpetual internet connection to run the software however you do need to connect to the internet every once in a while because the software is going to phone home and check the validity of your account now when this stuff first came out adobe said hey it's going to phone home every thirty days all right and if the software cannot connect to the internet then you get another thirty day grace period and then at that point if you still can't or if the softworks still cannot phone home then all of your software in all of your front stopped working all the funds to say all the funds that we're going to look at here that you can get as part of your creative cloud subscription so that scared a lot of people so adobe has now said that well if you purchase a month to month subscription and we're going to talk about all the different price packages so that you conceal, see what the best deal is free of that a nice deal calculator for you if you purchase in love two month subscription meaning you don't sign a year contract, then the software is going to phone home every thirty days if it can't connect and you get a thirty day grace period, at which point, if it still can't connect the next time you launch the software, you're going to get a little message that says this is really about to stop working. If you sign an annual contract, the software is going to phone home every ninety nine days sometime within that period. You don't know when exactly that's gonna happen, and if the software cannot connect to the internet, verify your account, then the next time you connect to the internet, then it's going to try to connect and if it still can't verify your account and then when you launch the software after that and you're going to get that scary message that says your entire world is going to stop working now, that may sound kind of weird, a little bit squirmy and uncomfortable that the software is phoning home, but it's been doing it for years, you just didn't know it. In an effort to prevent prior see, the software has been phoning home even in cia six tio validate your account and make sure that at the same account isn't being used you know a whole bunch times oh, well well lisa had this software last week now this chick you know megan's got this software what's going on here so that's really been happening but it's a little bit different now so what does all this mean let's talk a little bit about the pros the biggest pro at least in my humble opinion and it's okay to giggle I hope people get go, caesar I love I love sitting together these visuals there just so much fun one of the big pros in my humble opinion the biggest one is that a day these engineers are gonna be so much happier now, so this is actually one of the davies engineers from caving in, but this eighteen month revision cycle is absolutely unsustainable and tyrannical. You know, in my opinion, these guys are so stressed out it's my opinion that we're gonna have happier, less stress product engineers, which is going to mean better updates better features all kinds of creativity is going to come to these programs. I really do you think that aside from happier, less stress product engineers, we're going to have fewer new features released more frequently see, if you think about what's happening now every eighteen months we get this huge pile of new features not as the bigger the pile and photoshopped sisi as we hadn't cs sixty six was one of the biggest revisions that I've seen in years, so it's hard for us to get up to speed on all that, so it takes awhile. So now since we're going to be having the latest version of the software, we're always going to be on a most updated latest version we're going to be dealing with fewer new features, but more frequently so it's going to give us it'll be a little less overwhelming I think for us as customers to get up to speed on the thing because we're going to get a few new things here and there instead of nothing, nothing, nothing and then bam, you know this huge pile of new stuff so that's another another pro and like I said, we're always going to have access to the latest version, but you choose when that update happens. Another great thing about the cloud is that we can sink our application settings and we're going to look at how to do that and photo shop for example, if I made some actions on my laptop at home and my copy of photo shop and then I come in here two creative live and I need those actions all I have to do is sign out of whomever had photoshopped signed in at the moment. Sinan is me, and if I've seen to my settings, my settings come right to this copy of photo shop so that can happen on doesn't matter what machine if you think you're setting is and you sign in energy on that machine, then all of your presets air right there, which is wonderful, so that's a huge benefit, especially if you do a little bit of work it in an office and little bit of work at home, so that can be very helpful. You've also got access to both mac and windows versions of the software that's not happened before, so a lot of folks will oftentimes need both versions where you had to buy both versions before so that was expensive, so that's changed, so you get access tio mac copy or when those copy, depending upon what you need and you consol the software on to machines, so if you need to install it on the mac and a pc, you can under your creative cloud subscription so that's a huge benefit right there you also get twenty gigabytes of storage on the cloud now that's for sinking presets like we talked about just a moment ago and your documents now the document part of the sink is not quite ready yet to be rolled out, but look for that in the coming weeks, but you get twenty gigabytes of storage so that's nice, and to be quite honest, you're going to be able to explore all kinds of software that you never would have played with before, since you have access to over thirty applications, tools and services with your creative class subscription. So especially as graphic designers, you're going to be able to diversify. Your skill set would just makes you more marketable today's graphic designer has to wear many hats you have to know photoshopped you need to know illustrator you need to know in design and you have to be a copy editor he really need to know web software as well so you can get access tio, adobe, muse or dreamweaver so all kinds of applications are going to be available for you to explore and play around with, and you might not have done that before or so in my open at different avenues of revenue for you, or just get your creative juices flowing and get you excited. So that's another big, big benefit. Another benefit, especially for small to medium businesses or even entrepreneur sole proprietors is that the cash flow is going to be a little bit better because you're looking at a relatively low monthly payment tio have all the latest and greatest of everything instead of, you know, a couple of thousand dollars that you have to gather up and plunk out at one time for an upgrade, you know, the master creative sweet, you know, was running around, what, twenty five hundred dollars? Something like that and that's, not cheap and that's a lot of money, it's a big pile of money, my opinion to have to pluck out so a little bit better cash flow for a smaller, smaller businesses out there. So that's nice. Also a point that my husband, jay nelson pointed out to me is that you don't have to depreciate your software on your taxes if you're renting it. So there's, no amortization on leasing software like there is on purchasing it, so the way it works before is if you let's say, you bought the master suite for twenty five hundred dollars, you couldn't just take that twenty five hundred dollars off your tax return that year that you bought it, it had to be depreciated over a period of three years. Not true with rental software. The whole fifty dollars, just comes off every month. So that's a big deal that I've not heard anybody really talk about publicly, it was in my macworld and pc world review the software, though another great benefit of excited cloud is collaboration and feedback through another social media outlet called be hands we're going to look at be hands here in just a little bit rashly going upload a project so you can see how that works but just to give you well heads up on what it is it's another social media network but it's great for uploading work whether it's images, music designs what have you and people can comment on it so it's a great way to get feedback and you can control which people can comment on it and view it in your privacy settings she could make it available to everyone or you can lock it down to only your trusted circle of friends so that's another great free way to get critical feedback on your work so we're gonna look at that as well and also one last benefit is that along with that access to the collaborative behan's community you also get one free portfolio website hosting and everything the whole nine yards so part of the hands is a tool called pro site and it's a really neat kind of busy wig and website editor and it's great it has all kinds functionality you could make a very professional looking website and you can publish it that all comes I say it's free but you're paying for it through the creative class so you get that as well so one free portfolio website so if you don't have that what a great what a great benefit right so now let's take a look at all the pricing and it is confusing it's so confusing but it won't always be confusing it does he's going to get this moved out and it will be no big deal but for right now it is very confusing so what the heck do you get? What are your options? Your options for full creative cloud subscription so that's ah full meal deal the whole enchilada you're going to subscribe to the whole miss when you do that you get over thirty applications tools and services tools and services aren't really other applications they're just little helper athletes if you want to call them that helper tools that can allow you to do things like create an ipad app you know published a create animations publisher website all that kind of stuff that's fifty dollars for the whole enchilada fifty bucks a month if you sign an annual contract no, I don't think you don't have to pay the whole year upfront we do have signed a contract saying that you will in your credit card would just get charged fifty dollars a month you can if you already own cs three through cs five point five you can uh get it for twenty dollars a month I think I actually have those reversed I think it's thirty dollars a month if you have an annual contract from cs three ceos forces five five point five and I think it's twenty dollars if you got six but to do either though so a little bit reduced monthly fee for the first year on lee if you own one of those previous programs saying so it's kind of an upgrade situation, but you have to do it before july thirty first are there are no discounts even if you already own it flat fifty dollars and the discount is only good until august first of two thousand fourteen, at which point it goes right back to fifty dollars, so you will save a little bit of money if you decide to go ahead and subscribe to the cloud before july thirty first big big deadline coming up there another option for the full created cloud is to not sign the contract at all, at which point it's going to set you back seventy five dollars a month. So if you don't use the software all your long, you just work on it on a project by project basis then that meant might make more sense to you just to do it you know month by month and then just have it when you need it and don't have to pay for it when you don't need it so that's one one possibility there the other possibility is to do what to do because a single app subscriptions that's where you subscribe to a single app on lee and most of the big ones were included in that so we're talking photoshopped illustrator in design dream waiver et cetera you know the big ones that you could buy individually anyway when it was creative suite so what's the pricing on the single app subscriptions it is a twenty dollars a month investment if you sign an annual contract again you don't have to pay for that year upfront twenty dollars a month but you have to promise that you are going to at least pay for it for twelve months if you have c s three through cia six and you purchase by july thirty first then you can get it for ten dollars a month so that's a little bit of a promotional pricing there but again come august one two thousand fourteen that's going to go right back to twenty dollars a month and if you don't want to sign an annual contract for a single at membership then it's going to set you back thirty dollars a month and the software is going to phone home every month now there are other pricing schemes that I didn't want to go into just for confusion but if you are a student a teacher or you have a team so if you're working in a let's say an advertising agency and you've got a whole team that needs this software there are other pricing levels for you and I've made a tiny you earl of that webpage on a doobie site because it is a little bit difficult to find all these prices on adobe dot com but you can try it on over to lisa that I am slash two thousand thirteen cc prices now some folks are a little bit worried about this price and they say oh sure it's a good idea right now but what's the dhobi going to raise the prices to kind of like cable companies where you sign up for you know all these special channels and you get this introductory pricing and then before you know it you're paying two hundred dollars a month for the same thing that you started out paying fifty dollars a month all we can do is hope that that doesn't happen that would be one of the stupidest things in the history of software to ever do would piss off the customer base in a galactic way so I don't think that they're going to do that but who knows let's hope that they don't and if that happens then the world will in no e really don't think that's gonna happen but that is one thing that some folks are concerned about the dhobi raising these prices but I don't think that's gonna happen so let's talk about a couple of more things let's look at some more benefits and the deal calculator she can figure out what you should purchase for your particular workflow and company and then we're going to stop and take some questions on just the generality of this whole creative cloud situation. So what the heck do you get for each one also very confusing if he subscribed to the whole enchilada this is what you get on the left hand side you get photoshopped illustrator in design dreamweaver aftereffects premier probe muse for creating websites acrobat pro for manipulating pds audition which is sound software bridge that's your organizational database encore has also has to do with video, I believe fireworks flash builder flash pro in copy that's for copy editors working in in design light room oh yeah light room media in poder prelude and speed grade you also get access to those tools and services that we're talking about a few minutes ago that led to create mobile content as well as ipad aps so those air some extra things that you get with the full into a lotta you also get the creative cloud app which we're going to look at later you get another application called story c c plus you get cooler which allows you to create and share color schemes you get business catalyst which allows you to creatine track success of websites type kit which is adobes entire web font collection which is a big deal a digital publishing behan's that's the social media sharing collaborative feedback side and pro side now pro side is that extra piece of the hands that lets you create one professional portfolio site and you do get it hosted that is included in your package. I think that's a ninety nine dollars value just that you also get to install the software on two machines. Like we said earlier, either macro windows, you get to pick which format you want, you get the twenty gigabytes of file storage for collaboration or sharing your settings. And of course, you get the ability to sink your settings and documents the documents. Sinking isn't quite ready yet, but it should be seen and you also get hosting for up to five websites on business catalyst so that's what you get with the whole enchilada now, in contrast for the single app and, of course, that's available for photo shop illustrator in design dream waiver all the big guys you also get access to bridge and the many bridge pain, although it is a separate install these days, it used to be installed right along with photo shop, but not anymore. So you do get access to bridge you also get the creative cloud app you get ba hance and the pro side, so one portfolio side built to your specifications and fully hosted you also get the extension manager which is a needle thing that lets you turn on and off their party extensions that you may have installed which is helpful for troubleshooting you also get to install it on two machines mca windows you also get the twenty gigabytes file storage and the ability to sink settings and documents when that's available so hopefully this can start making this clear about oh what exactly you get on one versus the other now let's take a look at the deal calculator ok, what the heck should you buy what's going to be the best deal for you if you use two point five applications, then it'll be who view you will save money to buy the full creative cloud subscription that's where the break even point is two and a half aps so really if you used three aps and no megan here uses footage shot illustrator in design so you're perfect for the cloud hey so two and a half aps is the break even point if you use photo shop and light room on lee and you do not want to explore let's, say your photographer and you have no interest in exploring video editing capabilities so you don't want that exploration of all those other acts in order to diversify maybe you are just fun with what you're doing now and that's perfectly ok, then the best deal for you is to do a single app subscription to photo shop and by a standalone copy of light room you'll save quite a bit of money that way, so light room is still available as a perpetually licensed products, so you you purchase it and you own it same way with photo shop elements, those were the only two applications to my knowledge that still have a stand alone capacity to them. So if you just really use photo shop in light room single app subscription, that photo shot plus a standalone copy of light room in light room right now is we're in an eighty dollars for the upgrade, one hundred fifty dollars for the full version. If you use photo shop on lee and you do not want to explore all those other programs and that's perfectly fine let's say you're a hobbyist, perhaps if you just use photo shop it's time to switch to photo shop elements disses say that seriously photoshopped elements is so powerful I can make it get up on this table and dance absolutely I can make it do almost anything that photo shot can do yes, there are some advanced things that it can't do, it only works in rgb color space and you don't have access to the channel information individually, but you've got layer masking you've got nearly all the same filters, you've got nearly all the same adjustment layers it's incredible it's absolutely incredible, its user friendly and it was built for mortals. It was not built for high end graphic designers and photographers like fuck shot was really full shot wasn't built for photographers at all, but it was built for graphic professionals, so if you only use photo shop and there's so many of these folks out there screaming about, they're not going to pay all this money because they only use photo shop adobes, ripping them off. This is an opportunity to kind of get forcibly funneled into the piece of software that you should be using anyway. There's so many people that have photoshopped the full version of photo shop the big kahuna and they don't need it, they don't like it, it's overwhelming it's not user friendly I mean, hey, I make my money teaching is so great go me, but I can't tell you how many photographers I've met that they have just stopped editing their own images. They've started hiring other people to edit them simply because they can't handle photo shop it's just overwhelming in this unpleasant that's perfectly fine, I can get those people in the photo shop elements in their whole life changes, they get happy again, it feels approachable, user friendly it's got all kinds of little helper tutorials built into the program. They're called guided edits and it's absolutely amazing. I have a full day version in my catalog here, a creative live footage shot elements ten I think, for photographers, so be sure to check that out if this is of interest you but really, if you just hear his photo shop and you don't want any of that other stuff that's on the slide right here, then it is time to switch to elements for riel it really is and that's going to set you back eighty dollars, from in that grade, or about one hundred dollars for the full version and that's all you're going to spend in that whole year and you will probably be a happier photo shop user at that point, if you do switch to elements. So on that note shall we take some questions from? Does the studio audience have any questions so we can take some questions from the internet if we have them more of a comment? Because when this all came out, my news feed was so people are so negative and I was laughing so hard because back in the day when I was not as healthy, I paid about seventy five dollars a month for tanning killing myself and was completely happy was, you know, so switching that money over into software that I'm making money off of I don't understand why people are so angry and I don't understand people get angry at facebook anyways, but just that's what I am merely thought of when you were showing all that I was tackling to myself a little bit because I just thought it was so funny. Well, it is funny, it's just the shock of the change, and like I said earlier, it wasn't the best rollout from a company. It wasn't the most clear, it's all been a little bit confusing. Look over here, don't look over here, we're not really sure what this is going to be a look over here, bright shiny so part of that adobes, fault and it's just change, and sometimes people react negatively to that before they really assist a knee jerk reaction sometimes, but hopefully everybody will be on board with it after this class, or at least know what software they they probably should be using it, and so that you don't have to spend a whole lot of many for stuff that you're not going to use anyway. Cool. Thank you, lisa. All right, let's, talk about some a couple of worst case scenario questions here, ok, so thornton three as well as rick kraus or that similar questions will files process in the creative crowd be editable viewable in photo shop c s six and or five if and when users don't continue with a subscription after one year and they're just thinking, you know, if adobe raises the prices, I think they're probably lower the prices and hopefully, you know, that's what I'm hoping after a z years go by but it's hard, hard telling what do you think about what can tell us a little bit about that? He absolutely will be able to open your files if you have let's say the color look up adjustment layer so a new feature and see a six you can open that psd and c s five you can't double click that adjustment layer because that adjustment layer toe open at the sentences that adjusts in that particular kind of adjustment layer doesn't live in the earlier versions of photo shop, but she can still open the file. You just may run into editing challenges if you've used features that that later version has and then opened it up in an earlier version, but you can still open it up just fine, so it'll be a saying that they're going to support cia six for quite some time and I've seen a lot of people writing on the internet that well, I was going to stay to see a six they can't make me upgrade well, you know what's gonna happen if you're shooting raw the version of camera raul that came with your photo shop cia six if you brought in your camera is not going to be able to open your files because they're not adobe is not going tio update camera raw for cia six so you really can't stay there if your photographer just tossing a quickie um could you do like could you use light room? I mean, could you stick with light room in that case? Oh, absolutely. Ok, because the develop module of light room is cameron with a database tack on so many options thank goodness you're here to answer all of our questions eso shane is asking does photoshopped elements tie into a light room like photoshopped does and take it a step further does light room offer and edit in photoshopped elements option yeah, absolutely light room plus photoshopped element is a brilliant brilliant combination it's wonderful really, really wonderful. So yeah, just like you can have you can set up light room to use photo shop is your external editor you can set it up to use elements is your external editor you can even do that with I photo did you know that I photo that comes with every max a great little database in photo editor you can set up your external editor to be elements as well or photo shop very cool I photo right, okay rightly asks does getting type kit with the sisi subscription mean the adobe font folio I purchased a year ago was untimely mistake? It depends on what font follow he purchased so type kit is adobes web florence you can think of those as kind of like rental funds, so basically the just of these rental web funds is that if you wanted to design your website with these fancy shmancy fonts, what do you do when a viewer from you know wherever access is your website and they don't have those funds so they don't see your website as you designed it? So with these web funds, basically the fonts lived on the server wherever your site was hosted and when somebody hits your sight than the server goes and grabs those funds so that they're displayed on that years machine, even though that viewer doesn't really have those fonts on their machine. So in tackett adobe is really making available all of their web finds it's not the entire adobe font collection, so it depends on what he purchased if he em had a little bit of bad timing or not if he purchased the web front ophelia, then yeah, the timing was a bit poor, but if he purchased the big adobe web font collection, which is incredibly expensive, then that's not the same thing correct especially it is working on print there's two different right, two different right, but these web funds that you will be able to download through type kit and again, that part isn't quite ready yet, but it should be seen. You can use them in print projects that's, so they're not through talking. Yeah, absolutely. Because the father, you just get access to the funds through type kid. They get downloaded and installed on your machine, as he can use them in print projects as well as online projects.