New Photoshop licencing rules??

[JohnC64]

Guessing that when they move to the cloud, plugins won't work anymore and the 3rd party plugin authors get stiffed too.

Not a good move in going to the cloud, probably going to be a good market in 2nd hand versions of photoshop on fleabay

[endure]

Not much use for astrophotographic processing though, alas.

Olly

Can I ask why not please? What does the full version offer that Elements doesn't?

[alan potts]

As good as PS is I only ever use about 5% of what it can do, there is no way I would pay 20 quid for that. Elements is cheap enough and I will buy a copy sometime in the future. Alan.

[Lenny147]

I will stick with CS6 , You ca block it from accessing the net anyway so dont see the problem. They are trying to stop all the people using copied versions for sure

[IanL]

Guessing that when they move to the cloud, plugins won't work anymore and the 3rd party plugin authors get stiffed too.

Not a good move in going to the cloud, probably going to be a good market in 2nd hand versions of photoshop on fleabay

No, this is just more 'cloudwash'. There is 20GB of online storage included in the price but that is just a bit of a fig-leaf. What they are really doing is introducing subscription-based licensing; the applications are still downloaded and installed locally but you have to connect up to Adobe's servers to prove you are still a paying customer to use them. It is better for Adobe since they will have a constant and more predictable revenue stream rather than it arriving in lumps every two years.

If you are a pro and buying the full-priced software and then upgrading to the latest version every two years the cloud offering is actually more cost-effective (at current prices anyway). If you are a casual user and want to buy a version and not bother to upgrade for many years afterwards, you are the one being done over by this change. Of course people who don't pay for a legitimate copy are also likely to be inconvenienced (but doubtless someone will find a way around the DRM soon enough), but I don't have any sympathy for such people.

Doubtless the next move will be a 'plugin store' where you will only be able to purchase plugins from Adobe, with the plugin authors being required to fork over 20 or 30% of their revenue to Adobe to feature in the store, or face extinction.