At Adobe you can get CS6 CC for $39.99 per month, but if you have an email address that's from a school/college/university you can get CS6 for $19.99 per month. And you get all the following. So I upgraded from CS5 to CS6 today. Photoshop CC Illustrator CC InDesign CC Dreamweaver CC Aftereffects CC Adobe Premiere Pro CC Adobe Muse CC Acrobat XI Pro Acrobat® XI Pro Adobe Audition Adobe Audition® CC Bridge CC Bridge CC Encore Encore® Fireworks Fireworks® Flash Builder 4.7 Premium Flash® Builder® Premium Flash Professional Flash Professional CC InCopy CC InCopy® CC Photoshop Lightroom Lightroom® Media Encoder CC Media Encoder CC Adobe Prelude CC Prelude® CC SpeedGrade CC SpeedGrade® CC
I have Adobe CS2, I got it for free from Adobe because they want people to like it and upgrade. They, of course, are no match for my innate sense of penny pinching, and that I am thrilled to have a valid, full copy of their CS2 software. I realize that graphic artists and people in the graphics type professions need the best, up-to-date stuff, but I still think paying that much money, either per month or hundreds all at once, is just crazy. I have PaintShop Pro X2, and I paid $79 when it first came out back in 2007. I will use it until I am willing to pay another $59 for the latest version, which won't be for a long, long time. Still, this seems like a good deal for people who need it, and they should take advantage of it. I will say this, and I don't know if everyone does it now or not, but with PSP X2, after you activate your software more than twice, you have to email them and get a new activation key each time. Every time I call to get a new activation, I hear "we only allow so many licensed activations before you have to buy new software." Is this legal? Not to hijack your thread, ed, but I figured one of you guys would know, and since we are on the subject of licenses and photo editing programs, I thought I'd ask.
As to legality of "we only allow so many licensed activations before you have to buy new software." I think it is, as when you first buy it the agreement would most likely say something about installing on only one machine. So that by emailing in to reactivate they are essentially allowing another install as they have no guarantee that it was removed from the previous computer. As for myself, even at the minimum of what I can make on one set of business cards pays for a month's subscription. So essentially I see it as basically getting it for free.