EDIT: Adobe has now done away with perpetually licensed software, so it looks like everyone HAS to become a Creative Cloud subscriber if they want new versions of Creative Suite applications.

Adobe’s release of the Creative Cloud has posed a huge debate in the design community. Should you invest in a monthly subscription to use applications that have always been free to use after the initial purchase or should you buy the entire Creative Suite and not have to spend a penny more? If Adobe had made the elements of the Creative Cloud identical to the Creative Suite, I think the issue would have been much easier for individuals and companies to figure out, but the Creative Cloud has all the Creative Suite applications and some additional items, which is why people are debating if the added cost is worth the Creative Cloud.

I’ve been using the Creative Suite since CS2. Roughly every two years Adobe would release the next version and I would pay the $900 upgrade for the full Master Collection. With the release of CS6 Adobe also announced a new pay-per-month service called the Creative Cloud. The monthly cost for Creative Cloud members is $50 per month with a one-year contract, which is $600 per year, or $75 per month without a contract, which is $900 per year.

Adobe has also announced a new upgrade schedule so a full version upgrade for the Creative suite every two years and a half-upgrade in the years between the full upgrade. So in 2012 we received the full CS6 upgrade, in 2013 we’ll get the CS6.5 upgrade and then the CS7 upgrade in 2014. Even though Adobe did release a CS5.5 upgrade last year I didn’t bother with it since none of the new features were appealing to me even though the upgrade from CS5 to CS5.5 was only $525 which is a little more than half of a full version upgrade.

Along with having access to the full Creative Suite when you’re a subscriber to the Creative Cloud you also get some additional software and features. Adobe’s touch apps for mobile devices, Adobe TypeKit for web designers, online file storage, web hosting, online PDF creation and new features for Creative Suite applications that will only be available to the Creative Suite when the new upgrade becomes available.

From a cost perspective it seems that the Creative Cloud would be the best bet IF you wanted the extras that are only included in the Creative Cloud. The yearly cost for the Creative Cloud with a subscription is $600 while the upgrade for the whole Creative Suite is only $525 which actually makes the Creative Suite the inexpensive upgrade just for the applications alone. If you also figure in that the Typekit license you get with the Creative Cloud is the Portfolio plan that’s an additional $50 you would be spending if you purchased a license alone which brings up the cost of the Creative Suite to $575 which is only $25 less than the Creative Cloud.

The Creative Cloud also includes Adobe’s six Touch Apps which cost $10 each so that puts the Creative Suite at a cost of $635 if you also wanted Typekit and the Touch Apps. The other items which are more difficult to price out due to their not being tied to a definitive service outside of Adobe, such as the online file storage, could be priced out to another online service that also offers online file storage. However, in this case the online storage that Adobe is using has some features that aren’t available anywhere else as they are an integrated part of the Creative Cloud so the online storage is more than just online storage.

For myself the added benefit of the Creative Cloud isn’t something I’m interested in for a few reasons. The first is that if I decide that I would want to bypass an update I’m free to do so with just the Creative Suite. If I were to skip the CS6.5 upgrade it would cost me more for the CS7 upgrade but I would be saving money as the upgrade to CS6.5 would cost me $525 as would the upgrade then to CS7. That’s an extra $75 per year I would have to spend each year just for a half-upgrade.

Another reason is that I don’t own any tablets that can use the Adobe Touch Apps and I don’t want to use Typekit for this website. These additional applications may be nice to have but since I can’t install the Touch Apps on my Nexus 7 nor do I want to give Adobe $50 a year for webkit fonts, the added tools aren’t necessary for me.

The adobe online storage and sharing is something I would be interested in if I didn’t already have my own solution. For people like myself that not only do graphic design but web editing as well, the 20G of online file storage simply isn’t enough. Even when I’m creating a video proof for a client the file sizes are rarely smaller than 20G. I also use my own server as file storage and sharing so I don’t need this solution from Adobe.

The only part of the Creative Suite that’s actually of any interest to me are the incremental feature updates. These won’t always be got-to-have-it items, such as the new performance boost in Illustrator CS6,  but they will be features that would be nice to have in most cases. And while I would like it if Adobe made these enhancements available to people that pay for the full Creative Suite up front instead of only to people that gradually pay for their software month to month, it’s just not something that’s going to make me want to switch from the Creative Suite to the Creative Cloud.

The biggest downside to the Creative Cloud is that unlike other software you have to pay to use the applications in the Creative Cloud every month. I know people and businesses that are still using Photoshop CS2 because they don’t have a reason to upgrade to a more current version. While they may get the added benefit of the new features and performance from in Photoshop CS6 through the Creative Cloud, they’ve not had to continue to pay to use Photoshop CS2 since they originally purchased it. As such, they’ve more than made a return on their investment as they’re able to continue working without needing to keep upgrading.

It’s unfortunate that Adobe is “encouraging” people to move to the Creative Cloud software model as the incremental features will likely be quite desirable depending on their cool factor or how useful they are. But despite this, I’m not migrating my software to the Creative Cloud as there isn’t anything about it that makes it a worthwhile investment for me.

NOTE: There are few additional applications and services available in the Creative Cloud but for the purposes of this article I did not include them.