Updated: PhotographyUNcapped.com has received info directly from Adobe concerning the upcoming CS6 upgrade policy: Adobe Creative Suite 6 and Photoshop CS6 Availability and Upgrade Policy Clarified
____________________________________
Adobe Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Media Business Unit, David Wadhwani, has posted on the Adobe Featured Blogs that the upgrade eligibility for the yet to be announced CS6 Creative Suites 6 and Photoshop CS6 will be significantly changed.
According to the post, only those customers who have purchased Adobe CS5, CS5.1, or CS5.5 products, prior to the official CS6 launch will be eligible to upgrade to the CS6 versions of those products. This is a big shift from previous Adobe upgrade policy. See Adobe CS5 Upgrade Eligibility
From the Adobe blog post by David Wadhwani: “With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.”
Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Creative Suite: New Choices for Customers
So, if this holds to be true, anyone without a current version, at that time, won’t be eligible for an upgrade to CS6.
So, if you have CS4 or CS3 and were hoping to upgrade to CS6, now would be the time to jump up to CS5, in order to be eligible for CS6 upgrades later on.
The major alternative presented will be subscriptions (How Do Photoshop Subscriptions Work?) which may not sit well with many users.
Many blogs and forums are upset over this apparent policy change.
Voice your opinion.
Adobe Support Forum – Photoshop forum
Adobe Support Forum – Lightroom forum
Photoshop.com Forum thread
Some people act as if a new version of Photoshop means that upgrading is essential and forced. If you have a version of Photoshop, or any application, that you are satisfied with, you don’t have to upgrade. (That is, until you get a computer with a newer OS that doesn’t support an older application. ) Just because Adobe or any company moves on, doesn’t mean that you need to change anything.
We love Photoshop, and don’t want to see users forced out of upgrading, and into a position that they don’t feel comfortable with, such as perpetual subscriptions. We don’t want to see the work of dedicated engineers at Adobe supplanted by increased pirating of our favorite image-editing software.
I have to assume that this new policy will last for many years; which means, if I don’t buy CS6 I will not be able to buy CS7 ad infinitum.
This is forcing me into taking a very hard look at staying with Photoshop for the long-term or upgrading from CS3 to CS5 in the short-term, since I may have to deal with the same issue 18 months from now.
I also was not happy with the timing of the change. I would have bought CS5 when it was first introduced if I knew this was going to be their policy. This was not a well thought out customer-sensitive move on Adobe’s part, but it always seemed they put dollars well ahead of the customer. No surprise here.
Now, on to the Internet for alternatives.