Adobe Photoshop Photography Program availability extended—but for how long?

 

 

Score one for the cynics: When we posted about the imminent cessation of new sign-ups to Adobe's Photoshop Photography Program late last month, we soon heard from readers expecting the company would extend the program, perhaps with a slight bump in pricing. We must admit that we were rather expecting the same ourselves. We weren't unduly surprised, then, to see that availability of the program has indeed just been extended.

First announced last September, the Photoshop Photography Program offers an alternative to Adobe's extremely divisive, subscription-only Creative Cloud program, which replaced its traditional (and very long-running) Creative Suite retail software series. The barrier for Creative Cloud access is far from trivial, with a whole-suite pricetag of US$50 per month with an annual subscription, or US$75 on a month-by-month basis. Even a single app membership costs US$20 per month. By contrast, the Photoshop Photography Program gives access to the two most important photographer-centric apps -- Photoshop CC and Lightroom -- for a much more reasonable US$10 per month.

When it was first announced, the program was said to have limited availability thru December 31st, 2013. After that date, the implication was that you'd have to pay the standard, much higher Creative Cloud pricing -- and indeed, just one day before the expected expiry Adobe was still telling prospective customers that it was their last chance to enrol. Yet in short order, Adobe has now renewed the program -- and without even raising the price, which is great news if you chose not to enrol last year.

 

The program is now set to continue thru the end of February, 2014, and it will be interesting indeed to see what happens next. With the extension, the program will have been available for very close to six months, after all. Another renewal of the program at that point would be great news for anybody who hadn't yet signed up, but might cause some subscribers to question why they rushed to sign up before the original date.

Note that to sign up for the program currently, you must already own Photoshop CS3 or higher, either in a suite or standalone, and in its standard or Extended variants. That's as was the case when the program first launched, although Adobe subsequently dropped the requirement for a period.

More details can be found on the Adobe website!

(via The Phoblographer. Adobe sign image courtesy of midiman / Flickr, used under a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 license.)