Adobe’s announcement that it was to end the option of purchasing a “perpetual license” for its products in future, in favor of a subscription based monthly fee for its Creative Cloud has caused widespread discontent and threatened defections from its products. Perhaps in order to stem this, they Creative Cloud team has issues an update to the change on their blog. This addresses three key concerns or issues that users have expressed.

Firstly, the issue of file access if a user ceases to subscribe to the Creative Cloud. Although files are stored in a location of the user’s choosing, so file access is not affected by no longer having access to the cloud, the issue of how they will access files that have been stored in proprietary Adobe formats like PSD is a major concern. The recent announcement states that, with regard to this, the company has ‘a number of options open to us here and we expect to have news around this issue shortly.”

Secondly, photographers have been seeking an offering that is more specific to their needs and again the announcement offers: “We are looking at potential offerings that recognize the photography community – because it is so broad – has some unique needs.”

Thirdly, users have expressed the wish to continue to purchase perpetual licenses instead of subscribing to the Creative Cloud. The blog responds that Adobe do not plan to change and will forge ahead with its plans. They say; “we have no plans to change our focus on Creative Cloud. We understand this is a big change and for customers who are not yet ready to move, we will continue to offer CS6 products through our reseller partners and Adobe.com.” Of course, this does not say how long they will continue to support CS6, and does not address the issue of CS6 becoming obsolete on the operating system platforms of the future.