Since it’s been in development for so long, it’s hard to argue that you have to keep paying €720 year after year for a set you’ve already paid as a graphic designer multiple times (first purchase and via “updates”) before it becomes a subscription.

It’s almost impossible to get around Adobe in the graphic industry, for example, because you’re bound to receive stuff in adobe formats, so as a company you almost have to get involved.

For example, if you want to use Illustrator, it will cost 24 euros per month. It doesn’t matter if you use it for an hour or 8 hours a day. It doesn’t matter if you use one function or 200.

Illustrator and Photoshop are the main building blocks, so almost everyone uses at least these two components. Photoshop also costs 24 euros per month, so it is better to take the full package (and this is necessary) of 60 euros per month, because after that you also have InDesign with which you can work on multi-page documents more easily, using the psd and Illustrator files in it.

In short, 720 euros per year. Once you buy the whole set for that money, you can then use it for as long as you like. Well, that practically stopped because you wanted to update your operating system and it’s no longer compatible, but you can put that off for years, until you replace your Mac once, for example. Not anymore.

The bright spot is that all kinds of alternatives are becoming increasingly dangerous, such as Affinity Designer instead of Illustrator and Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop. Maybe in some ways they are better than Adobe apps. And much cheaper / one-time purchases anyway. Adobe really sees this mood coming, which is why they are coming up with such a quick release, because all kinds of users need a “light” version that runs through the cloud.