The Creative Cloud, in my opinion, is one of the best things that has happened in a long time. I read Adobe’s announcement and thought WOW! You get everything for just $49.99 (USD) a month if you subscribe on a yearly basis, that’s brilliant!

So I was really surprised by the some of the negative opinions I’ve seen in the last week on some of the forums and user groups. I think this comes from a lack of understanding, and in some cases, fear of what Adobe is doing. The two major issues I’m seeing:

1. Is all of the software on the Adobe Creative Cloud (Server)? Or the same question asked in reverse. Do I have to download all the software?
2. Are all my files saved to the cloud?

The Cloud is like a subscription only better.The biggest issue/concern I hear is that people think the software and all of your creative work resides on Adobe’s servers; it doesn’t. You download the programs you want. That’s right you can download and install:

• Photoshop CS6, Extended
• Illustrator CS6
• Premiere® Pro CS6
• InDesign CS6
• Fireworks CS6
• After Efects CS6

Well you get the picture… This is only a partial list, the whole list, including six new programs for tablets, can be found at Adobe’s creative cloud tools page.

The only real issue is how much space do you have on your hard drive. Your single license allows you to download to two machines as long as you don’t use them both at the same time. You work just as you normally would and you save your files locally to your machine.

So here is the big question:

Where does my work get stored?

You only use the Cloud when you want to share.

If you use automatic cloud syncing then yes all your work goes to the cloud but you do not have to sync everything.

The following is taken directly from Adobe’s FAQ page:

“Do I have to save my files to the storage space on Creative Cloud?
No — just sync what you want. You can save every file to your desktop and choose which ones you sync to Creative Cloud.”

When you want to share with others you do it by providing an e-mail link.

The above two questions are the ones that I have heard over and over again. If Adobe has a fault it is that they make so much of their information so very difficult to get.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Adobe and its not that they haven’t thought of the issues or that the answers aren’t there if you look. I am convinced that there web site is designed by programmers who don’t understand what is important to more creative types. You ask a question and they give you half an answer. Two days later you find the answer to your original question when you are looking for something completely different. That said the effort to search is a small price to pay for such amazing products.

I started subscribing to the Adobe Creative Suite in May last year. My reasons at that time were as follows;I wanted to:

• Go from Photoshop CS4 to CS5
• Upgrade my Illustrator skills from CS2 to CS5
• Learn Dreamweaver. (I code HTML & CSS but I was finally forced to give up GoLive)
• Learn InDesign
• Play around with Premiere and After Effects

Now to buy all those programs at once was just out of my budget but the subscription option opened a whole new world. The subscription options was one of the best decisions I ever made, I see the Creative Cloud as just an extension.