Official CS6 Upgrade Announcement from Adobe Released (GOOD Upgrade Options)
Discussion
22 replies
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 27, 2012 at 12:33 AM
Somewhat good news for CS3 and CS4 owners: while it's true that Adobe will enforce a new upgrade policy going only one version back, they will be offering "special pricing" for CS3 and CS4 owners, as stated in this recent announcement. They don't yet say what that discount will be, but whatever it is, it will only be effective through 12/31/2012. At least there's SOME relief in the upgrade cost for CS3/4 folks, whatever it will be. So start cashing in those Grape Nehi cans, because you're going to be buying something from Adobe before this year ends!
UPDATE, 3/27: see Luke's reply and my answer below, Adobe just started a "get CS5 upgrade now and you get CS6 for FREE" offer.
Posted by Luke Ormand on March 27, 2012 at 9:48 AM
According to their website if you upgrade to CS 5.5 you will be eligible for a free upgrade to CS6 when it's released. I bought LR3 in February for a cut rate price @ B&H and am not getting a free upgrade to LR4
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 27, 2012 at 12:36 PM
According to their website if you upgrade to CS 5.5 you will be eligible for a free upgrade to CS6 when it's released.
You're absolutely right Luke! They just started that offer yesterday, here are the details. You have to buy it through the Adobe store, not retail packaging via Amazon/Newegg/Fred's Bargain House/etc. I got a chat going with an Adobe rep and asked about Photoshop standalone, and he confirmed the same thing applies, it's not just for the Creative Suites: order the PS CS5 upgrade now and you'll get a voucher for the free upgrade to CS6. All of these offers end in May, FYI!
The other nice thing is that Adobe takes PayPal now, and at the PayPal page you can put the purchase on your BillMeLater account if you have one, 6 months, no interest. That was a huge blessing because I do have the Production Premium suite and that upgrade is $400 plus tax.
Man, I'm really thankful you caught that new offer and replied! If I had waited for just CS6 the upgrade would have been $600. Blimy.
Posted by Jim Sabiston on March 27, 2012 at 1:38 PM
This is excellent news! Thank you for doing the digging and providing the links. I will be buying my CS5.5 upgrade tonight. Glad I waited (<ahem> procrastinated!) until now.
Sometimes we get lucky.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 27, 2012 at 2:27 PM
Glad I waited ( procrastinated!) until now.
You said it! After buying Prod Premium CS4 for 90 billion dollars in 2009 and then the $599 CS5 upgrade last year, I held off on 5.5, although it's been sitting in my Amazon Cart for months, lol. It was tempting, the Premiere performance improvements are extensive, and the addition of Audition was big in my book, especially since I do a ton of audio work. But with no Photoshop upgrade I just held off. The last several months have been mostly stills work, no real A/V work at all, so I was in no rush. Now I'm getting hit with video requests all of a sudden, so the timing is impeccable. When I saw Luke's reply with the words "free" and "CS6" in one sentence, I knew it was going to be a good day.
This may be as good a place as any to remind folks that you can upgrade from PS Elements v.6-on to CS5.5 for $299 using this special offer.
Earlier versions of Elements can be had for a song, as well.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 27, 2012 at 6:02 PM
That is a great hidden gem, John, most of us have a copy of Elements laying around SOMEWHERE. I wonder if that offer will stand once PS CS6 is out? Anyway, that's the road to get into Photoshop if you don't have it, hands down (other than your wife buying it for you for your birthday, lol).
For existing CS3 or CS4 owners, the CS5 upgrade is $199 and that gets you CS6 for free, so that's the best road to date for existing PS owners.
And for goofballs like me that bought the Prod Premium Suite, getting the CS5.5 upgrade for $399 with a free CS6 voucher is the third great deal. Normally a version upgrade for me is $599. Sounds heavy, but it has Photoshop Extended (I do muck about with 3D, kinda neat actually) and all of the A/V tools: Premiere Pro, After Effects, the Audition Music Studio, Illustrator and that killer Swiss Army Knife app I use almost daily, Adobe Media Encoder. I'm covinced that AME could convert a slice of pizza and get it to play on an iPad. The suite also has Flash which I don't mess with. So for $399, I'm getting all that in CS6 which is amazing. But if you don't work with video or audio, NONE of this is relevant and you save money.
This offer has been out there for almost a decade now through many different versions of PS, Paul.
That's how I got on board so very long ago.You gotta be a real detective to find the offer, though.
Hey, thanks for all of the things you do here to save folks money. I know that I appreciate it!
Posted by David Bostedo on March 28, 2012 at 10:25 PM
Purchased! So I'm on CS5 now, with CS6 to come free! Thanks everyone for pointing this deal out.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 29, 2012 at 2:09 AM
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 29, 2012 at 2:11 AM
You're welcome John! I hate paying full price for anything, I even hesitated with this upgrade until I remembered it was $200 less and I got CS6 free. The Adobe rep did hang on the chat with me while I completed the order, and when I got to the payment page, I did shoot the rep a text and ask if he had any promo codes, lol.
Purchased! So I'm on CS5 now, with CS6 to come free! Thanks everyone for pointing this deal out.
David, do you mean CS5 or CS5.5?
Posted by David Bostedo on March 29, 2012 at 8:33 AM
Well Barbara, there is no Photoshop CS5.5. This is where it gets confusing, and why Paul wanted confirmation that the deal applied (FWIW, I also got confirmation, just to be safe).
"CS" in Adobe speak usually refers to the Adobe Create Suite, which includes Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, etc. You can buy all that together as Adobe CS 5.5.
If you do, it will include Adobe Photoshop CS5 (actually 5.1 for the actual version number). So the Photoshop included in the CS5.5 suite, is Photoshop CS5.
I have Photoshop CS5 and it says Version 12.0.4, so is that different? Thank you for the help.
Posted by David Bostedo on March 29, 2012 at 11:20 AM
That's correct Barbara... further confusing things, Adobe has also maintained it's internal version numbers back before it was part of CS. So PS CS was actually PS 8, and PS CS4 was PS 11, so CS5 then is 12.
I believe - although this is just my take - that the internal version number gets updated for all kinds of patches and fixes - so 12.0.1, 12.0.2, 12.1.0, etc. And the CS version number gets updated only for major things. So it's only PS CS5.1 right now - they've only had one major update.
The Adobe CS 5.5 for the suite, however, was a little different since they meant that to mean that it's an intermediate step between CS5 and CS6. So there I don't think there was a CS 5.4, for instance.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 29, 2012 at 2:44 PM
Absolutely correct David. And it gets confusing.
Barbara, software get tracked by the version it is, and there have been 12 major versions of Photoshop since its inception. If it were just programmers running the show, we'd all be calling PS CS5 Photoshop 12. CS4 would be called Photoshop 11 and so on, and of course, CS6 would be Photoshop 13. BUT, Marketing kicks in and has to apply a catchy sellable name, hence, Photoshop CS5/4/3, etc. And like David said, the CS means the Creative Suite idea that Adobe launched about 7 years ago. The name was applied to individual products like Photoshop, but the constant reminder that you can buy the entire creative suite is always there. I'm sure that was well planned, lol! So when you bought Photoshop CS5, you REALLY bought Photoshop version 12.0, and then the small fixes incremented the number to 12.0.1, etc, like David explained.
That's not just Adobe. Many people use Windows NT 5.0, but we know it as Windows XP. If you run Vista, you're actually running Windows NT 6.0, and NT 6.1 is known as Windows 7. Using Office 2007? Nope, you're using Office 12.0 which happens to be named Office 2007. OK, I'll stop there, I'm sure you get the point! (Side note: Office 2010 is version 14, Microsoft actually skipped 13, presumably fearing the "bad luck" thing with that number. Goofy.)
So in 2011, Adobe abandoned the "new version every 18 months" policy and decided to do a mid-term upgrade to most of their software, hence, the CS5.5 versions arose with a lower upgrade price. This applied to Premiere and After Effects (their video manipulation software), but Photoshop did NOT get an upgrade, much to the dismay of many users. To try and appease the masses, Adobe threw together an iPad app called Adobe Navigation which provides you with a basic screen with all of the Photoshop tools. You leave that app on the iPad running and you can simply touch the big button on the iPad screen that displays the tool you want, and it'll get selected in Photoshop on your PC (it does save time I admit). Of course, for this to work, Photoshop needs to "connect" to your wireless network, and the iPad has to pair with Photoshop on the network, just like BlueTooth. PS CS5 didn't have the "connect to a wireless network" built-in, so Adobe released PS CS5.1 for lack of a better name, but really it was Photoshop version 12.1 (3/31/2012 Update: Correction on that version number, there is no Photoshop 12.1, the latest version is 12.0.4 which everyone has had for a while if you do your updates. Sorry!), and that's what has the wireless server connection built in. If you don't own an iPad I suppose it's irrelevant. Who knows, maybe there's a droid version now. But anyway, that's how Adobe glossed over the "Here's the new and shiny CS5.5 but not for Photoshop users" issue.
And apparently they took one more brave step: Photoshop CS6 is available right now for WHOEVER wants to download and use it. In the past you have to beg on their steps to get in line to be a beta tester, so this is quite huge. There have been beta versions for test in the past but never this complete. PS CS6 in beta runs on my PC like it's the new version ready to be shipped.
So, bringing it all together, as you already know Adobe also stopped the practice of allowing upgrades from three versions back (i.e. PS CS2 owners upgrading to CS5, etc). If you want CS6, you need to own CS5, plain and simple. But they knew that they had to do SOMETHING for the CS3 and CS4 owners that would get burned by the new policy (especially since the forums were on fire about that these past few months), and the "solution" is what they just announced: CS3 and CS4 owners have until May to buy the CS5 upgrade for the standard $199 which comes with a FREE upgrade to CS6. Now is the time to leap on that for those CS3/4 folks. You don't have to worry about any of that, you already have CS5, so you can upgrade to CS6 whenever you want, but sometime before CS7 hits in 2014, or you'll lose the upgrade path, because you won't be able to go to CS7 from CS5, at least not for $199.
I dare say this: CS5 is by far the best Photoshop, it was a huge upgrade. If we got stuck on a desert island with a camera and a laptop (and a way to charge batteries), you could run on CS5 forever and have more than ample editing power. Sure CS6 will be better, but if budgets are tight and someone doesn't want the burden of laying out a few hundred every 18-24 months, stick with CS5. What major thing does it NOT do for your workflow right now?
Not to mention, by the time CS7 hits, that 1999 HP Pavilion PC we bought at Sam's Club probably won't handle the software well anyway, so there's more expense: getting a new PC. Just something to chew on...
That's a nice explanation of the whole kit-and-kaboodle, Paul. Thanks!
--P
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 29, 2012 at 5:10 PM
You're welcome. I just wish sometimes with Adobe and Microsoft that the kit & kaboodle was at least smaller than the state of Montana...
Posted by Jim Sabiston on March 30, 2012 at 1:51 PM
"I just wish sometimes with Adobe and Microsoft that the kit & kaboodle was at least smaller than the state of Montana."
LOL!!!!!!!! Too true, too true!
Just a followup thank you for the original post. As I mentioned in my previous post, I went right home and upgraded my CS4 to CS5 for $199 and upgraded Lightroom # to Lightroom 4 ($79) while I was at it. I also had the online chat assist who confirmed the free upgrade to CS6 when it is ready.
I am now up-to-the-minute and good to go! Thanks again for sharing this information.
Paul, thank you so very much for that explanation. It's all much clearer now.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on April 1, 2012 at 12:16 AM
You're welcome Barbara... I hope it's clearer, I think I confused myself after writing all that.
Posted by David Bostedo on April 23, 2012 at 4:35 PM
For anyone who happens across this post, the $299 update link from Elements to CS, which had been active for years, has apparently finally been killed by Adobe. I don't currently see a discount option in the Adobe store to go from Elements to CS right now, and I don't know what it will cost if/when they restore it.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on April 23, 2012 at 6:16 PM
You're right David, but I guess with this whole new pricing model and push for Cloud subscriptions, the demise of the Magic Link was due to come.
BTW, something to think about if you do upgrade each version: If you buy PS at $699 and then do the $199 upgrade every 18 months, over a 6-year run Photoshop will cost you $18 per month. If you subscribe to Photoshop annually for $239.88, that's $19.99 per month, which is not that much more obviously. The drawback for the subscription is that if you decide you like a certain version, you can't stop spending bucks on Adobe and just keep what you have. Plus I don't know if you get two installs with a subscription. But if you own a small photography business and you can deduct that subscription every year and you plan on keeping PS up to date, that might be a viable option.
Having said all that gibberish, I just prefer buying it and having it permanently embedded in my system.
Discussion
22 repliesUPDATE, 3/27: see Luke's reply and my answer below, Adobe just started a "get CS5 upgrade now and you get CS6 for FREE" offer.
You're absolutely right Luke! They just started that offer yesterday, here are the details. You have to buy it through the Adobe store, not retail packaging via Amazon/Newegg/Fred's Bargain House/etc. I got a chat going with an Adobe rep and asked about Photoshop standalone, and he confirmed the same thing applies, it's not just for the Creative Suites: order the PS CS5 upgrade now and you'll get a voucher for the free upgrade to CS6. All of these offers end in May, FYI!
The other nice thing is that Adobe takes PayPal now, and at the PayPal page you can put the purchase on your BillMeLater account if you have one, 6 months, no interest. That was a huge blessing because I do have the Production Premium suite and that upgrade is $400 plus tax.
Man, I'm really thankful you caught that new offer and replied! If I had waited for just CS6 the upgrade would have been $600. Blimy.
Sometimes we get lucky.
You said it! After buying Prod Premium CS4 for 90 billion dollars in 2009 and then the $599 CS5 upgrade last year, I held off on 5.5, although it's been sitting in my Amazon Cart for months, lol. It was tempting, the Premiere performance improvements are extensive, and the addition of Audition was big in my book, especially since I do a ton of audio work. But with no Photoshop upgrade I just held off. The last several months have been mostly stills work, no real A/V work at all, so I was in no rush. Now I'm getting hit with video requests all of a sudden, so the timing is impeccable. When I saw Luke's reply with the words "free" and "CS6" in one sentence, I knew it was going to be a good day.
Earlier versions of Elements can be had for a song, as well.
For existing CS3 or CS4 owners, the CS5 upgrade is $199 and that gets you CS6 for free, so that's the best road to date for existing PS owners.
And for goofballs like me that bought the Prod Premium Suite, getting the CS5.5 upgrade for $399 with a free CS6 voucher is the third great deal. Normally a version upgrade for me is $599. Sounds heavy, but it has Photoshop Extended (I do muck about with 3D, kinda neat actually) and all of the A/V tools: Premiere Pro, After Effects, the Audition Music Studio, Illustrator and that killer Swiss Army Knife app I use almost daily, Adobe Media Encoder. I'm covinced that AME could convert a slice of pizza and get it to play on an iPad. The suite also has Flash which I don't mess with. So for $399, I'm getting all that in CS6 which is amazing. But if you don't work with video or audio, NONE of this is relevant and you save money.
That's how I got on board so very long ago.You gotta be a real detective to find the offer, though.
Hey, thanks for all of the things you do here to save folks money. I know that I appreciate it!
He didn't.
David, do you mean CS5 or CS5.5?
"CS" in Adobe speak usually refers to the Adobe Create Suite, which includes Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, etc. You can buy all that together as Adobe CS 5.5.
If you do, it will include Adobe Photoshop CS5 (actually 5.1 for the actual version number). So the Photoshop included in the CS5.5 suite, is Photoshop CS5.
I believe - although this is just my take - that the internal version number gets updated for all kinds of patches and fixes - so 12.0.1, 12.0.2, 12.1.0, etc. And the CS version number gets updated only for major things. So it's only PS CS5.1 right now - they've only had one major update.
The Adobe CS 5.5 for the suite, however, was a little different since they meant that to mean that it's an intermediate step between CS5 and CS6. So there I don't think there was a CS 5.4, for instance.
Barbara, software get tracked by the version it is, and there have been 12 major versions of Photoshop since its inception. If it were just programmers running the show, we'd all be calling PS CS5 Photoshop 12. CS4 would be called Photoshop 11 and so on, and of course, CS6 would be Photoshop 13. BUT, Marketing kicks in and has to apply a catchy sellable name, hence, Photoshop CS5/4/3, etc. And like David said, the CS means the Creative Suite idea that Adobe launched about 7 years ago. The name was applied to individual products like Photoshop, but the constant reminder that you can buy the entire creative suite is always there. I'm sure that was well planned, lol! So when you bought Photoshop CS5, you REALLY bought Photoshop version 12.0, and then the small fixes incremented the number to 12.0.1, etc, like David explained.
That's not just Adobe. Many people use Windows NT 5.0, but we know it as Windows XP. If you run Vista, you're actually running Windows NT 6.0, and NT 6.1 is known as Windows 7. Using Office 2007? Nope, you're using Office 12.0 which happens to be named Office 2007. OK, I'll stop there, I'm sure you get the point! (Side note: Office 2010 is version 14, Microsoft actually skipped 13, presumably fearing the "bad luck" thing with that number. Goofy.)
So in 2011, Adobe abandoned the "new version every 18 months" policy and decided to do a mid-term upgrade to most of their software, hence, the CS5.5 versions arose with a lower upgrade price. This applied to Premiere and After Effects (their video manipulation software), but Photoshop did NOT get an upgrade, much to the dismay of many users. To try and appease the masses, Adobe threw together an iPad app called Adobe Navigation which provides you with a basic screen with all of the Photoshop tools. You leave that app on the iPad running and you can simply touch the big button on the iPad screen that displays the tool you want, and it'll get selected in Photoshop on your PC (it does save time I admit). Of course, for this to work, Photoshop needs to "connect" to your wireless network, and the iPad has to pair with Photoshop on the network, just like BlueTooth. PS CS5 didn't have the "connect to a wireless network" built-in, so Adobe released PS CS5.1 for lack of a better name, but really it was Photoshop version 12.1 (3/31/2012 Update: Correction on that version number, there is no Photoshop 12.1, the latest version is 12.0.4 which everyone has had for a while if you do your updates. Sorry!), and that's what has the wireless server connection built in. If you don't own an iPad I suppose it's irrelevant. Who knows, maybe there's a droid version now. But anyway, that's how Adobe glossed over the "Here's the new and shiny CS5.5 but not for Photoshop users" issue.
And apparently they took one more brave step: Photoshop CS6 is available right now for WHOEVER wants to download and use it. In the past you have to beg on their steps to get in line to be a beta tester, so this is quite huge. There have been beta versions for test in the past but never this complete. PS CS6 in beta runs on my PC like it's the new version ready to be shipped.
So, bringing it all together, as you already know Adobe also stopped the practice of allowing upgrades from three versions back (i.e. PS CS2 owners upgrading to CS5, etc). If you want CS6, you need to own CS5, plain and simple. But they knew that they had to do SOMETHING for the CS3 and CS4 owners that would get burned by the new policy (especially since the forums were on fire about that these past few months), and the "solution" is what they just announced: CS3 and CS4 owners have until May to buy the CS5 upgrade for the standard $199 which comes with a FREE upgrade to CS6. Now is the time to leap on that for those CS3/4 folks. You don't have to worry about any of that, you already have CS5, so you can upgrade to CS6 whenever you want, but sometime before CS7 hits in 2014, or you'll lose the upgrade path, because you won't be able to go to CS7 from CS5, at least not for $199.
I dare say this: CS5 is by far the best Photoshop, it was a huge upgrade. If we got stuck on a desert island with a camera and a laptop (and a way to charge batteries), you could run on CS5 forever and have more than ample editing power. Sure CS6 will be better, but if budgets are tight and someone doesn't want the burden of laying out a few hundred every 18-24 months, stick with CS5. What major thing does it NOT do for your workflow right now?
Not to mention, by the time CS7 hits, that 1999 HP Pavilion PC we bought at Sam's Club probably won't handle the software well anyway, so there's more expense: getting a new PC. Just something to chew on...
--P
LOL!!!!!!!! Too true, too true!
Just a followup thank you for the original post. As I mentioned in my previous post, I went right home and upgraded my CS4 to CS5 for $199 and upgraded Lightroom # to Lightroom 4 ($79) while I was at it. I also had the online chat assist who confirmed the free upgrade to CS6 when it is ready.
I am now up-to-the-minute and good to go! Thanks again for sharing this information.
You're right David, but I guess with this whole new pricing model and push for Cloud subscriptions, the demise of the Magic Link was due to come.
BTW, something to think about if you do upgrade each version: If you buy PS at $699 and then do the $199 upgrade every 18 months, over a 6-year run Photoshop will cost you $18 per month. If you subscribe to Photoshop annually for $239.88, that's $19.99 per month, which is not that much more obviously. The drawback for the subscription is that if you decide you like a certain version, you can't stop spending bucks on Adobe and just keep what you have. Plus I don't know if you get two installs with a subscription. But if you own a small photography business and you can deduct that subscription every year and you plan on keeping PS up to date, that might be a viable option.
Having said all that gibberish, I just prefer buying it and having it permanently embedded in my system.