- Okay, so disclaimer.
Nobody is paying me to make this video.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake of robertoblake.com
helping you create something awesome today.
Today, we're going to talk about a topic
that's slightly controversial.
We're gonna talk about Adobe Creative Cloud, why use it,
why I prefer to use it,
why I love the subscription model
and why I don't think it's the problem
that people make it out to be.
Now, before we go any further,
your individual choice with regard
to how you're going to spend your money,
how you're gonna operate your business
or what you wanna spend money on your career,
totally your choice, I completely respect that.
However, if you make excuses and you make defenses that
I don't feel stand up or that I have a counter punch too,
I'm going to rip them apart
and cast their ashes into the wind.
So, comment section,
do what you will with that disclaimer as well.
Now, all kidding and snarkiness aside,
my stance on the Creative Cloud
subscription model is as follows,
I think it's a tremendous value.
I think the far majority of people were limited
in terms of their ability to enter into the industry
due to expensive and prohibitive hardware cost.
Most graphic designers still believe that to this day
you have to have a Mac in order to be a graphic designer,
be taken seriously, get hired in house or an agency
and the reality is
that a lot of people making those decisions
actually do intend that and you do have to have
a Mac or MacExperience or own a Mac
in order to get into some of those places still to this day
even though I would make argument
that it doesn't matter anymore.
Part of the reason I can make that argument
is because of Adobe Creative Cloud.
With Adobe Creative Cloud,
the ability to use the software that most people
in the industry are using
if specially if you're working at an ad agency,
it doesn't matter because it is the same in the Mac
and is the same in the PC,
and you can make all the UI and UX arguments you want
on the Mac and PC thing, we will go back and forth,
I've done videos about it over and over and over again.
But in terms of functionality,
there is no real difference
between what you get for the majority
of the Adobe Creative Suite programs on Windows verus Mac.
The Creative Cloud making that seamless
and giving you the ability to log in
on both a Mac and PC which I do
because I own my iMac, I own my Dell XPS 13,
I own my custom built PC called the Stormtrooper
and so, I have the ability to just log in
to any of my devices and use the same tools
and the same apps and in many cases, my same presets.
The ability to sync my presets, my work spaces
and my custom shortcuts, tremendous.
That is fantastic and that is
a great option in Creative Cloud.
Now, a lot of you don't actually have a problem
with the software Creative Cloud itself.
You don't have a problem with the
things that they've upgraded,
the things that they've changed.
A lot of you actually would be in favor
of those things if you were using them
or if you actually got the free trial.
Many of you struggle with the constant idea
of a subscription model versus ownership
even though we all know that technically,
you don't actually every own software,
you have a usage license.
But you guys feel that this is ransom ware
and I don't agree with that.
I think it is a very ridiculous argument to make
and I apologize if that offends anyone.
Go ahead and unsubscribe if that is your thing
and you feel that that's a way to hit me back for that one.
But I'm gonna call it like it is.
I feel that it's a ridiculous idea for multiple reasons.
You could make the argument that
owning Creative Suite 6 outright at its full price
means that you don't have to upgrade,
you don't have to shell out any more money to Adobe,
you aren't paying the Adobe taxes
you guys like to say sometimes
and that's fine for you and you feel that it can do
most of what you've been able to do,
et cetera, et cetera et cetera.
Here is the problem with that.
On multiple levels, CS6 is not nearly as fast
at the majority of the same task,
nor as accurate compared to Creative Cloud.
That's a big deal.
Speed is important, time is money.
The justification of the price in my mind,
the argument and the counter punch I have is this.
Conservatively making the assumption
that out of a 40-hour work week
you could save 10% of your time
by using the newer Creative Cloud software
which again, I say it's a conservative estimate
for several reasons.
The newer software is optimized and more streamlined
and it can take more advantage of the hardware.
Meaning if you have the latest MacBook Pro
or you have a custom PC
or you have the latest iMac or you have a Mac Pro
then the Creative Cloud can take more advantage
of the hardware resources available
in the newest computer systems.
Whereas putting old software on newer faster computers
isn't gonna really help you in terms of performance.
And so, that means you have a bottleneck now.
Here's where the math gets interesting.
Instead of paying let's say with taxes
close to $60 per month,
$720 per year for Creative Cloud.
Whatever your standard hourly rate is,
consider the fact that you could be saving
four hours a week.
That's 16 hours.
You're eliminating that savings
of 16 hours per month of time,
16 hours per month of your time to save $60.
Do some math and divide that.
If you do some math and divide that
you are roughly saving just a little over what?
Let's do some math.
You're saving less than $5 per hour there.
You're valuing your time.
The savings of I don't wanna pay $60
even if I could save 16 hours a month
that comes out to you chipping on your time
and valuing your time as a creative
at less than $5 an hour.
That's all you're saving if the time is that.
Let's be conservative though, let's go even further.
Let's say you're only saving five hours a month.
If you're saving five hours a month then that means
that you're valuing your time efficiency
in terms of savings here at about $12 an hour.
If you're a graphic designer,
if you're a video editor,
if you're a motion graphics person,
if you're a digital illustrator,
is your time worth $12 an hour
or is it worth more than that?
Because that's what you're valuing your time at
if you're just trying to save 60 bucks a month
versus saving even five hours.
For many of you, if we still reduce this down to two hours,
it's still not your hourly rate when you think about it.
If many of you who are watching this
who are very good at what you do
and you make real money at it,
saving two hours and not paying 60 bucks,
you're valuing your time,
if you're more concerned about 60 bucks versus two hours
at $30 an hour.
Does that add up for you?
Why is this considered the raw math there,
that's why I say that argument doesn't make sense.
I feel it's a better argument for me
to go there and talk about the value of your time
than convince you that it's cheaper than your cable,
it's cheaper than drinking Starbucks everyday,
it's cheaper than those of you who are smoking
because for whatever reason,
those aren't convincing enough arguments
so I will go to the value of your own time
and I will use that pain point.
The other thing I would say about this whole thing is that
from a standpoint of collaboration,
raw features, the constant upgrades that it provides
and the ability to use the entire suite of Adobe tools
at a relatively low, upfront price when you consider
the type of projects that you could produce
and the money that you could make,
it's a no-brainer for me in terms
of a practical business investment.
If you have a 10,000-subscriber email list
which I have close to that at this point,
then the $60 a month doesn't mean as much to you
from a business investment standpoint.
Because you pay astronomically more
just to be able to email people,
let alone produce projects for paying clients
or develop things for your own brand
that are gonna make you money.
For those of you who are just photographers
or you just use Photoshop alone,
it's $10 per month to go to Creative Cloud
and you get Photoshop and Lightroom.
That is a fantastic deal.
If you're a photographer you can't justify the price
of $10 a month considering what we used to spend on film.
Remember these things?
Remember the cost of doing business
associated with these things
and those of you who are hobbyist like me
who still use them on occasion,
the cost of this to be able to use it per month,
much more than $10 for renting software.
Get over it, okay?
Creative Cloud is great software.
Are there alternatives out there?
Yes.
Are there cheaper software out there?
Yes.
The power is in the suite of software itself,
the compatibility with its own suite of mobile apps
and the services that you get
and the fact that Adobe is now integrating
machine learning in the backend.
Which means that the artificial intelligence behind there
will only get better and smarter
based on collected user data.
Which means more accurate things,
more time saving features.
It's only going to get better from here
and in a few years, you can expect
that the Creative Suite option
will just not exist altogether.
This will be a nonissue for the majority of new creators
entering the marketplace
and when you are not able to compete with that,
you won't really have as much of a say
in whether you're going to move to this or not
because one, the other options won't exist.
It will not be practical because as operating systems
upgrade in terms of Mac and Windows,
the compatibility issues for legacy software
will just get worse and worse as new hardware.
We're about to enter an entirely
new generation of processors
that are gonna be faster than ever.
We have a new graphics processing architecture from NVIDIA
so, there's just so much power
that you'll be leaving on the table
as you upgrade hardware by using old legacy software.
And that is just a reality of where technology is going
and I know that the pay, it's a play model,
it upsets so many people.
I know that there's anxiety about this lack of ownership of
what if lose my files, what if I (mumbles) lose my files.
But the reality is in any business,
if you stop paying your web hosting,
your website and your email is gonna go down
and it's gonna go away.
You stop paying your electricity that's gonna go away.
Services as a utility is not something new
and for those of you who run your own creative business,
you already know that between web hosting
and email marketing and so many other things,
that these are practical operating expense
in the cost of doing business,
and you can always charge enough to your clients
to justify the expense.
So, all of the issues and all of the arguments for
why Creative Cloud is horrible
or why it's not the right decision
or it's some evil empire thing that Adobe's doing.
I don't really buy into those arguments because
as someone who's been using Adobe software
for more than half of their life,
as someone who's bought single license
products from Adobe for years,
as somebody who had a license from their job in corporate
and also their own licensing
which again, I bought some of those.
And then when Creative Cloud came it was a no-brainer.
All I did was I kept my individual single product licenses
and all my old stuff as a backup
and I still have those registered in my same account,
and I added a Creative Cloud membership with my email
meaning that instead of upgrading,
I added a Creative Cloud membership,
I still retain all of those serial numbers,
I still have all of the archive in my cloud
and on DVDs and on hard drives.
All of the downloads of my old software
which means that those legacy things are there
if I felt like for any reason I still wanted or needed them
and I just added Creative Cloud to it.
So if you already own an Adobe product
and you have a full license,
my answer to you is retain your full licenses
and the old software if you'd feel
you need to have a backup
and you need something to feel safe and comfortable
and that you can access the archive of your body of work.
That's perfectly fine and legitimate.
I'd make the argument that for the most part
in terms of accessing your files,
you could do that with open source
and third party software as well,
and there are universal file types such as EPS.
Those are things and IDML and so on and so forth.
There are answers to this but
I would say add a Creative Cloud license to the mix,
even just do the trial
and see if you don't have a better, faster,
more robust overall experience in your workflow
and see if you give it an honest shot
without having to commit to the pricing
and the monthly fees.
Because I think if you took the monthly fees
and the frustration or the anger
you have toward that out of the equation,
you would just use this thing
and you would just love it just like I do.
But again, Adobe's not paying me to do this video.
They don't pay for my Creative Cloud software,
at least not right now as of the making of this video.
But you know, if they offer I'm not gonna turn it down.
I think more than anything as a creative
that you owe it to yourself to charge enough
and to work hard enough to make the money
that justifies you having the best tools at your disposal
or the tools that will work the best for you
and for your clients,
and you just have to figure that out and make it practical.
I know that might seem difficult right now
depending on what your situation is
but one of the great things that I love about
the things that I do on this channel is that
I give you guys practical solutions and actionable advice
and things that have worked
to be able to help put you in that position.
I've done a lot of videos on how to charge
and how to get the most out of your design projects
and how to find clients if you're struggling with that.
And if you need more ideas and ways to make money
as a creative, I've done videos on that as well
and I will continue to do those videos
so that you can afford to stay in this industry
and stay in business.
I also cover budget solutions.
So, for those of you who absolutely
can't afford Creative Cloud right now,
don't worry, I do talk about free software on the channel.
I've done whole videos listing the best free software
available for creatives and designers
and I'll be doing more videos like that
and covering more software
especially as I become more familiar
with things in the market.
You guys, if you're in the comments
you can leave some suggestions
of free software that people can get
as alternatives to Creative Cloud
if they still can't afford it.
Or if there are budget alternatives
that you would like for me to cover on this channel
then let me know that in the comment section as well.
Anyway, I'd love to know what you guys think.
Have I convinced you that
Adobe and Creative Cloud is not the devil
and that if you're hurting on the money side
you just have to figure it out more than anything?
Have I convinced you that it's worth saving your time
rather than trying to save money
and that when you try to save money,
sometimes what you're really doing
is you're devaluing your time and your actual worth?
You know, I would love to know if I've brought you over
or won you over in some way
or if you have a counter argument that I haven't thought of.
Let's politely discuss that in the comment section.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video
and for those of you who didn't,
well that's just too bad.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, create something awesome today.