Adobe Creative Cloud for Photographers now permanent subscription option

When Adobe announced it would be scrapping boxed copies of individual Creative Suite apps in favour of the Creative Cloud subscription services, photographers were up in arms – rather than just buy Photoshop or Lightroom, they would be forced to pay a monthly fee for web design and layout programs they had no intention of using. Adobe relented and introduced the limited time Photoshop Photography Program specifically for photographers, but indicated it wouldn’t be around forever. That changed today, as the company announced the Creative Cloud Photographer subscription would be extended indefinitely.

Now, photographers won’t be forced to pay extra for InDesign, DreamWeaver, After Effects or the other nine programs that make up the Creative Cloud subscription – they will instead be able to pay for just the programs they will use. The new permenant subscription includes Photoshop CC, with the new 2014 additions revealed today being made available for both new and existing subscribers, along with the latest Lightroom 5.5 for desktop, Lightroom mobile and integration with the new Photoshop Mix iOS app.

The 2014 version of Photoshop CC includes several new blur and content aware fill effects that should prove useful to photographers, both amatuer and professional, including non-destructive path blur and a spin blur mode with the ability to set strobe length. Smart selections can now be made based on what’s in focus, letting you grab a subject from the foreground of an image much faster than with previous versions. Finally, content aware fill should now accurately match colour gradients to make moving objects within an image a painless process. These tweaks are on top of a new Mercury rendering engine and underlying speed boosts that should make Photoshop feel more responsive than ever.

For editing on the move, Lightroom for Mobile and Photoshop Mix will automatically sync your collections and creative portfolio from the cloud. Both apps have advanced filters that go beyond what an iPad is capable of, but can offload the processing task to Adobe’s servers before returning with the results.

The Adobe Creative Cloud Photographer subscription is available to all customers now through the official Creative Cloud website, for £8.70 per month here in the UK.