I first used Adobe and Macromedia software 15 years ago, when I started at university. The apps I used were Photoshop for image editing, PageMaker for desktop publishing and Macromedia Director for multimedia production. Today, I still use Photoshop, in addition to Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Acrobat on a daily basis, for designing, coding, publishing and other creative and productive tasks.

While there are cheaper (and free) apps which achieve similar results, I’m comfortable with the workflow, familiarity and powerful features offered by Adobe software.

My biggest criticism of Adobe has been its software pricing. I welcomed the recent inquiry into Adobe’s local pricing versus USA pricing. At over $1,000 for the full version of Photoshop, upgrades have been too expensive or at the very least, hard to justify. For this reason, I have stuck with the CS2 and CS3 versions of the Adobe apps, for the best part of five years. While these apps have allowed me to get the job done, I have missed out on productivity enhancements, new tools and support for current standards (e.g. HTML5) which are available in the latest versions. Read the rest of this entry »