Creative Suite vs. ‘Just a Few’ Apps: How to Decide Which Adobe Products to Pick

Although you can still purchase older editions of the older Adobe suites such as CS6, most creatives and professionals are moving over to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud is a cloud-based system that stores all your programs, files and information on the web which can be accessed through your unique login details.

Not only is this more secure, but it also saves you space on your computer or external hard drive. Perfect!

But the range of great tools, security and storage comes at a price – with monthly subscription fees varying depending on the apps you use. To ensure you’re not spending more than you need to, you’ll need to consider what you actually need from Adobe Creative Cloud.

What will you be using it for?

All of Adobe’s individual apps do drastically different things – and while a creative professional may use them all on a daily basis, others may have absolutely no need for half of them. If you subscribe to the entire suite, you will gain access to:

• Photoshop
• Lightroom
• Illustrator
• InDesign
• Experience Design (Beta)
• Premiere Pro
• After Effects
• Project Felix
• Dreamweaver
• Muse
• Acrobat Pro
• Animate
• Audition
• Bridge
• Character Animator (Beta)
• Media Encoder
• Fuse (Preview)
• Flash Builder
• InCopy
• Prelude
• Spark
• Scout
• SpeedGrade
• Story Plus
• PhoneGap Build
• Gaming SDK
• Extension Manager
• ExtendScript Toolkit

Wow, that’s a lot of apps! But really, how many do you need? If your job (or hobby) is related to graphic design, do you really need an app aimed at app developers for example?

If you’re not going to be using the majority of apps on a regular basis, you may be able to get a better deal on just a few apps instead.

Add the monthly cost of your chosen apps. How does it compare to the cost of the entire Creative Suite?

Once you’ve determined which of the apps you actually need, take a look to see how much they cost to subscribe to individually. Prices range depending on the individual app, with some being higher due to their wide range of features or complexity.

Add together the cost of subscribing to each app individually and check your total. If it’s lower than the cost of subscribing to the full creative suite, that’s great – you’re saving money!

But in the event it ends up being more, you may as well pay for the Suite subscription and enjoy the option to use the extra apps should you ever need to.

So whether just an individual app is enough for your needs or you’d be better off going all out and subscribing to the full Creative Cloud Suite, check out your options here at AisplStore!