Adobe launched its new versions of Creative Cloud apps and services. As you may know, Creative Cloud provides subscription-based access to Adobe apps (and more) for about $50/month.

Among the upgrades:

• Better integration between desktop and mobile

• Android support

• Stock, a stock-photo service featuring one-time or subscription pricing plans

• Linked assets — meaning you can make a change to, say, a Photoshop image in your Creative Cloud library, and every InDesign or Illustrator document that uses that image will receive the updated version.

Is this enough to warrant at $50 monthly subscription? I’m not sure. Since switching to MangaStudio for my digital art, I find fewer and fewer reasons to launch Photoshop. Having drawn in each, I find the responsiveness in MangaStudio to be far superior. (Although, to be fair… the implementation of the CC Library does attempt to replicate MangaStudio’s advantage in saving/reusing images).

One of the strongest aspects of a Creative Cloud membership is the access to (and ease-of-use of) the Adobe Font Library. Well-organized and full of great typefaces, I find it a go-to for any design-related projects than need a little something extra.

And if freelance design were a bigger part of my revenue, I guess that would be a lock. But it isn’t, so it’s not.

So, is Creative Cloud worth $50 a month??

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