Macbook Air Good For Adobe Creative Suite

broken image


If you're a creative professional, you will have asked yourself the question – is Adobe Creative Cloud worth it? It seems expensive, so is Adobe fairly charging for its software?

Hi there, I'm using a 13' MacBook Air (2.2GHz dual core Intel Core i7 processor and 8GB 16000MHz LPDDR3 memory). It has 128GB storage and Intel HD 6000 graphics. I need to have Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and PremierPro on my laptop. I am not an expert and can't decide whether it would be wise for me to buy the Adobe Creative Cloud. Agree with Steve Caplin - it is excellent. I have a 13″ Air and while I much prefer my iMac the Air does everything I need it to when I am on the road. As Steve said - get the maximum amount of RAM (the 13″ comes standard with 8GB but the 11″ need. Jun 12, 2012 Wondering which Adobe apps will suffer using a Macbook pro vs air. Video and 3d apps would render slower. Wonder where photoshop, illustrato, and indesign may find itself too sluggish to use a MacBook Air. Dec 23, 2020 Due to severe performance limitations on the Intel version, running any of Adobe's creative suite has been a challenge. But the M1 changes all that, even on the $999 MacBook Air.

Adobe has for many years led the creative software conversation, and deservedly so. Applications like Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects are used by individuals, businesses and professionals every day all over the world to develop anything from flyers to movie posters to the movies themselves.

Much like any consumer software, once upon a time you just bought it up front and owned it forever. Now, Adobe no longer sells any of its software as one-off, permanent purchases. Instead, all its products are available as a subscription service called Adobe Creative Cloud.

What is Adobe Creative Cloud?

Adobe Creative Cloud (or Adobe CC for short) is the company's catch-all name for all its software products. There are a lot of them:

  • Photoshop

  • Illustrator

  • InDesign

  • Adobe XD

  • Spark

  • Lightroom

  • Acrobat Pro

  • Animate

  • Dreamweaver

  • Premiere Pro

  • Premiere Rush

  • After Effects

  • Dimension

  • Audition

  • InCopy

  • Lightroom Classic

  • Media Encoder Facetime camera not working macbook pro.

  • Character Animator

  • Prelude

  • Fuse

  • Bridge

Adobe categorises its software by profession:

Macbook Air Good For Adobe Creative Suite 2020

  • Design

  • Photography

  • Video & Audio

  • Web & UX

Each app performs different functions, and some are cross-discipline: for example, Photoshop is used by designers, photographers and Web & UX professionals but an app like After Effects is only needed by Video & Audio pros.

It means that if you only work in one area of the creative industry you won't necessarily use all of the above apps that are all included in Abode CC's full app package.

How much is Adobe Creative Cloud?

The thing is, Adobe makes it difficult to justify paying for individual apps because of its pricing.

Read moreAdobe announces next generation of Creative Cloud
Macbook air good for editing

Adobe Creative Cloud's all apps package can be purchased three ways:

  • AU$76.99 per month (annual plan, paid monthly)

  • AU $871.07 per year (annual plan, prepaid)

  • AU$114.99 per month (paid monthly)

Adobe clearly wants up you to sign up for at least a year, whether that's split over 12 months or paid up front. The pay as you go monthly cost is much more, though does mean you can cancel at any time.

For comparison, the costs of Photoshop on its own are:

  • AU$29.99 per month (annual plan, paid monthly)

  • AU$343.07 per year (annual plan, prepaid)

  • AU$45.99 per month (paid monthly)

Read moreAdobe and Microsoft expand productivity partnership

The costs for Illustrator are the same. So, if you need Photoshop and Illustrator for your work, you'd be paying AU$686.14 per year, which is only AU$184.93 less than the annual cost of getting every single CC app.

Even if you don't need them all, Adobe prices its apps in a way that makes it more cost effective to simply pay for them all.

The benefits of Adobe Creative Cloud

While it is frustrating to some that you can't buy Adobe software outright any longer, it means you'll get continuous software updates that improve the products over time. Adobe is trying to get users used to the fact its products evolve – many Photoshop users gets so used to the older software that they find it hard to adjust to the new ones. By moving to a subscription model, Adobe is trying to ween people off the idea that software should not evolve.

That said, it still offers Lightroom Classic as an app in its photography package for this very audience.

Read more:Adobe Creative Cloud pitched at Ps/Lightroom users

The value question

Asking whether Adobe CC is worth it is a different question to wondering whether you should pay for something like Microsoft Word instead of using Google Docs. Adobe Creative Cloud is a full suite of professional-level creative tools used worldwide, with services that simply aren't given away for free anywhere else. If you need to use such software, you're pretty much going to have to pay up or use a much inferior product.

Considering the monthly cost, we'd hope that most creative professionals would be able to earn back the spend easily in a day's work as a freelancer. The extra functionality afforded by committing to paying for CC (cross-device syncing, cloud storage, continuous improvements via software updates) is frankly worth it compared to using CC's cheaper alternatives – which are usually free for a reason. They simply aren't as good and come with fewer features.

Of course, if you use video editing software like Final Cut Pro on Mac then you might prefer to pay for that over Adobe's Premiere Pro – sometimes the decision will be what you are comfortable using rather than what the best price is.

But if you know you need at least two or three CC apps for your work, then Adobe Creative Cloud is worth it.

The best Adobe Creative Cloud deal

Read moreAdobe reveals major updates across Creative Cloud

If you are a casual photographer, the best standalone CC deal by far is for Photoshop and Lightroom together with 20GB cloud storage. You can download the apps for your desktop and iPad and have access to your work from anywhere.

Macbook Air Good For Adobe Creative Suite 4

The cost of the bundle is:

  • AU$14.29 per month (annual plan, paid monthly)

  • AU$171.41 per year (annual plan, prepaid)

It gets you Photoshop, Lightroom and even the desktop-focused Lightroom Classic if you've been using the software for years and don't want to switch to the new design. It's a huge saving to paying for Photoshop or Lightroom on their own and is a much better deal than paying for all of CC if you're only going to use these two apps. This can't be said for most of Adobe's software when purchased separately.

If you need more storage, there's a 1TB option for more that is still good value.

Otherwise, the AU$76.99 per month annual cost of the entire Adobe CC suite is worth considering if you need two or three of Adobe's apps, as the cost of subscribing to them individually will soon add up to around that amount.

Macbook Air Good For Adobe Creative Suite 3

Free

Adobe Creative Cloud's all apps package can be purchased three ways:

  • AU$76.99 per month (annual plan, paid monthly)

  • AU $871.07 per year (annual plan, prepaid)

  • AU$114.99 per month (paid monthly)

Adobe clearly wants up you to sign up for at least a year, whether that's split over 12 months or paid up front. The pay as you go monthly cost is much more, though does mean you can cancel at any time.

For comparison, the costs of Photoshop on its own are:

  • AU$29.99 per month (annual plan, paid monthly)

  • AU$343.07 per year (annual plan, prepaid)

  • AU$45.99 per month (paid monthly)

Read moreAdobe and Microsoft expand productivity partnership

The costs for Illustrator are the same. So, if you need Photoshop and Illustrator for your work, you'd be paying AU$686.14 per year, which is only AU$184.93 less than the annual cost of getting every single CC app.

Even if you don't need them all, Adobe prices its apps in a way that makes it more cost effective to simply pay for them all.

The benefits of Adobe Creative Cloud

While it is frustrating to some that you can't buy Adobe software outright any longer, it means you'll get continuous software updates that improve the products over time. Adobe is trying to get users used to the fact its products evolve – many Photoshop users gets so used to the older software that they find it hard to adjust to the new ones. By moving to a subscription model, Adobe is trying to ween people off the idea that software should not evolve.

That said, it still offers Lightroom Classic as an app in its photography package for this very audience.

Read more:Adobe Creative Cloud pitched at Ps/Lightroom users

The value question

Asking whether Adobe CC is worth it is a different question to wondering whether you should pay for something like Microsoft Word instead of using Google Docs. Adobe Creative Cloud is a full suite of professional-level creative tools used worldwide, with services that simply aren't given away for free anywhere else. If you need to use such software, you're pretty much going to have to pay up or use a much inferior product.

Considering the monthly cost, we'd hope that most creative professionals would be able to earn back the spend easily in a day's work as a freelancer. The extra functionality afforded by committing to paying for CC (cross-device syncing, cloud storage, continuous improvements via software updates) is frankly worth it compared to using CC's cheaper alternatives – which are usually free for a reason. They simply aren't as good and come with fewer features.

Of course, if you use video editing software like Final Cut Pro on Mac then you might prefer to pay for that over Adobe's Premiere Pro – sometimes the decision will be what you are comfortable using rather than what the best price is.

But if you know you need at least two or three CC apps for your work, then Adobe Creative Cloud is worth it.

The best Adobe Creative Cloud deal

Read moreAdobe reveals major updates across Creative Cloud

If you are a casual photographer, the best standalone CC deal by far is for Photoshop and Lightroom together with 20GB cloud storage. You can download the apps for your desktop and iPad and have access to your work from anywhere.

Macbook Air Good For Adobe Creative Suite 4

The cost of the bundle is:

  • AU$14.29 per month (annual plan, paid monthly)

  • AU$171.41 per year (annual plan, prepaid)

It gets you Photoshop, Lightroom and even the desktop-focused Lightroom Classic if you've been using the software for years and don't want to switch to the new design. It's a huge saving to paying for Photoshop or Lightroom on their own and is a much better deal than paying for all of CC if you're only going to use these two apps. This can't be said for most of Adobe's software when purchased separately.

If you need more storage, there's a 1TB option for more that is still good value.

Otherwise, the AU$76.99 per month annual cost of the entire Adobe CC suite is worth considering if you need two or three of Adobe's apps, as the cost of subscribing to them individually will soon add up to around that amount.

Macbook Air Good For Adobe Creative Suite 3

View all Adobe Creative Cloud purchasing options here.

Shining a light on creativity
More from MSI Australia and New Zealand Gaming Notebook

Macbook Air Good For Adobe Creative Suite 2

Join the newsletter!





broken image