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A Review of the Adobe Family
December 17, 2014

A Review of the Adobe Family

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

WebBasics

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Business Catalyst

The creative suite by Adobe is being utilized primarily by our design department. We use a variety of Adobe programs, but mostly Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere, and Media Encoder. Our inbound marketing agency handles everything from website designs to video production, so having the Adobe products to support our needs is necessary.
  • The Adobe programs are particularly strong by their continuity throughout the entire system. It is fairly simple to jump from one program to the next with ease, as long as you understand at least one program in depth.
  • The Creative Cloud system does create a very convenient environment for keeping our programs up to date, and offering the ability to download whatever program we might now, rather than forcing us to download EVERY Adobe program.
  • While there can be short comings with some things, for the most part Adobe has done a fantastic job of monitoring trends in the design world and responding to those trends with specific tools.
  • I have run into some Adobe CC shortcomings. Video, specifically, seems to lack options. I was recently required to download a third party system to translate my video into web-ideal formats, such as .ogg and .webm. These are fairly common as web-optimized videos. I was very disappointed that Adobe's fairly advanced video software was unable to export in these formats.
  • In addition to the video software shortcomings, I am usually disappointed with the online help options. Adobe is an extremely expensive product, so I naturally expect to have help at my fingertips whenever I may need it. Unfortunately, I am often relying on public forums, where the only professionals that comment end up redirecting you half a dozen times to find the information you need. It would be positively lovely to have 'chat' capabilities with professionals associated with specific programs.
  • There are some tools that I think could be simplified in some of the programs. A specific example would be InDesign's color swatches and pantone controls. It took quite a while to figure out how to create a 2-color printing safe document, and it is needlessly difficult to accomplish.
  • Well you can't really beat consistency throughout an entire family of programs. Adobe in pretty much uncontested in this arena.
  • If you are a designer, you will need these programs at some point. It is a depressing fact, but Adobe has the absolute monopoly in the business. If it is any consolation, they make excellent programs.
Adobe, is very expensive, has a solid background and produces quality programs. You can't argue with that.
Well, folks, I hate to tell you this, but you don't have very many options. Sure, there are open source programs out there, as well as cheap knock-offs of the Adobe products, but you will more than likely end up buying CC after a couple weeks of struggle and strife. My largest criticism for the Adobe products would be the enormous price tag attached, as well as the EXTREMELY limited options to own just one or two Adobe programs. While working at a marketing agency, it comes in handy to have all the programs. If I where to rely on photography as a source of income instead, I would not want to pay money that gets me ALL of the programs. I would want the option to purchase Photoshop, Lightroom, and perhaps one or two other programs alone.