What is Adobe Creative Cloud? The subscription service explained

If you're interested in any creative sector, whether as a hobbyist or as a professional, you've likely heard about Adobe Creative Cloud(opens in new tab), but you may be unsure of what it is and if it's a worthwhile investment.

Creative Cloud is a subscription service (paid annually or monthly) that grants access to Adobe's creative applications and facilitates the transfer of files between desktop, online, and mobile applications.

Creative Cloud gives you access to hundreds of Adobe fonts and assets, including images, movies, audio clips, and video clips, depending on the package you choose. In addition, there are useful collaboration capabilities that enable distant teams to work on cloud-based projects, as well as a multitude of courses that stream on Adobe Live.

You must subscribe to the Creative Cloud All Apps bundle to gain access to the 20+ applications that cover everything from photography to design (see below). However, given this is overkill for many users, we've also outlined some more affordable and specialised Creative Cloud choices below.

All Apps

Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps provides access to the company's complete portfolio of desktop and mobile creative software. You receive the industry-standard image editor Photoshop, the vector graphics editor Illustrator, the video editor Premiere Pro, as well as many other applications.

A subscription to All Apps provides access to 20 desktop and mobile applications, as well as 100GB of cloud storage for your work, your own portfolio website, premium typefaces, and social media tools. You can also acquire a subscription to stock photography for an additional cost, which allows you to download and utilise 10 Adobe Stock photographs per month.

Using a mix of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe XD, for instance, you may create email campaigns or web page mockups. And although it's not inexpensive, the All Apps bundle is a vastly diverse collection of applications that can handle virtually any professional creative activity.

Specialist plans

If you're solely interested in photo enhancement, there is a more economical 'Photography plan' that includes Lightroom (both Classic and CC), Photoshop, Photoshop Express, and the entertaining Photoshop Camera app.

In addition to these two primary programmes, All Apps and Photography, Creative Cloud offers additional plans for individuals, students, instructors, colleges, institutions, and businesses.

If that is all you require, you may also subscribe to individual applications for a monthly cost. In many instances, such as the Photography plan, subscribing to a single app like Photoshop costs more than subscribing to one of Adobe's packages.

Is Adobe Creative Cloud worth it?

An Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is expensive, but the initial cost is a small fraction of the cost of purchasing the entire software package, and it's difficult to argue with the quality and ease.

If you only want a single software for a certain use case, such as photo editing, you should consider competitors that still offer non-subscription solutions. Affinity Photo, for instance, is available for a one-time download charge, so you do not need to sign up for another monthly subscription.

But if you are a serious enthusiast or professional who need the adaptability that Adobe's numerous tools provide, a Creative Cloud subscription is something you should really consider.