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Has anyone used this at home? Or anything else like it?
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/students/make-it-with-creative-cloud.html

DS is going to take a graphic design elective next year (high school level) and I'm wondering if this would be worth the money--and maybe even excite him a little. I would also like to learn...and I bet DD would, as well.

I am not techie at all and don't really understand why the "cloud" aspect is important. Is it because it auto-updates?

We are all Apple here at home and I'm looking into purchasing a new(er) iMac so I can keep the kids off my laptop. I don't want them to have laptops (they do have an older Air they can use--but won't, because my Macbook Pro is so much faster). I think the design stuff plays nicely with Mac...at least that used to be one of the draws.

Any smart technical advice would be greatly appreciated. I don't know if you have to have a lot of processor speed to use this without frustration...tech specs make my eyes cross.

They're not talking about a specific product when they refer to "creative cloud," but rather grouping a number of graphical authoring products under a single umbrella. It's unlikely your children's classes will require all of them, so an a la carte approach would probably save you money. It's likely, for instance, that Adobe Photoshop would be all that the kids really need for a class like that.

And then, because it's a school, and financial reality is what it is, the school has probably rejected the expense of Photoshop in favor of GIMP, which is free, and which will run on your Macs.

If this is specifically being done with that elective course in mind, my first step would be to try to find out what software they're using in the classroom, and see if that's a good match for you at home.

Oh, and don't be discouraged that you don't know what they mean by "the cloud." That's a poorly described and understood phrase, even in IT circles, because it's largely an invention of the marketing folks.

Adobe switched their software options to a "cloud" based system in that you license monthly rather than purchasing a new software version every couple years, and you always have access to the latest software.

They do offer a student pricing option, and having the full package offers some good opportunities to learn multiple applications. I tend to use Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator together to create a project, as a designer.

I have the old software that I purchased before the cloud switch, however, since I'm not full-time any more and can't justify the monthly expense. As someone who has used their software for over twenty years, I don't like the new pricing plan, because I used to budget upgrade package price skipping a generation, and the monthly/yearly is more expensive per year.

But it is industry standard software and good to know how to use, so student pricing affords a great opportunity to learn and do tutorials. There are a number of other pretty sweet and high quality programs out there for less money to purchase now, too.

Also, in general, in the past anyway, have twice the amount of RAM you think you need, and twice the hard drive space you think you need, or at least keep some free space on your main hard drive for a buffer (like a third of the drive empty) -- for Photoshop in particular, but also for video editing (if that's on the agenda). Our Mac is 5 years old and still holding strong, but it needs more RAM and I'm thinking of putting an SSD in to boost the system speed.

Check out Pixelmator on the Mac App store. Great app. My kid uses it.

I wouldn't invest in Adobe products unless you know for sure what you want to do, and for sure that you want to do it I speak as a person who is a long-time Adobe products user and personally I think they are *wonderful* - but also expensive for someone who is just learning either graphic design or photo editing etc. I also am not a fan of the move to the "cloud" pricing scheme - I do like that it means you get all the latest updates as they come out, but I'd also been very happy updating every other release or so as longcut mentioned. I took a quick look at the deal linked above, and it's a good deal for what you get (if you're actually going to use it) - otoh, it's only good for one year and then the price per month goes up. It is great software though

FWIW I run on a Mac and, as longcut mentioned, the products consume RAM like crazy. Intermediary files can be quite large too.

I can't point you to any specific inexpensive products but fwiw, my kids seem to find them all over the place and they have used different products at school - in this case, unless your ds is begging to start up now before school starts, I'd probably wait and see what software they use in the class. You can most likely find something else that's a better starter program in terms of price.

polarbear