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If you’ve been waiting to upgrade Photoshop CS3 or CS4 to CS6 when it’s released sometime next year, here’s some bad news: the upgrade price won’t apply to you. Starting with CS6, Adobe will be enforcing a new upgrade policy:

"We are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6."

Sad news for me I am affraid, but that is the industry standard #P

That totally pisses me off. It is not worth it to get each and every new version. I for one went from CS to CS4. Even skipping 2 whole versions was barely worth it. There is no way I'll upgrade to CS5 in order to upgrade to CS6. Looks like I'm stuck where I am. Adobe's greed will end up biting them in the ass losing a lot of customers.

  To start.. Yes I did, indeed, buy the copy/version I am currently using. That said, I have to agree with Dreamer.. this will bite them in the rear, as well as add to industry's woes.

  While I do not, and can not, condone the use of black market, pirated or hacked software, this decision of theirs will only add to the fire, costing them more, in the end, than the salaries of the programmers who would have written the extra it would have taken to go even two, rather than one, version back. I only hope that they come to their senses, and back off this decision before they end up in the red. Of course, if they do, they will likely default to, "Not my fault".

Actually, Adobe is one of the last holdouts to this. Everyone else already defaults to a one-version upgrade or you pay full price policy. This is one of the things that makes,... made .... Adobe so much better to deal with.

Autodesk products; Maya, 3DSMAX, Mudbox, Softimage to name a few is helping to push the industry towards "The Cloud" in an effort to squash Piracy of their products. I can hardly stand the thought of the cloud, because you will never own a physical or downloaded copy ever again. You will get a license and a Cookie to put on your computer so you can log in and do your work, all the while your time used, time of day, and everything you do is logged and stored on a distant server that yu cannot access therefore you will never really own your own work ever again.

All that being said because Adobe mentioned the cloud in their statement #P

The end of software as we know it is not far off, folks!!!

Well.. this will only push people toward using GNU/free software.. like you see in Source Forge.

I have never seen the justification of doing something just because someone else did it. It then becomes a pass the buck blame game: “I only did it because they did it first” sort of thing. Just because some company is putting their hands in your pocket doesn’t justify them all doing it. As expected, as the computer and software business evolves, it becomes more and more commercialized…so much for the open source market. And as it becomes more and more commercialized, the more the government wants to get involved not wanting to miss out on getting their palms greased by passing laws to place restrictions and tax Internet use.

It reminds me of how your operating system software upgrades were free in the beginning while they were passing out free computers to schools and businesses until everyone became addicted to them, something I find tantamount to passing out cocaine at a college party.

This news is unfortunate for those of us who can barely afford the initial cost of the software and are now expected to continue paying the high prices for the upgrades as if we were individual, financially viable imaging corporations...just my opinion.

When were OS upgrades free on personal computers? Not for at least a couple of decades, I remember paying for DOS 6 and Win 3.11 (from Win 3.1).

Sorry for the rant…I just had to spit up that fur ball. With the world economies in turmoil, and families finding it hard to make ends meet, it infuriates me to no end when I see or hear of corporate greed like this. It flies in the face of all things rational. Pathetically it seems as if only their financial necessities matter.  

@RHaseltine…yes, you are correct, as I said: “…in the beginning while they were passing out free computers to schools and businesses…”

Everbody doesn't do it.  Ask Zbrush users how much they paid for the last couple upgrades.  I'm on a fixed income so this is the end of Adobe products for me, at CS3.

I don't think they're doing this just because others are doing it.  I'm sure they weigh the pros and cons, looked at numbers etc etc... before they took this decision and figured they'll gain more then they'll loose.  It's a real bummer for the little folks like us though but business is heartless most of the time.  :unsure: