Adobe are currently offering Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5 for a subscription of $9.99 a month if you sign up for a one year plan :
For a limited time, you can join a special Creative Cloud plan. It includes access to Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5, plus feature updates and upgrades as they are available, 20GB of cloud storage for file sharing and collaboration, and a Behance ProSite. And it’s just US $9.99/month when you sign up for a one-year plan, but you need to join by March 31, 2014.
Now if you’re in the the Euro zone it’s 12.29 a month including VAT and in the UK it’s £8.78 including VAT … the temptation to rant here is rather immense, but I’ll let it pass. The prices are reasonable, here’s the thing, Adobe Photoshop is a very powerful tool that could be used for Second Life content creation. Adobe used to have an island in Second Life, I don’t know if they still have that island but I visited the place when they had an event many moons ago.
The transport was a freebie and they had entertainment there during the day, so Adobe did at one stage have a clue about how to use Second Life. However even if they no longer have an island, their new monthly subscription plan is ideally placed for being bundled with some sort of Second Life premium membership plan. One aimed at content creators.
I’ve long argued that the Second Life premium membership is too rigid. Personally I think Linden Lab could learn a thing or two from mobile phone packages. There you get x amount of free texts, x amount of data, x amount of free calls and the more you pay, the more you get but some people are happy with the lower levels they get, whereas others prefer the more expensive packages because it fits in with their usage patterns.
In Second Life terms, some people don’t really need the tier free land option, but they would benefit from x amount of free uploads, or inworld advertising, or Marketplace adverts etc. Some people would want the tier free land option, the inworld adverts and the marketplace adverts.
However with Adobe charging a monthly fee, and with Linden Lab charging a monthly fee and taking into account that Adobe have products that are very suitable for Second Life content creation, I feel there’s a massive cross promotion opportunity here. A new premium membership plan could be introduced that includes a subscription to Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5, obviously this would be more expensive than the current Second Life Premium plan but with sensible negotiation between Linden Lab and Adobe, it would work out roughly the same or cheaper, than subscribing to both, on the Second Life end you’d lose some of the current premium perks to compensate for this.
Adobe could advertise this option on their web properties too, thereby promoting Second Life in other venues, without bikini clad babes. Honestly, Adobe and Linden Lab, please talk to each other.
I actually once posted about the idea of integrating a customized version of GIMP and Blender to a special Second Life enviroment for builders. They are all open source and free. But you are right. Many creative people use adobe products. Some kind of cross promotion could bring in new talented content creators to SL.
I’ve discussed strategic partnerships with the likes of Blender and Gimp before, that’s another opportunity that goes begging.
Throw in SL GO at a reasonable rate (current price is outrageous) and I would be excited! SL GO would be a good reason to justify going premium.