I'm a semi professional small-scale photographer. It's a hobby, but I do some commercial work. It certainly isn't a living (I have other income)
I've been on CS6 for some time. It does absolutely everything that I need, and in fact it's too much. I could do with an application that's somewhere between Lightroom+Elements and CS6. It doesn't exist.
But as I've paid for CS6 I'm quite happy to keep on using it ad infinitum - after all, with no more upgrades (CS7 etc) it's free now! But at a realistic level how long can I run it for, do you think? I run a good spec desktop PC with Windows 7. I use CS6 in 64bit mode, and also Bridge. Assuming my PC fails in 12 months time (it's three years old) I will get a new destop using Windows 8. CS6 will run under Windows 8, so no problems there. My new desktop may last 5 years? That gives me a total of 6 years using CS6.
Of course, there will need to be support from Adobe for CS6, in particular if any significant bugs arise. But why should there be new bugs, unless they are in relation to third-party plugins etc? CS6 has been out for some time. Adobe are not going to change it (they have their head stuck in a cloud) so it shouldn't get broken. Or am I wrong in thinking that?
Any thoughts?
To upgrade to CS6 http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/catalog/cs6._sl_id-contentfilter_sl_c atalog_sl_software_sl_creativesuite6.html?start=10
- In the Photoshop CS6 row, click the Buy link
- "I want to buy:", click on the dropdown menu and select Upgrade
- click "I own" and on the dropdown menu select the relevant product which you already own
- Follow the prompts from there to complete the purchase