When I moved to Mac, the then cost of switching to Mac versions was prohibitive in my circumstances, so I looked for other alternatives. I’d started using Lightroom in Windows land, but looked to Apple’s Aperture as it was cheaper.

At the beginning of this year, Lightroom was cheap enough for me to move back to, and I started using a subscription copy of Photoshop CS 5.5, more as a long term trial, than for any serious use.

When the Creative Cloud was released, my PS CS5 subscription became non version specific, and I was able to use my Adobe ID to update to PS CS6, which married up nicely with the upgrade to Lightroom 4.

Further investigation showed that I was eligible for the first year introductory discount offer for the Cloud service, and have been able to ‘convert’ my product specific subscription to the full membership. (Actually, all I did was sign up for the Cloud service, which recognised my intro discount eligibility from the Windows products I bought a two or three years ago. Looking at my account pages, the Product Subscription service appears to have been “replaced” with the cloud membership, so I’m making an assumption.)

It’s kind of like revisiting old friends again, and although I’m unlikely to use all of the software available, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat are already installed, and will get a work out. I might get Dreamweaver down the track, to play with some website development – who knows, but the advantage is that the software is now available to me if I need it, with no additional outlay.

Is it worth it to all and sundry? As a entry level cost into the software, for a hobbyist, it is ideal. For a small business, it can be used as a per seat costing, rather than having to manage licensing costs every upgrade cycle. If you already have licensed copies of the software, and the current versions are suitable for your use, then it’s something to keep in mind for when an upgrade becomes useful or necessary.

Where it’s been annoying, for lack of a better word, is in the use of the web interface to write up posts, particularly if you, like me, prefer something “offline”, where you can type and fiddle to your heart’s content, before actually posting anything.

I used MacJournal for a while, as it allowed me to kill two birds with one stone, in that I could manage a number of journals for various things like notes, musings, etc, as well as a blog. However the blog interaction wasn’t all that wonderful, and a couple of weeks ago, I rebuilt my laptop, and reinstalled MacJournal from the App Store.

Suddenly, I couldn’t connect to this blog, and I couldn’t even get into the blog settings. A perusal of the MacJournal forums showed me I wasn’t the only one, and the recommended work around was to install the trial version, set up the blog, and then re-install the App Store version. I went to try this, but found I had to register on vendor’s site, so decided it was time to look for a better desktop blogging client, and relegate MacJournal to keeping journals.

I did some dummy runs with MarsEdit, and found it a lot better in the blog interaction area, and had a few extra bells and whistles, that I’m sure I’ll take advantage of further down the track.

In the meantime, I need to get back into capturing images, so that I can have something interesting to post here, instead of just rambling on.