ADOBE has buckled under the pressure of the Federal Government's IT Pricing inquiry.

Yesterday it dropped the price of its annual subscription rate of its Creative Cloud suite from $62.99 to $49.99 a month, bringing it in line with US prices.

It also lowered its casual subscription price from $94.99 to $74.99 a month.

But is it all just a PR ruse?

Before you decide to purchase Adobe software, know that customers are still being gouged on digital subscriptions, as well as physical software packs.

The retail price of its out of the box, full software versions of Photoshop, Creative Suite and Premiere will remain as high as ever, the Australian Financial Review reported.

The Creative Suite Master 6 Collection in Australia costs $4,334. The same software carries a price of $2599 in the US, Gizmodo reported.

That's a $1,735 price difference.

Consumer watchdog Choice noted last week that you could fly to the US to buy a particular piece of Microsoft development software and still save thousands of dollars.

The same is true of this piece of Adobe.

A return flight to Los Angeles costs $1147.58 on Virgin Australia.

You could fly to the US, purchase the software in LA and fly home and it would still cost less than purchasing it outright in Australia.



Adobe's communications manager Suzy Brady had nothing to say about why it was continuing to gouge Australians on prices, but said that the change in its subscription pricing for Adobe Creative Cloud "has been in the works for several months".

"We believe it will attract additional customers to the offering and build on our existing momentum in this market," she said.

"Individual Creative Cloud Membership has been reduced to AU$49.99 per month (on an annual plan) from AU$62.99 per month (on an annual plan); month to month pricing has been reduced to AU$74.99 from AU$94.99."



"Existing customers can upgrade from Creative Suite to Creative Cloud for AU$29.99, reduced from AU$37.99. "

She also said single app subscriptions for programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Pro, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Speedgrade, Acrobat Pro had been reduced to AU$19.99 per month from AU$24.99 per month.

"Muse has been reduced to AU$14.99 per month from AU$18.99 per month; Edge Inspect has been reduced to AU$9.99 per month from AU$12.99 per month."

"The shift to the cloud, which has been driven by greater access to robust, powerful broadband networks, helps drive greater business efficiencies, better customer experiences and as we have seen in Adobe’s announcement, has the potential to lower the cost of IT. "



Adobe will have to do more than lower the subscription rate of a single piece of software before we can take them seriously.