The sign shop wanted the logo in vector

The sign shop called Diane's tax office in September about the new window lettering. They needed the logo "in vector." Diane's logo lives as a screenshot inside a Word document and a JPEG her cousin made in 2019. I explained this to her like a man whose own truck registration is three months expired.

She asked what it would cost to fix. Here's the honest ledger. A local designer quoted her $350 to redraw it clean. I said let me try it myself first, because I'd been meaning to learn anyway. I got the seven-day trial of Illustrator, then paid one month of the single app, about $26. Six hours later I handed the sign shop a real vector file. I should have paid the designer the $350. More on that in a second.

What it costs

Adobe sells Creative Cloud three ways. One app runs about $26 a month. The Photography plan bundles Lightroom and Photoshop for around $10 to $20 depending on storage. All Apps is $55 a month on the annual plan, and the current Pro tier listing runs $69.99 a month, with 100GB of storage riding along.

The catch that gets people: no perpetual license. You can't buy Photoshop and own it anymore. Stop paying and it stops opening. And annual plans billed monthly charge a fee if you cancel early, so the advertised monthly price assumes you'll stay the year. For a one-off job, pick the month-to-month plan and cancel when the job's done. That's what I did. I'm not paying for Adobe now and haven't since October.

There's a seven-day free trial on any app. Use the trial before you put a card in. If the job finishes inside the trial, you paid nothing.

How I did Diane's logo, and what it really cost

1. Watched forty minutes of pen tool tutorials on a second screen, on the couch, after the kids were down.
2. Traced her cousin's JPEG over two evenings. The first version wobbled on every curve like a hose kinked three ways.
3. Paid one month of Illustrator, about $26, when the trial ran out before I did.
4. Exported the vector file and sent it to the sign shop. They accepted it, no revisions.
5. Canceled the subscription the same hour. Month to month, so no exit fee.

So the real bill was six hours and $26, against $350 and somebody else's four hours. Sounds like I won. Here's the part I leave in the story on purpose. The curves took me two tries because the pen tool fights beginners. The kerning was probably wrong in ways I can't see. A pro would have billed four hours and it would have looked better on glass from across the street. The lesson isn't "save money like Ryan." It's that I burned six hours learning a tool I'll touch twice a year, and Diane's $350 was mostly buying me out of that.

The recovery machine version

The full Creative Cloud is the $9,000 recovery machine on a service truck. Gauge set, vacuum pump, nitrogen bottle, torches, all of it, bolted down and beautiful. It pays for itself only if you're opening that door every week. Most weeks you need a manifold and a meter.

The single-app month is renting the recovery machine for one job. It's the right call exactly when the job demands the real tool and won't come around again soon. Adobe's rental model annoys pros, and I understand why. For a shop like mine it's actually the honest way to buy: pay for the months you use, own nothing, owe nothing.

Complaints you'll hear from people who live in it, all fair: the subscription never ends, the apps lean on their cloud and their browser sign-in, and the price only moves one direction. Praise you'll hear, also fair: nothing else touches Photoshop or Illustrator at real work. Both things are true. Neither one is a reason for a five-person office to pay $55 a month.

What to do Monday

Go through your card statement for software you opened fewer than five times last year. Cancel one tonight, month-to-month or not. Then, if a vendor asks for your logo in vector, call one local designer and get the real quote in writing before you open a trial. Take it from the guy with six hours of pen tool in him.