I know people are sometimes morally opposed to the idea of "rental" software (I was), but I'm here to tell you something: if all you need is Photoshop, you are FLAT OUT CRAZY not to be using the subscription-based CC version. Here's why:
1. It's $10 a month. That's $120 a year, with upgrades included. You are about to pay something in the neighbourhood of $600-800 (maybe $100 less if you're lucky) for a program that is no longer supported and will never get another update ever. How many YEARS of Photoshop CC "rental" does that cover? If they were still on the CS system, you might well have upgraded to CS7 or CS8 when your CS6 would no longer work with (future OS X version). So that's another upgrade fee sometime in the next two or three years.
2. For that $10 a month, you also get Lightroom. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Lightroom, but its not bad. You also get 20GB of cloud portfolio storage for your work with Behance, and a few other minor goodies.
3. Photoshop CC 2014 was a HUGE UPGRADE (essentially, CS7 if they'd carried on that way) and IMO much better than CS6.
4. The thing about subscription payments that I like is this: I can, if I want, unsubscribe. Say I don't find myself using PS CC much, using more Pixelmator or something. Just stop paying. No harm, no foul, you can pick up the subscription again when (or if) you ever feel like doing so. If you find that your work is largely seasonal, you can rent on a slightly higher month-to-month need.
5. Still investing in lots of plug-ins? At the moment, they'll all still work fine with CS6. But that won't last much longer -- and all that money you've spent on them will be gone in a couple of years unless you upgrade. Not to mention that eventually CS6 will break under some future OS X upgrade. Probably not real soon, but eventually.
So for people who use PS all the time and upgrade fairly regularly (I used to upgrade every other version), the program is now dramatically cheaper than it used to be. For people who only need PS from time to time (but when they need it, they need it!), the program has gotten super-duper-duper cheap, since they only pay for when the use it.
If you can find CS6 for super cheap, then maybe its worth it to buy still. But you're going to kick yourself if Adobe ever raises the price on this $10 a month deal, because one day you *are* going to upgrade to it. At the price of maybe 1.5 lattes from Starbucks a month, I think this thing's a no-brainer, particularly if you actually use it to help you earn money.
