About Adobe Software and Employee Access

BCIT’s updated agreement separates Adobe offerings into three licensed products:

Adobe Acrobat is site licensed (no cost) for Faculty and Staff.
Adobe Express is site licensed (no cost) for Faculty and Staff.
Adobe Creative Cloud is now limited (billed to department) and licensing will be regulated.
Note: Access to Creative Cloud subscriptions now requires review and approval based on the use of the software at BCIT and will incur a cost to your department.

BCIT has extended all existing subscriptions to September 30, 2023. Existing subscribers will need to renew their subscription on October 1. New employees will be able to use the self-serve portal to obtain a subscription now, but will need to renew the subscription on October 1.

The extension and renewal is required to align all of our deployed products with our current license holdings.

Acrobat Pro DC is used to read/edit/ and manage PDF documents. This is the institute standard for PDF files and is basically required for 70%+ of employees.

Creative Cloud Pro is Adobe’s premiere suite for digital content creation, with over 20 tools that includes Acrobat Pro DC as well as tools for creating and modifying different types of images (Illustrator, Photoshop, Lightroom), sound and video (Audition, Premiere Pro), web content and prototyping (Dreamweaver, XD), and others. If you are creating content for BCIT (MarCom, BCIT Imaging, LTC design consultants, etc) or teaching classes with these products (full-time and flexible learning instructors) they are a must have for daily use. Other instructors may find Creative Cloud useful for developing course content.

Adobe Express is a collection of web-based, template-driven tools for creating content such as flyers, web pages, and business cards and for enhancing images quickly. It is designed for users who wish to create quick and professional looking results and it needs far less expertise and ability than Creative Cloud Pro apps. It also has less freedom for creativity. Creative Cloud Pro is a blank canvas, whereas Express is a more structured “plug and play” tool.

BCIT are site licensed for Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Express – these are Adobe’s tools for PDF creation, editing and management as well as a suite of web-based creativity tools and templates.

BCIT are site licensed for these products and all faculty and staff can access a subscription for Adobe Acrobat and install the software on up to two devices (BCIT-issued device and an additional personal device).

Review the article Adobe Acrobat for Faculty and Staff for information on how to subscribe and download Adobe Acrobat.

Once you have Adobe Acrobat, you can review the article Adobe Express for Faculty and Staff and start using these tools right away.

An Adobe Creative Cloud subscription provides access to a large library of Adobe software, including Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and many more. Subscriptions for Creative Cloud can also be installed and accessed on up to two devices.

Creative Cloud is not site licensed for BCIT.

BCIT has optimized our licensing use for classroom delivery use and institute requirements. To support this, there is now an application and approval process before faculty and staff can access Adobe Creative Cloud.

Applying for Creative Cloud subscription

Review the article Adobe Creative Cloud for Faculty and Staff for information on how to apply for, subscribe, and download Creative Cloud applications.

Trial subscriptions

If you have a time-sensitive issue with a staff Adobe subscription, do not try to resolve it via a trial subscription. Instead, contact adobe@bcit.ca to reach BCIT’s Adobe experts and we will assist you.

BCIT recommends against the use of trial subscriptions in all situations. This is a private contract between you, your credit card and Adobe. BCIT is not involved and can not assist with remediating any issues you encounter with trial subscriptions.

About Adobe Software and Employee Access

Licensing Information

Which software do you need?

Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Express

Adobe Creative Cloud

Applying for Creative Cloud subscription

Trial subscriptions

More information about Adobe software