Adobe today announced the next version of its professional design software suite, Creative Suite 6 (CS), along with a new online offering called Creative Cloud. The company said the suite would be available within 30 days, with pre-ordering starting today.
Anchored by the groundbreaking image editor Photoshop, the suite is a massive bundle of software including the Illustrator drawing app, InDesign for layout, Premiere Pro for video editing, and Flash and Dreamweaver for Web programming. The fullest version of the suite (with a dozen major apps), CS6 Master Collection, sells for $2,599, while Creative Cloud offers a new subscription model including all the apps for just $49.99 per month.
The best-known member of the suite, Photoshop CS6, gets a notable update, with new, content-aware moving and patching tools and the ability to edit video. A new Camera Raw module more powerfully handles native files from all popular digital SLRs, automatically correcting photos based on lens characteristics. New drawing, text, and perspective tools, as well as sped-up performance make Photoshop CS6 a far-from-insignificant upgrade.
Adobe Creative Cloud will not only make all of the CS6 apps available to subscribers for download, but also adds online services for sharing and publishing content created with the suite. Subscribers will receive updates with new features periodically, and also get all of Adobe's related mobile apps for iOS and Android. Creative Cloud will include 20GB of online storage, and sync CS6 files between the user's devices. Finally, users will get access to a large online library of typefaces and training materials.
The dozen major Creative Suite apps all get some degree of updated design and features. One theme running through a few of them is the ability to create one project that will work on multiple displays: computer, tablet, and smartphone. InDesign, for example, offers the new "liquid layouts" feature for this, along with new content collector tools. Many of the apps benefit from redesigned user interfaces, often with darker options that put the focus on your content rather than the program's interface.
Many of the apps also benefit from Adobe's Mercury graphic engine, which takes advantage of the graphics processors found within today's PCs and Macs to speed up image processing. Illustrator CS6 uses this, and also gets new image tracing and pattern creation tools. The Premiere Pro professional video editor gets a similar speedup, along with expanded multicam capability, new trimming tools, and native support for new digital cinema cameras. The After Effects video post-production effect tool gets even more performance from a global cache that eliminates redundant processing, and adds a 3D camera tracker that can calculate 3D space from 2D footage and ray-traced extruded 3D text.
The Web development tools also get boosts with CS6. The Dreamweaver website builder adds fluid grid layouts to accommodate the various screen sizes mentioned earlier, and adds support for HTML5 CSS Transitions and jQuery mobile support. Flash Professional gets new "sprite sheets" for game development, the ability to build hardware-accelerated 2D content with the Starling framework, and to build apps prepackaged with the Adobe AIR runtime.
Upgrade pricing has been a contentious issue among longtime Creative Suite users, but Adobe is offering tiered upgrade pricing, depending on how long you've had your current version. So users of CS5.5 will pay $525 for the above-mentioned Master Collection, which normally costs $2,599. Users of CS5 will pay a $1,049 upgrade price, and CS4 users will pay $1,399. Other editions of the suite include Design Premium, Production Premium, and Web Premium, each costing $1,899, with similar upgrade discounts. Design Standard costs $1,299, and student pricing brings the cost way down.
The applications will be available as standalone offerings. Here are the individual suite members, along with their prices:
PhotoshopExtended |
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Full |
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$999 |
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Upgrade |
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$399 |
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Photoshop |
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Full |
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$699 |
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Upgrade |
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$199 |
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Illustrator |
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Full |
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$599 |
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Upgrade |
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$249 |
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InDesign |
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Full |
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$699 |
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Upgrade |
FROM CS5.5 |
$125 |
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Upgrade |
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$249 |
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Dreamweaver |
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Full |
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$399 |
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Upgrade |
FROM CS5.5 |
$125 |
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Upgrade |
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$249 |
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Fireworks |
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Full |
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$299 |
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Upgrade |
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$149 |
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Flash |
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Full |
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$699 |
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Upgrade |
FROM CS5.5 |
$99 |
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Upgrade |
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$199 |
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Soundbooth |
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Full |
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Upgrade |
FROM CS5 |
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Upgrade |
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Education |
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Premiere Pro |
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Full |
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$799 |
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Upgrade |
FROM CS5.5 |
$149 |
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Upgrade |
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$299 |
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After Effects Pro |
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Full |
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$999 |
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Upgrade |
FROM CS5.5 |
$175 |
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Upgrade |
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$349 |
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Audition |
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Full |
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$349 |
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Upgrade |
FROM CS5.5 |
$75 |
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Upgrade |
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$149 |
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Speed Grade |
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Full |
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$999 |
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Prelude |
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Full |
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$399 |
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Stay tuned to PCMag this week as we publish reviews of the major applications included with Creative Suite 6, starting today with Adobe Photoshop CS6.
For more from Michael, follow him on Twitter @mikemuch.