San Francisco — Popular graphics application maker Adobe Systems Inc., has just announced plans that it will launch its much touted next version of its market-leading digital media software, Creative Suite 6 (CS6) on Monday April 23, in San Francisco, along with disclosing more details on its Creative Cloud software-and-services subscription program.
Interestingly, following the release of a beta version of its Photoshop CS6 last month, the April 23 event, to be presented by Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, which will also be telecast over the Web beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on Adobe’s launch site. The presentation will be available later for replay at tv.adobe.com.
In fact, the beta launch last month also was bundled with After Effects CS6 and Premiere Pro CS6 at the NAB tradeshow earlier this week, sneak peeks of gradients on strokes and pattern design tools in Illustrator CS6, Adobe will fill in the details of the rest of the suite on Monday–including InDesign CS6, Flash Pro CS6, Dreamweaver CS6, and Fireworks CS6.
On the other hand, not only will all the gregarious apps, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro be showcased to the public for the first time, but Adobe is staging a San Francisco scavenger hunt, with prizes of $10,000 and a free lifetime subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.
Adobe has already revealed extensive details of the Creative Cloud service that offers users all of the CS6 apps under one umbrella–Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, DreamWeaver, Premiere Pro and the rest–along with updates, starting at $49.99 per month for an individual user.
Similarly, the service includes all of Adobe’s mobile apps, too, as well as online collaboration and project hosting capabilities. However, what it has not disclosed is pricing beyond a standard US$50 per month fee and how it will implement the service for groups, though this is due later this year.
Normally, Adobe is not permitted by law to add features to one-time purchased software, but the Creative Cloud model does not have this restriction, so subscribers will get new features at intervals without needing a full program update. It will also include syncing of your work in the apps between multiple devices, 20GB of cloud storage, Adobe Business Catalyst site hosting, and thousands of Web-based fonts.
Apart from the product launches, Adobe will ‘disclose new primary research on the impact of creativity on our culture and economy, and reveal new initiatives that motivates creativity in education,’ according to the company.
To coincide with the launch, last week, Adobe informed the video professional’s version of the suite, CS6 Production Premium, demonstrating the new versions of Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Encore, and Story Plus applications. Also displayed were two new suite members–Prelude CS6, a new app for organizing production workflow through on-set ingest and logging; and SpeedGrade CS6, professional color grading tool.
Lastly, stay tuned to grab a complete reviews of the upcoming Creative Suite 6 apps once they become available on Monday.