During yesterday’s Adobe Keynote at FITC Toronto 2012, Adobe made some very big announcements that I’m sure many of you creatives will appreciate, primarily the launch of this beautiful piece of software: Adobe Creative Suite 6.
CS6 will change the way you think about digital media development, enabling you to work more quickly and efficiently with tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Dreamweaver and Flash Professional. This new update will also allow you to create projects that fluidly adapt to virtually all web, mobile and video standards.
Those eagerly anticipating the release of the newest and most feature-packed Adobe design tools yet will be happy to know that it’s set to be released on May 7, and that Adobe is now starting preorders.
Overall, pricing remains more or less the same compared to CS5.5. If you’d like to check out more upcoming Adobe tools check out their product page here.
Another major announcement worth checking out is the launch of Creative Cloud, which gives subscribers access to all of Adobe’s Creative Suite tools (as well as several other tools like Adobe Touch Apps, Proto and Photoshop Touch), all for a monthly fee.
By becoming a member, not only do you get to download and install each of your preferred applications individually on up to two different devices, but it will also allow you to access online services for file sharing, editing and publishing.
Priced at $49.99/month for one-year subscriptions or $74.99/month without a contract, this new feature could make a lot more sense for some of you, especially with the CS6’s high price point. While Creative Cloud seems like a great deal, you’ll have to consider whether it’s really worth it cost-wise in the long run.
This service-for-software feature will launch alongside CS6 sometime later in the first half of this year. Let’s look a little closer into what Creative Cloud will have to offer:
- The whole gamut of CS6 applications
- All Adobe Touch apps including Photoshop Touch, Kuler, Proto, Ideas, Debut and Collage
- Helpful publishing tools like Business Catalyst (for web hosting), Typekit (for web fonts) and Digital Publishing Suite (for publishing content to tablets)
- File sharing, editing and publishing
- Device & PC Sync
- 20GB Cloud Storage
Creative Cloud definitely offers a few advantages over buying CS6 products outright. First off, there will be more tools at your disposal as part of the subscription including the final version of Adobe Edge for HTML5 development, and Photoshop Lightroom 4 when it ships this summer. It’ll also support publishing, website creation and give you access to hundreds of typefaces. Then there’s the mentioned cross-platform 20GB storage, file sharing and editing capabilities. So, depending on your needs this subscription could end up being very helpful, just watch out for those long-term costs and you’re good to go!
You can find out more about Creative Cloud here.
