Adobe (http://www.adobe.com) has announced the Adobe Creative Suite 6 product line and Adobe Creative Cloud. The former includes new releases of 14 CS6 applications and four Creative Suites: Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium, Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design Standard, Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium, and Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection.
A new subscription-based offering, Adobe Creative Cloud, will provide users with the ability to download and install every Adobe CS6 application. Creative Cloud also integrates Adobe Touch apps into everyday work, introduces cloud-based sync and store capabilities, and powers the publishing of apps and high-impact Web experiences.
The performance and workflow enhancements in Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Illustrator CS6 and Adobe InDesign CS6 will result in significant time savings for print, Web and mobile projects, according to David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media Business, Adobe. In Photoshop CS6, designers “will experience incredible performance, powered by the Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, enabling near instant results from essential editing tools, including Liquify, Puppet Warp, Transform and Lighting Effects,” he adds. Adobe has built on Photoshop’s Content-Aware capabilities with new Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move features.
Illustrator CS6 debuts a revamped interface. New features include an image tracing engine, easy pattern creation and ability to apply gradients to strokes. The Mercury Performance System delivers speed and stability, including 64-bit support for Mac OS X and Windows.
InDesign CS6 streamlines the creation of multiple layouts from a single set of content with new Adaptive Design Tools — Alternate Layout, Liquid Layout, Content Collector Tools and Linked Content, says Wadhwani. A new application, Adobe Muse, enables designers to create and publish HTML5 web sites without writing code.
New workflows and capabilities across Adobe tools simplify the creative process for today’s Web designers, developers and interactive professionals, according to Wadhwani. Web pros can integrate HTML5 animations, created with Adobe Edge preview, into their Dreamweaver projects.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 addresses the challenge of responsive Web designs with the ability to build fluid grid layouts replacing the tedious manual process of creating and configuring separate CSS-based interfaces for phone, tablet and desktop, says Wadhwani. Through direct integration with Adobe’s recently announced PhoneGap Build service, Dreamweaver CS6 helps round out Web professionals’ skillsets and enables them to produce native mobile applications for multiple platforms.
Adobe Flash Professional CS6 users can translate and transition their skills to HTML5 using the Flash Professional Toolkit for CreateJS. Flash Professional CS6 also helps designers create “exciting and impactful” gaming experiences and advancements include the ability to generate sprite sheets that improve workflows and performance, says Wadhwani. Pre-built native extensions and new packaging options, leveraging the latest Adobe Flash Player and AIR runtimes, help expand and ease app delivery to Android and iOS devices.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 boasts dozens of new features, including a revamped editing environment. The Adobe Mercury Playback Engine now supports OpenCL on MacBook Pros.
Adobe After Effects CS6 is purportedly faster and more responsive than ever. With Global Performance Cache, previews are saved and ready to go — cutting the time spent bouncing between projects.
New to Production Premium are Adobe Prelude CS6, which is designed to streamline logging and ingest workflows in post-production, and Adobe SpeedGrade, which contains finishing tools for film finishing and color grading.
Adobe Audition CS6 accelerates audio post-production: real-time clip stretching lets you stretch clips to fit an edit. Automatic Speech Alignment introduces a new engine for automated dialogue analysis.
A new third party API [application programming interface] for hardware integration — Adobe Mercury Transmit — allows broadcast video monitoring to connect directly into the Mercury Playback Engine via third-party cards from AJA, Blackmagic Design and Matrox.
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Adobe Creative Suite 6 products and Adobe Creative Cloud are scheduled to be available within 30 days and can be pre-ordered now. Adobe continues to offer 14 CS6 point-products as well as Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium (US$1,899), Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design Standard ($1,299), Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium ($1,899) and Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection ($2,599) for purchase.
Upgrade pricing is also available to eligible customers. Customers can purchase CS6 products via Adobe.com and through select retail, resellers and online stores. More information on product pricing is available at http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html .
Adobe Creative Cloud membership for individuals is $49.99 per month based on annual membership and $74.99 per month based on month-to-month membership. A special introductory offer of US$29.99 per month for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 individual customers is also available. Learn more at http://www.adobe.com/go/creativecloud .