[UPDATE – Win Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 for free! ($1000 giveaway)]

Two weeks after its official introduction, Adobe this morning has released Creative Suite 6, with major upgrades across the line. All CS6 suites and individual products are now shipping and downloadable as trials or for permanent use. The subscription-rental Creative Cloud will be out later.

The CS6 configurations are broadly similar to CS5.5, with four product removals and two additions. The product pricing has largely stayed the same, with modest adjustments for some upgrade paths and geographies. The new software is available immedi­ately for Windows and Mac OS via full purchase or discounted upgrade (from as far back as CS3 and CS4, through the end of this year), with delivery via boxed shipment or instant download.

And important news – starting now with this release, all CS6 upgrades can only be purchased direct from Adobe… CS6 upgrades will not be offered from third parties, resellers or retailers.

All of the CS6 free trials are also now available for download. These trials are fully functional for 30 days and work side-by-side with any previous version(s) of the Creative Suite, including CS5 and CS5.5. If you decide not to buy CS6 when the trial period is up, you can just uninstall it and your older tools will continue to run – while buyers can easily convert their trial to permanent use without reinstalling the software, even when upgrading. (For more informa­tion, refer to the complete Trial FAQ.)

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Creative Suite 6 is now available for instant download and direct shipping, and there are many important differences in this release compared to Creative Suite 5, including hundreds of new features added to the individual applications.

Here we’ve put together a complete set of direct download links for all the new CS6 products (Windows and Mac OS), for instant easy access and the ability to use your own download manager or download assistant if you have any difficulty with what Adobe normally employs and need to access the trials without it… Whether you’re considering buying a full version or upgrading from a prior release, you can always use these trials to install, run, and activate the software on your system.

Where available, we’ve also linked the free CS6 Extra Content downloads (aka Additional or Functional Content). Direct links for both the Adobe Muse 1.0 free trial and the Adobe Edge Preview are offered as well.

Below is a table for CS6 trials in major languages. These links go to the auth­entic and original CS6 files residing on Adobe’s servers, are guaranteed genuine and will not change. For Windows, each program consists of up to two files, an .exe and a 7-Zip file (.7z). The .exe file will only work once the .7z file is fully downloaded and resides in the same location. For the Mac, it’s just a single .dmg file for each program.

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We’ve mentioned Adobe TV in the past, but it just keeps getting bigger and better…  They’ve just published a large series of free new video tutorials for all Creative Suite 6 tools.

You’ll learn the basics with Getting Started overviews plus What’s New reviews by product experts, with nearly 18 hours of content covering all major CS6 applications.

And if you want to get going today, you can go ahead and download a free 30-day trial for any CS6 product for Windows or Mac – then install, run, and start your training…

Here’s how the courses break out:

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[UPDATE (May 7th) – Creative Suite 6 is now shipping!]

Yes – Adobe CS6 has just been announced with all the details… Pretty much on the time­frame we forecast, you can learn about and order any of the new products or suite editions, or even download the free CS6 trials. An on-demand video of the global Creative Suite 6 Launch Event is also now available. Adobe calls this “a huge release, our best ever,” so let’s take a closer look…

CS6 arrives one year following CS5.5 and two years after CS5. Photoshop and Illustrator did not get CS5.5 versions, so both of these tools have received very significant upgrades for CS6. But all the individual applications, including InDesign, Dreamweaver and the video tools, are receiving additional features, enhanced functionality, updated technologies, and/or solid performance boosts with Creative Suite 6. There are also two new products: Prelude CS6 and SpeedGrade CS6; plus the Design Premium and Web Premium suites have been combined into one (see how these fit into the Product Matrix).

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Adobe has just unveiled Creative Suite 6 – and one of the upgrade questions people are asking is what’s new, what’s different, what’s changed in CS6 as compared to previous version(s)? Adobe calls it, “a killer release with hundreds of new capabilities rolling up four focus areas: application performance, enhanced user interface, efficient development for multiple devices, and making previously impossible things possible.” So our job here is to give you a quick “cheat sheet” on top new features, to help you decide about upgrading…

CS6 updates almost all of the individual products from CS5, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Pro, InDesign/InCopy, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Encore.  Learn more about all the new features added to each of these applications in detail, with our special coverage.

The CS5 tools not revisioned to CS6 are Flash Catalyst, Contribute, OnLocation, and Device Central.  Acrobat and Flash Builder are included but remain the same versions as before.

In addition there are two new applications introduced: Prelude CS6, a video ingest and logging tool to help tag and transcode footage rapidly, and SpeedGrade CS6, a professional color grading system that brings state-of-the-art color science to your video productions. These new tools are included in both the Production Premium and Master Collection suites.

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The Adobe Student and Teacher Editions look like a great deal. They offer big discounts, as much as 80% off normal prices. They’re available for most of Adobe’s product line, including Creative Suite 6, Lightroom 4, Acrobat X, and Elements 10.  They can be purchased by anyone who qualifies – primary and secondary school students, college or university students, faculty, teachers, and administrators.  Even part-time students or teachers can be eligible, and there is no age limitation. They’re available pretty much worldwide in many languages on both Windows and Mac, and you don’t need any kind of coupon or promotion code to get the deep discounts.

So what’s the catch? Is the Academic software different or limited somehow? Is there any sort of time restriction, time limit, or time out – do Adobe Student Editions expire? Or are they unusable for commercial purposes?

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Creative Suite 6 was released on Monday and has brought with it some changes to Adobe’s previous upgrade policies… Here below is a full summary.

The first change, which we wrote about late last year, is the amended “one-version back” policy which states that current owners of CS3 or CS4 products (tools or suites) will receive temporary upgrade pricing to CS6 until December 31, 2012 – and after that date, only owners of CS5 or CS5.5 will qualify for upgrade pricing to CS6 (or to CS6.5 due out mid-2013).

The second revision is that all CS6 upgrades can only be purchased directly from Adobe in most countries – resellers and retailers will not be offering them (except for volume licenses which are still available on Adobe.com or through channel partners).

The final change now has to do with upgrade paths. Before you could upgrade from an individual point product to a suite containing that product, either in the same release or a subsequent release. So if you owned Photoshop CS6 then you could upgrade from that to CS6 Design & Web Premium, or to (say) CS7 Master Collection down the road.

But this will not be possible going forward… For Creative Suite 6, you can upgrade to a newer version of the same application you already own (e.g., Photoshop CS5 -> Photoshop CS6), but not to a suite. In other words, owners of individual appli­cations qualify for upgrade pricing to the same product, but not to a suite edition.

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With Adobe Creative Suite, if you’re just looking to set up and run CS6 on either a Windows PC or a Mac OS system, the instructions for that are easy. And in fact, as we discussed earlier, it’s relatively straightforward to install and activate the software on up to two machines of the same operating system type – in other words, either two Mac computers, or two Windows PC’s.

But in most cases, with the platform selection for Creative Suite and Acrobat products, it’s “either-or.” Either Apple or Microsoft. Either Mac or Windows. That’s the story for the retail and education versions of the software. And, if you want to change or swap platforms entirely, and move your tools from one o/s to the other, you can do that with an Adobe CS “crossgrade.”

However, there is another possibility if you want or need to have the applications available on both operating systems (Windows plus Mac OS) at the same time – and that is to get an Adobe volume license. Despite the name, anybody can buy them (not just businesses and even for just one copy), though they do offer discounts for larger purchases… and there are some additional advantages too (including the ability to order CS5 or CS5.5 instead of CS6, if that’s what you happen to need). They’re easy to get – no signature contracts are necessary and you can pay online with a credit card, and download right away.

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As you may know, Creative Suite 6 was announced on Monday with a big launch event webcast worldwide…  So we’ve learned about what’s new and different, and now we’re waiting patiently for the actual release date. But there is some official news today that will affect the buying patterns of many customers.

Starting with Creative Suite 6, all individual upgrades — both for CS suite editions and point products like Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6 — are available for purchase only through the Adobe website.*

Normally after a new release comes out, you can find the many upgrade packages at other sites or vendors. But effective with CS6 in many major geographies, Adobe will no longer offer upgrades through resellers, retailers, or other third parties* – including Amazon…

So now in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, the only place you can buy a CS6 upgrade from any earlier version of Adobe software is directly at Adobe’s online Store. The rest of the world (including Europe) will continue as before.

* Upgrades for volume licensing customers are still available on Adobe.com or through channel partners.

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Last week Adobe launched Creative Suite 6 and we took a high-level look at how CS6 is different from CS5.5 – and so now here we’ll step through the significant new features at an individual product level, product-by-product…

The upgraded applications and their key new functionalities are detailed below. If you’re coming from further back and would like to know the differences between older versions – like an upgrade from Adobe CS5.0 to CS6, from CS4 to CS6, or from CS3 to CS6 – the last section will also help.

Major Changes to the Creative Suite Products

• What’s New in Photoshop CS6?
• What’s New in Illustrator CS6?
• What’s New in InDesign CS6?
• What’s New in Dreamweaver CS6?
• What’s New in Fireworks CS6?
• What’s New in Flash Professional CS6?
• What’s New in Premiere Pro CS6?
• What’s New in After Effects CS6?
• What’s New in Audition CS6?
• What’s New in Encore CS6?
• What’s New in Prelude CS6?
• What’s New in SpeedGrade CS6?
• What’s New in the Four CS6 Suite Editions?
• Differences from Older Releases (CS3, CS4, CS5.0)?

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