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But this will not be possible going forward… For Creative Suite 6, you can upgrade to a newer version of the same application you already own (e.g., Photoshop CS5 -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.

Similarly, if you decide to buy Photoshop CS6 now, you would not be able to later upgrade from that program to any full suite, whether it be CS6 or a future release like CS7 or CS8. Price reductions are not offered if you want to move from any standalone tool to a suite edition.

However, owners of any previous suite will still be able to upgrade to any available Creative Suite 6 suite. So if you own any CS3, CS4, or CS5 suite, you can upgrade to any CS6 suite edition no problem (for CS3 and CS4 users only until the end of 2012, as mentioned earlier). CS2 and earlier software is too far back to qualify.

So what this means is a little more deliberation is necessary before deciding which CS6 product you’re going to get. Whichever track you choose, you can expect to stay on that track. If you purchase a standalone product, your upgrade path will keep you on just that product. If you purchase a suite edition, then your path will be for a choice of future suites going forward. Here Adobe is saying to decide carefully now, because you can no longer mix the paths.

You might think, “oh, maybe you can buy a CS5 suite on eBay and then upgrade from that”… As covered previously, we absolutely do not recommend that.

One other point – what if you need to run your software on both Windows and Mac OS? Then you might want to take a look at how to buy CS6 multi-platform.

For more information and details on Creative Suite 6 worldwide pricing, upgrades, availability, and system requirements, see our companion CS6 Launch Guide. Or read more about how CS6 is different from previous versions like CS5.5, including a detailed product-by-product breakout of what’s new in every application.

You can get started using the new products right away by downloading the free trials and then taking advantage of 18 hours of free new video tutorials to learn them.

Related Posts

• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• What’s New in Adobe CS6 Upgrade? A Product Feature Overview
• News: All CS6 Upgrades Now Only Available through Adobe Direct
• Adobe CS6 Was Announced April 23, but When Is the Release Date?
• Adobe CS6 vs. CS5.5 Comparison – What’s the Difference Between?

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.)

If you have any difficulty with the trial downloading process or using the Adobe Download Assistant, you can instead click through the complete list of CS6 direct download links to easily get all of the trials you want without any download manager or assistant.

The CS6 Student & Teacher Editions are also now shipping. These offer up to 80% off the regular prices for education customers including students, teachers, and academic staff. Just be sure you know the key differences between Adobe’s academic versions vs. regular.

If you need more than one copy of any product, check out Adobe volume licensing for price discounts and ease of management, plus other benefits – including the ability to purchase and run CS6 multi-platform (on both Windows and Mac).

CS6 ships in English, French, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Portuguese, and Japanese today, with up to 24 languages coming in total – including Chinese, Korean, and Russian. The CS6 System Requirements are close to those for Creative Suite 5 – you can read more about this in the links below.

Related Posts

• Adobe Releases CS5.5 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• Download Adobe CS6 Trials: Direct Links (no Assistant or Manager)
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• What’s New in Adobe CS6 Upgrade? A Product Feature Overview
• News: All CS6 Upgrades Now Only Available through Adobe Direct

Creative Suite 6 was released today – and is now available through Adobe’s Business Store, which was formerly called the Volume Licensing Store…

But this online store is not just for businesses or big volume – it’s for anyone who would like to run more than one copy of the CS6 software at one time, or has multiple concurrent users. The standard licensing for Adobe’s off-the-shelf retail products permits only a single user running on up to two installed computers – which is usually not enough for most members of a company, group, office, team, school, or enterprise. And it’s occasionally not enough for some homes!

Regardless, the benefits of going with an Adobe CS6 volume license even for a simple or small purchase are numerous and clear:

• A single serial number for all installations, open and switchable.
• The license management and maintenance is easier and flexible.
• The number of seats you buy is how many users can run the product.
• Adding new users or additional computers (as needed) is simple and fast.
• You can install on both the Windows and Mac platforms simultaneously.
• You can access and run older versions if you need to, like Creative Suite 5.
• There is no paperwork and no signature “contracts” to sign.
• You can buy online with a credit card with no minimum order size.
• PayPal and purchase orders are also accepted, if you prefer.
• Instantly download the software online for free (or get media by mail).
• All CS6 suites & products (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, etc) qualify.
• Easy web-based license management tool for all seats in your organization.
• Just like elsewhere, each user’s license can install on up to two computers.
• Convert a standard Adobe trial to volume-licensed just by entering the key.
• In some cases, set up a flexible or floating license scheme across a network.
• Gain access to the Adobe licensing community and associated resources.
• Volume licenses are transferrable or resellable to other users, if necessary.
• Can get credit for past qualifying purchases of retail or off-the-shelf versions.
• No sign-up or membership or subscription costs, no hidden or extra fees.
• Despite the name, the online store is not just for businesses or large purchases.
• Called TLP (Transactional Licensing Program), it gives options not found elsewhere.
• Offered for all: individual, commercial, academic, or government customers.
• Now open for education too: schools, colleges, universities, students & teachers.
• Available direct from Adobe all over the world – with no reseller needed.

Questions about how it works?  Please see our previous in-depth article on Creative Suite volume licensing for all the answers and details on the program.

Or go right to the Adobe Business Store to see all the CS6 products plus more information, including an Instant Quote for the applications you’re interested in, no matter how many seats for your group or site.

Not in the U.S.? No worries… Adobe now has online volume licensing stores all over the world – in North America, Europe/UK, Asia, and Africa…  Just visit the Adobe Store Selector and choose your country, and then “Business Store.”  That’s it – buy and download (or ship) your volume-licensed product in your local currency with your local address.

Related Posts

• How to Run Multiple User or Computer Licenses for Adobe CS6
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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)?

What’s New in Photoshop CS6 (Standard & Extended)

The world’s best digital imaging software gets even better with Photoshop CS6. Benefit from state-of-the-art imaging magic, exciting new creative options, and unprecedented performance. Correct, refine, and composite with groundbreaking new Content-Aware tools, an all-new Crop tool, and new skin tone–aware selections and masking. Design superior graphics as well as movies with new and reimagined tools and workflows. Count on a modern user interface to make your images pop, and edit at blazingly fast speeds with the new Mercury Graphics Engine. Create rich 3D artwork with a vastly simplified user interface in the Extended edition.

New features:

• Content-Aware Patch, Move & Extend – Retouch images with astonishing ease & control
• Mercury Graphics Engine – See near-instant results and a fluid feel as you work
• New & revamped design tools – Type styles, custom vector strokes, layer search, more
• Intuitive video creation – Use familiar PS tools to edit & create movies, in all versions
• All-new Crop tool – Crop images faster and with greater precision, nondestructively
• New Blur Gallery – Quickly create photographic blur effects with on-image controls
• Preset migration and sharing – Easily transfer your presets, workspaces, and settings
• Background Save and Auto-Recovery – No waiting and no re-dos! Work fast and secure
• Adobe Camera Raw 7 plug-in – Reveal rich detail in both the highlights and shadows
• Adaptive Wide Angle – Easily straighten objects that appear curved in wide-angle shots
• Revolutionary erodible brushes – Draw more naturally & realistically with eroding tips
• Completely reengineered 3D tools – [Extended] Enjoy huge leaps in 3D capabilities
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Illustrator CS6

Number 1 in Illustrator CS6 is the new Mercury Performance System that delivers native 64-bit support for both Mac OS and Windows. You can now work with precision, speed, and rock-solid stability on large, complex files. An updated interface streamlines daily tasks, and new creative options let you design and edit seamless patterns, leverage a new image-tracing engine, and apply gradients to strokes. Spend less time waiting and more time creating with Illustrator CS6, the industry’s premier vector-drawing environment for creating graphics that scale across media.

New features:

• Mercury Performance Engine – Work with speed & stability with native 64-bit support
• Pattern creation tools – Easily make seamlessly-tiled repeating vector patterns
• Image Trace – Completely new tracing engine converts raster images to editable vectors
• Efficient, flexible interface – Streamlined to take fewer steps to accomplish daily tasks
• Gradients on strokes – Apply gradients to your strokes with complete control
• Many panel improvements – Get your work done more efficiently and precisely
• Gaussian Blur enhancement – Do shadows, blurs & glows faster and more accurately
• Dockable hidden tools – Tear off and dock hidden tools for an efficient workspace
• Workspaces with rooms – Move fluidly between workspaces with support for rooms
• True white canvas color – Fast color sampling when you quickly need a pure white
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in InDesign CS6

InDesign CS6 introduces powerful features for print and digital workflows. New tools help you adapt layouts to multiple page sizes, orientations, and devices—without sacrificing pixel-perfect control over design and typography. Use the Content Collector tools to easily repurpose text and images in other files; link content across documents to help ensure consistency. Integrate with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to publish InDesign layouts as tablet applications.

New features:

• Liquid Layout – Automatically adapt content to different page sizes and orientations
• Alternate Layout – Create and design multiple versions for all needs within a single file
• Content Collector tools – Grab objects from existing layout, easily place in new one
• PDF forms within InDesign – Create and order form fields before you export to PDF
• Autosizing text frames – Grow & shrink frames automatically, using simple parameters
• Split window – View two side-by-side layouts within the same document to compare
• Grayscale preview & PDF export – Preview in grayscale, and export grayscale PDF
• Enhanced split and span support – Keep lines together that split or span columns
• Linked content – Live-link content within or across documents, changes applied to all
• Middle Eastern language support – For easier localization and enhanced functionality
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Dreamweaver CS6

Dreamweaver CS6 introduces expanded support for creating clean, industry-standard HTML5 and CSS3 code. Check the rendering of HTML5 code with updated Live View and Multiscreen Preview. Use fluid grid layouts to design projects that are cross-platform and cross-browser compatible. Enhanced jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap Build support framework helps you develop projects for desktop screens, tablets, and smartphones. Faster FTP transfers let you work more efficiently.

New features:

• Fluid grid layout – Construct complex web designs and layouts for different screen sizes
• Improved FTP performance – Save time uploading with multi-threaded FTP transfer
• Enhanced jQuery Mobile – Create native apps for iOS and Android with updated support
• CSS3 transitions – Animate changes to CSS properties to bring web designs to life
• Updated Live View – Test pages before publishing using updated Live View functionality
• Updated PhoneGap Build – Build and package native mobile apps with updated support
• Updated Multiscreen Preview panel – Now can check the rendering of HTML5 content
• Business Catalyst integration – Integrated panel to edit sites you build with BC
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Fireworks CS6

Fireworks CS6 provides new screen layout tools to help you work faster and smarter. Jump-start your interactive designs for popular smartphone and tablet apps with new jQuery Mobile theme skinning, CSS sprites from comps, and extraction of industry-compliant CSS3 code. Blaze through your workflow with improved color swatches and greater precision. Boost productivity with better redraw performance for Mac OS and improved memory management for Windows 64-bit operating systems.

New features:

• New CSS Properties panel – Extract CSS code and create CSS sprites and CSS effects
• New jQuery mobile theme skinning support – Create, modify, or update jQuery themes
• Improved performance on Windows & Mac OS – Plus better graphics optimization
• Quicker access to color – Rapidly switch between colors and color effects
• Opacity support for Fill and Stroke – Apply opacity control separately
• API access – Access the API to generate extensions, use community extensions
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Flash Professional CS6

Flash Professional CS6 features new support for generating sprite sheets for improved game develop­ment and the ability to deliver apps with a prepackaged Adobe AIR captive runtime for a better user experience. Access device-specific capabilities with prebuilt native extensions, simulate common mobile application interactions, and reach devices that run on Android and iOS platforms by targeting the latest Adobe Flash Player and AIR runtimes.

New features:

• Export as HTML5 content – Use CreateJS to make HTML5 from existing Flash content
• Sprite sheet generation – Export symbols and animation sequences quickly for gaming
• Wide platform & device support – Target the latest Flash Player & Adobe AIR runtimes
• Prepackaged AIR application creation – Deliver applications with an AIR captive runtime
• Platform- & device-specific access – Use prebuilt native extensions that provide access
• Adobe AIR mobile simulation – Simulate common mobile interactions for testing
• Stage 3D targeting – Turbocharge rendering performance via the Starling Framework
• Multiple AIR SDK support – Add multiple Adobe AIR software development kits
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Premiere Pro CS6

Premiere Pro CS6 delivers a sleek, professional user interface; a powerful playback engine (see all supported graphics cards); and a host of fantastic creative features. Quickly stabilize shaky shots with Warp Stabilizer. Natively edit anything from low-resolution to RED EPIC 5K and ARRIRAW footage, finesse your work with dynamic timeline trimming, handle more multicam angles, and correct rolling shutter artifacts. Get flexible audio tracks, powerful color workflows, Adobe Prelude integration, and more.

New features:

• Sleek, highly intuitive, and customizable user interface – Intelligently redesigned
• Fluid editing workflow – Over 50 of the most requested editing enhancements
• Dynamic timeline trimming – Edit with precision using powerful trimming tools
• Warp Stabilizer effect – Correct jitter and rolling shutter artifacts, like AE
• Expanded multicam editing – Easily edit footage from as many cameras as you have
• Better 3-Way Color Corrector – More intuitively manage the color in your projects
• New adjustment layers – Apply effects across multiple clips, easily create masks
• Revamped Project panel workflows – View, sort, and arrange media faster
• Uninterrupted playback – Make changes on the fly, adjust parameters & add effects
• Enhanced, flexible audio tracks – New tools deliver greater audio flexibility
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in After Effects CS6

After Effects CS6 lets you deliver cinematic visual effects and sophisticated motion graphics faster than ever before. Take 64-bit to a new level with Global Performance Cache. Extend your creativity with the 3D camera tracker, built-in text and shape extrusion, new mask feathering options, rolling shutter repair, and more built-in effects to make your final project look the way you intended.

New features:

• Global Performance Cache – Revolution “under the hood” makes AE fast and responsive
• 3D camera tracker – Track & place 3D elements onto 2D footage with complete control
• Ray-traced, extruded text & shapes – Extrude fully ray-traced text & shapes natively
• Variable mask feathering – Precisely control mask feathering for the shape you want
• Integration with Adobe Illustrator – Instantly convert, animate, or extrude vector art
• Rolling shutter repair – Remove rolling shutter artifacts such as skew and wobble
• New and updated effects – Enhance creativity with 90 new and updated built-in effects
• Avid AAF and FCP 7 XML file import with Pro Import AE – Integrate your workflow
• mocha for After Effects CS6 – Launch mocha for CS6, included directly within AE
• Broadly-improved GPU acceleration for previews & rendering – Get work done faster
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Audition CS6

Audition CS6 offers high-performance, intuitive editing tools to help you produce audio efficiently. Powerful new features such as real-time clip stretching, pitch and speed control, write/latch/touch automation, control surface support, and automatic speech alignment help you deliver projects faster than ever. Many user-requested features have been added and improved, such as CD burning, clip grouping with group suspend, tone generation, and more.

New features:

• Faster, more precise editing – Work faster with dozens of timesaving enhancements
• Real-time clip stretching – Stretch nondestructively in real time, new varispeed mode
• Automatic speech alignment – Quickly align & replace dialogue with studio recordings
• EUCON and other control surface support – Work with myriad control surfaces
• Parameter automation – Automate entire mixes with new parameter automation modes
• Powerful pitch correction – Correct pitch problems automatically or with manual control
• Tools for efficient session management – New Media Browser and Quick Search field
• Clip grouping – Edit multiple clips simultaneously, new Suspend Groups feature
• Expanded output options – More flexible delivery options including output to audio CD
• HD video playback – Import and play back HD video without transcoding
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Encore CS6

Get rock-solid performance and stability with Encore CS6, now natively 64-bit. Open and save projects faster and send them from Premiere Pro CS6 directly to Encore CS6 software without intermediate rendering. Benefit from faster MPEG import, pixel aspect ratio correction in previews, and enhanced DVD, Blu-Ray Disc, and web DVD authoring.

New features:

• Native 64-bit support – Speed up your authoring workflow with rock-solid performance
• Faster MPEG import with asynchronous processing – Pull assets in the background
• Pixel aspect ratio correction in previews – View the correct ratio when previewing
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in Prelude CS6

Adobe Prelude CS6 is a video ingest and logging tool that can help you tag and transcode footage rapidly. Searchable temporal markers and comments entered in Adobe Prelude can help you find the footage you want, when you want it, at any point in production. Easy ingestion of nearly any file-based footage along with keyboard-driven creation of searchable metadata allows you to keep your eyes on the video and work faster, stay organized, and streamline production. Create rough cuts and associated metadata that will flow through the entire production process in Premiere Pro and with other NLEs. Leverage the XMP-based open platform capabilities of Adobe Prelude to integrate with third-party technologies and asset management systems.

New features:

• Full or partial ingest – Get to work faster with easy ingest & tagging of file-based footage
• Heads Up logging – Create metadata & subclips without taking your eyes off your footage
• Transcode to many formats upon ingest – Transcode to your preferred format(s)
• Searchable temporal markers – Add searchable markers & temporal metadata to clips
• Rough cut creation – Jump-start your editing by adding clips & subclips to rough cuts
• Thumbnail scrubbing – View clips as thumbnails in addition to hierarchies within folders
• Success write confirmation – Get immediate confirmation your ingest was successful
• Speech transcription notes – View transcription notes from Speech Analysis in Premiere
• Customizable extensibility – Leverage the XMP-based open platform for integration
• Customizable metadata import – Import event metadata from other sources
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in SpeedGrade CS6

Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 is professional color grading software that brings state-of-the-art color science to your productions. Output to virtually any type of display, from handheld tablets to the big screen. Now part of the Adobe Creative Suite, SpeedGrade CS6 offers a new streamlined interface and the Lumetri Deep Color Engine, giving you confidence in your color decisions. Load projects from Premiere Pro and use professionally designed presets to get up and running fast. Native .Look file support in After Effects and Photoshop provides visual consistency across your productions.

New features:

• Lumetri Deep Color Engine – Apply precision floating-point grading to all your shots
• Powerful layer-based grading – Simplify complex color adjustments with layers
• GPU-accelerated performance – Experience real-time feedback while you grade footage
• Primary and secondary color correction – Apply to the whole frame in combination
• Streamlined user experience – Organize logically & efficiently in one integrated workflow
• Professionally designed .Look files – Explore a range of beautiful, predesigned .Look files
• Perfectly balanced gamma – Adjust footage to compensate for irregularities and shifts
• Camera and color space matching – Automatically match footage from different cameras
• Automatic scene detection – Distinguish individual shots and make short work of projects
• Adobe tool and workflow integration – Integrate with Premiere Pro, AE, Photoshop, more
• …plus more that’s new, or download the free trial

What’s New in the CS6 Suite Editions

Adobe combined two CS5 suites into one – the new CS6 Design & Web Premium suite. So now there are four suite offerings in total, including CS6 Design Standard, CS6 Production Premium, and CS6 Master Collection. The different suite configurations remain similar to before except the applications you don’t see above – notably Flash Catalyst, Contribute, OnLocation, and Device Central – are no longer included in Creative Suite 6. What’s more, Flash Builder 4.6 is now bundled with Master Collection only.

Read more about how CS6 is different in other ways, or on other key launch details…

Differences from Older Versions (CS6 vs. CS5.0, CS4 or CS3)

What if you’re not currently on CS5.5, but would like to compare from prior versions of Creative Suite? Like upgrading from CS3 to CS6, or from CS4 to CS6…

To answer that, check out the differences between Adobe CS5.5 vs. CS5 vs. CS4 vs. CS3 – for the complete picture!

See the full CS6 System Requirements, the different CS6 Product Configurations, or the CS6 Price Sheet in major geographies.

Related Posts

• Adobe CS6: Can No Longer Upgrade from Single Tool to a Suite
• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• News: All CS6 Upgrades Now Only Available through Adobe Direct
• Adobe CS6 Was Announced April 23, but When Is the Release Date?
• Adobe CS6 vs. CS5.5 Comparison – What’s the Difference Between?

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.

This should be better in some ways because upgrades have always been a confusing part of the process – there are a lot of different combinations and paths from different products, and it was hard for other vendors to present them well and make sure customers bought the right thing, were qualified with the correct prior version, etc. There will also now be zero risk of software piracy for buyers of upgrades going forward.

So now a lot of that experience should be improved, and hopefully we’ll have fewer comments here from bewildered visitors wondering why the Photoshop they bought for $199 from Best Buy doesn’t work on their computers (…because it was an upgrade version and they didn’t own a prior release) – or the one they got from eBay doesn’t work at all and put malware on their system. It also means that customers will always have the choice to download and run their upgrades instantly if they want, or order the box.

Keep in mind too Adobe’s other recent Upgrade Policy change which sets a year-end deadline for folks still on CS3 or CS4 versions to receive discounted upgrade pricing to CS6.

Will this affect you at all? See the price of a CS6 upgrade direct from Adobe, for your product in your region… although until May 6th, you should probably be upgrading to CS5.5 instead because it usually comes out less and you will receive a free further upgrade to CS6 when it ships.

One other point – what if you need to run your product on both operating system platforms? Then you might want to take a look at how to buy CS6 on both Windows and Mac.

For more information and details on Creative Suite 6 worldwide pricing, upgrades, availability, and system requirements, see our companion CS6 Launch Guide. Or read more about how CS6 is different from previous versions like CS5.5, including a detailed product-by-product breakout of what’s new in every application.

Or get started using Creative Suite 6 right away by downloading the free trial and then taking advantage of 18 hours of free new video tutorials to learn it.

Related Posts

• Adobe CS6: Can No Longer Upgrade from Single Tool to a Suite
• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• What’s New in Adobe CS6 Upgrade? A Product Feature Overview
• Adobe CS6 Was Announced April 23, but When Is the Release Date?
• Adobe CS6 vs. CS5.5 Comparison – What’s the Difference Between?

Missed the big event? No problem! You can watch a full replay… It’s about an hour and twenty minutes in length, and available on-demand below. Creative Suite 6 offers hundreds of new capabilities and focuses on four main areas: Application Performance, Enhanced User Interface, Efficient Development for Multiple Devices, and Killer Features. The launch event illustrates these themes through the true story of a fashion designer and how her company benefits from the new features added in CS6.

Adobe says it’s taken more than 10,000,000 person-hours to produce this version… If you assume salary, benefits, office and other expenses come out to around US$50/hour, then that’s $500 million invested into Creative Suite 6 – and onto your desktop!

If you want to just watch the 22-minute segment with demos of CS6, without the intro pieces or coverage of the Creative Cloud, it’s the second video below. For more details on the release such as product adds/drops, suite configurations, system specs, upgrade paths, plus pricing and availability, see our CS6 Launch Guide. Or check out a detailed product-by-product breakout of what’s new in every CS6 application.

Meanwhile, the free CS6 trials will be available soon, but if you’d like to get started with Photoshop right away, just download the Photoshop CS6 beta release. You can also enter to win Photoshop CS6 for free…

Creative Suite 6 Demonstration Segment (Only)

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[NEWS (May 7th) – CS6 has been released!]

As you may have heard, Creative Suite 6 was announced on April 23rd with a big launch event that’s being webcast world­wide…  So we’ve learned about what’s new and different, but we can’t use or download the software yet – for that we have to wait further until the actual release date. When will that be?

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has previously said this regarding availability:

“I know there’s been some confusion about what we mean by ‘launch’ versus what we mean by ‘ship.’ On the launch date, we’ll talk a lot more about the new features and function­alities of the suites, the various product configurations, and what we’ve done with pricing. We have some new products which will factor into the pricing moving forward. And then traditionally, within 30 days, you tend to ship the software products themselves. The early feedback has been very positive.”

The time window now also means you can preorder the software, but you might not want to actually do that. Why? Because you could save a good bit of money by ordering CS5.5 from Adobe’s site instead (at lower cost), in which case you will be eligible for an automatic free upgrade to CS6 when it comes out…

So for the release date itself, we have long forecasted early May, which is confirmed by the May 6th expiration date of the CS6 grace period offer just described. It is also confirmed by word on the Adobe Boards.

Customers who preorder the CS6 titles now receive the following notice:

Preorder Estimated Availability May 7, 2012. Your credit card will not be charged until the product is ready to download. Estimated availability date is subject to change.

Adobe advised earlier they will be moving to a simultaneous release in the major geogra­phies, which in addition to the U.S., tend to be Europe (U.K., Germany and France) and Japan. So expect to see the English, German, French, and Japanese language editions all ship at the same time, with others to follow later – 23 languages in total.

We also anticipate the CS6 free trials, the Creative Cloud, and the new Student & Teacher Editions to also be available on that same date.

[UPDATE (April 30th) – Adobe confirms in today's "Ask a Pro" presentation: "All pre-order customers will have access on May 7th in the US (date may vary by country)."]

So there you have it – hopefully installing by second week of May! In the meantime you can download the Photoshop CS6 beta release now, or enter to win Photoshop CS6 for free…

[UPDATE (May 7th) – All Adobe CS6 downloads are now available!]

For more information and details on Creative Suite 6 worldwide pricing, upgrade changes, availability, and system requirements, see our companion CS6 Launch Guide. Or read more about how CS6 is different from previous versions like CS5.5, including a detailed product-by-product breakout of what’s new in every application.

Related Posts

• Adobe CS6: Can No Longer Upgrade from Single Tool to a Suite
• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• What’s New in Adobe CS6 Upgrade? A Product Feature Overview
• News: All CS6 Upgrades Now Only Available through Adobe Direct
• Adobe CS6 vs. CS5.5 Comparison – What’s the Difference Between?

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.

With the spread of online content, Adobe found there was growing overlap in the customer base for the Design Premium and Web Premium suites, so they combined them both into one now called CS6 Design & Web Premium – which draws upon the tools of both editions. Design Standard’s collection remains “as is,” and rounds out the line-up.

As was disclosed previously, Adobe’s new design tools Edge and Muse will not be included within the Creative Suite, but sold separately.

For more information and details on Creative Suite 6 worldwide pricing, upgrade changes, availability, and system requirements, see our companion CS6 Launch Guide.

What’s New in CS6 vs. CS5? A New Feature Version Comparison

Here’s a quick run-through of some of the top new features in CS6 for major applications…

— Photoshop CS6: New modern user interface, Content-Aware move/patch/extend tools, new Camera Raw 7, background save and auto-recovery, Blur Gallery, redesigned vector and 3D engines, intuitive video editing, and many more.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— Illustrator CS6: Reengineered and streamlined user interface, fast Mercury Performance System for native 64-bit support on both Windows and Mac, new creative tools for pattern creation, image tracing, and gradients on strokes.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— InDesign CS6: Content Collector tools, hot-linked content across pages, integration with Digital Publishing Suite, Alternate Layout, Liquid Layout, other new tools efficiently adapt layouts to a myriad of page sizes, devices, and orientations.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— Dreamweaver CS6: Fluid grid layout for cross-platform design, CSS3 transitions, HTML5 code rendering with Live View and Multiscreen Preview, enhanced jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap Build framework support, optimized FTP performance.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— Fireworks CS6: New screen layout tools, jQuery Mobile theme skinning, CSS sprites from comps, CSS3 code extraction, improved color swatches, better redraw performance for Mac, improved memory management for Windows 64-bit systems.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— Flash Professional CS6: Sprite sheet generation, CreateJS toolkit to output HTML5, access to platform- and device-specific capabilities, prepackaged Adobe AIR captive runtimes, mobile application interaction simulation, support for the latest runtimes.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— Premiere Pro CS6: Sleek and professional user interface, uninterrupted playback, Warp Stabilizer effect, dynamic timeline trimming, expanded multicam editing, rolling shutter artifacts correction, adjustment layers, and many more.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— After Effects CS6: Global Performance Cache, 3D camera tracker, ray-traced text and shape extrusion, new variable mask feathering, rolling shutter repair, enhanced integration with Illustrator, new and updated effects, and many more.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— Audition CS6: Real-time clip stretching, pitch and speed control, CD burning, parameter automation, control surface support, automatic speech alignment, clip grouping with group suspend, tone generation, and many more.  [SEE COMPARISON]

— Encore CS6: 64-bit support for rock-solid performance, faster MPEG import with asynchro­nous processing.

— Prelude CS6: Full or partial ingest, tag footage with searchable temporal metadata, transcode to many formats, heads-up logging, rough cut creation, thumbnail scrubbing, speech transcription notes, success write confirmation, fully customizable.

— SpeedGrade CS6: Powerful layer-based color grading, GPU-accelerated performance, Lumetri Deep Color Engine, primary and secondary color correction, automatic scene detection, camera and color space matching, Adobe tool and workflow integration.

These are just a few highlights of what’s new in the toolset and there are many, many more.

If you want to know what’s different from CS6 going back to releases prior to last, check out comparisons of earlier versions of the Creative Suite, for example CS4 vs. CS5.5, or CS3 vs. CS5.5.

When Can You Get It?

So all this new software has been officially announced, but when will Creative Suite 6 be shipping?  Our checks indicate the release date will be in early May… We may find out more at the big Global CS6 Launch Event.

In the meantime you can register to download any of the free trials — or grab some chances to win Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 for free!

Lastly, keep in mind you can usually save a good bit of money on CS6 when coming from older versions like CS2, CS3, or CS4 by upgrading now at lower cost to CS5.5, and then you’ll automatically receive a free further upgrade to CS6 when it comes out… Just look for “Can’t wait? Order the previous version now” at Adobe’s Online Store.

Related Posts

• CS5.5 or CS6? New Adobe “Sneak Peek” Preview Videos Out
• How to Move Adobe CS6 Between Computers, or from PC to Mac
• Buy CS5 Now + Get Free Upgrade to CS6: Adobe Sets Grace Period
• Adobe CS6 Upgrade Policy Changes Postponed! CS3 & CS4 on Track
• Adobe’s New Upgrade Policy for CS6: What It Means for You [Poll]

[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).

Generally speaking though, the configurations and prices are similar for CS6 as compared to CS5. Overall we present some highlights here, but see our two companion “what’s new” articles for: (1) an overview of the key differences between CS6 vs. CS5.5, including what’s been added and what’s been taken away, and (2) a detailed product-by-product review of the significant new features and enhancements in CS6.

CS6 Pricing, Upgrades, Availability, and Requirements

The CS6 Price Sheet shows the complete pricing for the full versions in major geographies and currencies.  The cost to upgrade from CS5.5 to CS6 ranges from $45-$149 for the individual point products, and $275-$525 for the suites. In the U.S., CS6 pricing across the board remains roughly in line with what it was for CS5, with slight cost increases or decreases for some paths – while pricing in Europe is a bit lower.  Adobe is offering free shipping on orders over £350 in the UK and €500 in Europe (before VAT).

One very big change coming is that all CS6 upgrades are only available direct from Adobe… CS6 upgrades will not be offered from third parties like resellers or retailers.

If you’re currently running older releases like CS3 or CS4, don’t forget you have until year-end to upgrade with Adobe’s discounted pricing. And if you’re still on CS2, you only have until May 6th with the CS6 Grace Period Offer!

For education customers, the CS6 Student & Teacher Edition offerings remain the same, with some modest price adjustments up and down but still close to 80% off – plus education orders ship free until June 30th. Learn more about the benefits and limitations of Adobe’s academic versions.

If you need to run multiple users with Creative Suite, check out the volume license program. Adobe is also now offering a membership-based Creative Cloud option for those who wish to rent access to their software, to go along with the subscriptions which were introduced with CS5.5.

The CS6 System Requirements have some differences from those for CS5. Generally speaking, Windows Vista is no longer officially supported but Adobe will not restrict installing or running the tools on Vista. Also, the minimum Mac OS version has bumped up to 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and some programs require that your Mac have a 64-bit processor (here’s how to tell).

Premiere Pro and After Effects continue to be 64-bit-only applications, however all of the other products will run well on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. And good news for many: Illustrator CS6 now comes with a native 64-bit version in addition to 32-bit, similar to how it works with Photoshop.

Adobe has also put together an excellent FAQ that addresses a lot of general questions. There’s also an extensive set of CS6 overview videos on Adobe TV, plus 18 hours of free new video tutorials for Creative Suite 6.

And similar to other Adobe software, you may be able to install and run CS6 on up to two computers, subject to the terms of the software’s license agreement.

When Is the Release Date?

So all this new software has been officially announced, but when will Creative Suite 6 be shipping?  Our checks indicate the release date will be in early May… In the meantime you can register to download any of the free trials — or grab some chances to win Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 for free!

Or read more about how CS6 is different from previous versions like CS5.5.

Lastly, keep in mind you can usually save a good bit of money on CS6 when coming from older versions like CS2, CS3, or CS4 by upgrading now at lower cost to CS5.5, and then you’ll automatically receive a free further upgrade to CS6 when it comes out… Just look for “Can’t wait? Order the previous version now” at Adobe’s Online Store.

Related Posts

• Adobe CS6: Can No Longer Upgrade from Single Tool to a Suite
• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• What’s New in Adobe CS6 Upgrade? A Product Feature Overview
• News: All CS6 Upgrades Now Only Available through Adobe Direct
• Adobe CS6 Was Announced April 23, but When Is the Release Date?

[UPDATE (April 23rd) – Creative Suite 6 is out!]

With a barrage of Photoshop sneak peeks plus many for other CS6 products, you knew that finally Adobe Illustrator was bound to get more love of its own… Adobe has now slipped out two cool looks at the new Illustrator CS6.

Similar to Photoshop, it’s been two years now since a major new version was released – and similar to Photoshop CS6, the new edition of Illustrator will also have a redesigned user interface that is both darker and more modern. The idea here is by making the background darker and the controls more streamlined, the content itself will more readily shine through and stand out.

Here below AI Product Manager Brenda Sutherland shares two quick peeks into a bit of what’s new for Illustrator CS6 as part of the upcoming Creative Suite 6 – a terrific new Gradients on Strokes feature that lets you create artwork that looks complex but is easy to edit, plus an exciting new way to create seamless, repeating vector patterns… check them out:

Notice there are three different ways to use this new capability: “Apply gradient within stroke,” “Apply gradient along stroke,” and “Apply gradient across stroke” – to apply gradients along the length, across the width, or within the stroke itself. This has to be one of the most requested features for Illustrator for quite some time – and means no longer trying to to use a gradient brush as a workaround.

Here’s the second AI CS6 sneak on patterns:

As Adobe’s Terry Hemphill says:

On-artboard controls let you create and edit patterns interactively. One-click tiling arrangements let you experiment quickly so you can spend more time being creative and less on planning.

If you’ve ever struggled with creating seamless patterns in Illustrator (and I know I have) , you’re going to love this new way of working.

One big question customers are now asking: Will there be 64-bit and/or multiprocessor support in Illustrator CS6, with the improved performance that would bring? No indication has been given in the videos or anywhere else, but with all the time since the last release and the way other products are going, it would make good sense for Illustrator CS6 to have native 64-bit support, don’t you think?

[UPDATE – CS6 Grace Period: Buy CS5.5 Now + Get CS6 Free!]

As a side note – and in the hard-to-believe category – Adobe Illustrator celebrates its 25th anniversary this year… Ever wonder (or remember!) what the earliest versions of this flagship vector drawing tool looked like?

Well, if you’re up for a blast from the past, here are some nostalgic old and original demo reels of versions 1 (featuring Adobe co-founder John Warnock) and 2 (a.k.a. Illustrator 88)!

Related Posts

• Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition CS6 FAQ and Highlights
• First Look: Adobe CS6 Production Premium Suite — What’s New?
• What’s New in CS6: Premiere Pro, After Effects & Audition Features!
• What Are the Differences in Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 — What’s New?
• Sneak Peeks of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash, Premiere & More

[UPDATE (April 23rd) – Creative Suite 6 is unveiled!  Learn when it will ship.]

The wait is over, the date is set!  After months of hints and “sneak peeks”, Adobe has just confirmed they will be officially launching Creative Suite 6 on Monday, April 23rd, 2012…

This lines up well with our earlier forecast for the announce date – and we continue to expect the shipping date to come in early May, as suggested by the current CS6 Grace Period Offer.

The Creative Suite 6 Launch Event will be webcast worldwide on Monday at 10am PT / 1pm ET and 5pm GMT – and naturally it will be recorded so you can watch the video on demand thereafter.

Naturally there are a lot of details left to unfold but here are some of the earliest… Be sure to tune in here:

And the invitation itself:

Join us for a live webcast April 23 at 10am Pacific Time (see the hour in your timezone) to hear how Adobe is reinventing the creative process and be the first to experience the latest innovations within Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Creative Suite 6.

Importantly, this means time is running out to take advantage of the money-saving grace period for a free CS6 upgrade when you buy CS5.5 now – because as soon as CS6 is released, Adobe will stop selling Creative Suite 5… and it’s very likely to be less expensive to upgrade to CS5.5 now (with CS6 gratis) than up to CS6 later.

It’s also the last chance for anybody still running CS2 to upgrade, due to Adobe’s “three versions back” limit!  For owners of CS3 and CS4, the recent upgrade policy changes mean that you have only until the end of 2012 to receive discounted upgrade pricing to CS6, and after that it will be full price to anybody not on CS5.

For some punch, the launch trailer:

Can’t wait till next week?  No problem – you can download the Photoshop CS6 beta release now, or enter to win Photoshop for free…

Also check out these resources:

— Adobe: CS6 on Track for “Late in Q2″ with Very Compelling New Features

— Sneak Previews of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash Pro, Illustrator & Premiere

— Revealed! What’s New in CS6 for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition

— First Look: The Adobe CS6 Production Premium Suite

— What’s the Difference Between Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 – What’s New in Features?

We’ll have a lot more coverage of the Creative Suite 6 rollout right here as we progress to the launch date, and beyond…

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• How to Move Adobe CS6 Between Computers, or from PC to Mac
• Adobe CS6: Can No Longer Upgrade from Single Tool to a Suite
• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• What’s New in Adobe CS6 Upgrade? A Product Feature Overview
• News: All CS6 Upgrades Now Only Available through Adobe Direct

[UPDATE (April 23rd) – Creative Suite 6 is out!]

On Thursday Adobe surprised everyone with an “early reveal” of the new CS6 video products just in time for the NAB 2012 show in Las Vegas kicking off today…

If you missed it, we have coverage of the new features in Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition, with a CS6 vs. CS5.5 version comparison – as well as the same for the CS6 Production Premium suite, taking a look at what’s new and improved.

These video tools are loaded with new features and performance improvements, and are already getting solid reviews. Lynda.com writes, “Workflow, speed, and efficiency make for a strong CS6 update to veteran production applications Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.”

And PC Pro Magazine gives its verdict on Premiere Pro CS6: “A significant interface overhaul, both in appearance and day-to-day operation, makes this sophisticated, powerful editor more tempting than ever… Adobe’s video-editing flagship completes its transformation from a clunky and unresponsive behemoth to a smooth, efficient professional tool.”

Here now are some Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) on the products, and a bit further down are some helpful video demos for each of the three.

[UPDATE – CS6 Grace Period Savings: Buy CS5.5 Now + Get CS6 Free!]

Creative Suite 6 Video Tools FAQ

See complete what’s new & different in Premiere Pro CS6 / After Effects CS6 / Audition CS6.

SpeedGrade CS6 and Prelude CS6 FAQ

Premiere Pro CS6 Overview

After Effects CS6 New Features Highlights

Audition CS6 Two-Minute Demo

Check out this page for more CS6 walkthroughs in greater detail, as well as First Look: CS6 Production Premium!

See also

— CS6 Grace Period! Buy CS5.5 Now + Get Free Upgrade to CS6 When It Ships

— Adobe: CS6 on Track for “Late in Q2″ with Very Compelling New Features

— Sneak Previews of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash Pro, Illustrator & Premiere

— Win New Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 FREE! ($1000 Giveaway)

— What’s the Difference Between Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 – What’s New in Features?

Related Posts

• First Look: Adobe CS6 Production Premium Suite — What’s New?
• What’s New in CS6: Premiere Pro, After Effects & Audition Features!
• Sneak Peeks of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash, Premiere & More
• Adobe Sneaks New Video Features for Premiere Pro & After Effects
• Adobe Creative Suite 5 Is Now Shipping!

[UPDATE (April 23rd) – Creative Suite 6 is out!]

Wondering what’s coming soon in Adobe’s world-class video suite CS6 Production Premium, before it comes out next month? Read below for the latest details on what’s new and improved in CS6, and what’s different compared to CS5.5…

This information is being revealed in advance of the 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas next week, where the company is planning to make a really big splash with these new tools.

Adobe CS6 Production Premium introduces a sleek, fresh editing environment in Premiere Pro – the hub of your post-production workflow. Freely iterate creative ideas with the new Content-Aware family of technologies in Photoshop Extended and with new 3D advancements in After Effects, where the Global Performance Cache lets you work as fast as you can think. New components – Adobe Prelude, a logging and ingest tool, and Adobe SpeedGrade, for color grading and finishing (originally published by Iridas) – offer superior solutions to common production challenges. Adobe Audition adds dozens of enhanced editing features and support for control surfaces so you can produce audio more efficiently. From planning to playback, CS6 Production Premium gives you tools that help your workflow.

[UPDATE – CS6 Grace Period Savings: Buy CS5.5 Now + Get CS6 Free!]

Top 16 New Features in Adobe CS6 Production Premium vs. CS5.5

Sleek Adobe Premiere Pro user interface – See more of your video and less clutter, thanks to an efficient, highly intuitive interface featuring customizable Project panel views, transport controls, Audio Meter panel, and track headers. Play clips directly in the Media Browser.

Global Performance Cache in After Effects – Create more in less time. Adobe After Effects intelligently optimizes and preserves your previews by taking full advantage of the 64-bit power in your computer’s hardware. Now you can beat deadlines instead of waiting for frame updates.

Photoshop imaging magic – Retouch images with the new Content-Aware family of technologies. Experience fast performance when working with large files using the new Mercury Graphics Engine in Photoshop CS6.

Creative tools in After Effects – Extrude fully ray-traced text and shapes natively while adding reflections, environment maps, and more. Track elements in 3D space with depth of field, shadows, and reflections, and apply 3D track points to 2D footage.

SpeedGrade for crafting the perfect look – Manipulate light and color. Broad format support includes raw, HDR, and stereoscopic. Apply precise HDR grades to source, or import sequences from Adobe Premiere Pro for more in-depth color grading.

Faster audio editing in Adobe Audition – Get high-performance and intuitive audio editing. Powerful new tools such as automatic audio alignment, real-time clip stretching, pitch and speed control, and control surface support help you deliver projects faster.

Logging and ingest in Prelude – Ingest nearly any file-based format and begin logging immediately with searchable temporal markers that flow through post-production, enabling you to work faster and stay organized.

Creative enhancements in Adobe Premiere Pro – Take editing in new directions with adjustment layers to apply effects to multiple clips, expanded multicam editing, and the redesigned Three-Way Color Corrector. Send sequences to Adobe SpeedGrade for more in-depth color grading.

Stabilized footage without rolling shutter – Remove unwanted camera movement with GPU-accelerated Warp Stabilizer in Adobe Premiere Pro. Rolling shutter repair, available in After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro, eliminates wobbly artifacts.

GPU-accelerated performance – Speed up your workflow thanks to support for MacBook Pro OpenCL-based GPUs and NVIDIA Maximus configurations provided by the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro. Plus, get GPU-accelerated features in Adobe Photoshop, SpeedGrade, and After Effects.

Expanded format support – Edit anything. New support for ARRIRAW, RED EPIC, and RED Scarlet-X adds to the extensive list of natively supported formats in Adobe video and audio tools.

Interoperability with third-party tools – Preserve your creative intention with high-fidelity exchange between components of Production Premium and third-party software and hardware.

Adobe Story for script development – Develop your scripts from the desktop to speed up the post-production process with Adobe Story CS6.

Faster, more flexible Adobe Media Encoder – Quickly and easily output to virtually any screen. Create and organize your favorite presets in the new Preset Browser for faster export and batch encoding in the background.

Robust metadata for production management – Enjoy rich metadata support throughout Production Premium for efficient editing and project management. Ingest and log media with Adobe Prelude. Use metadata-rich scripts to track complex productions with Adobe Story.

Fast Blu-ray Disc, DVD, web DVD authoring – Send Adobe Premiere Pro projects directly to new 64-bit Adobe Encore without rendering. Speed up your authoring workflow with rock-solid performance and stability. Open and save large and high-resolution projects faster.

See the differences in each individual application, including more details on the two new tools:

What’s New in CS6: Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition & More

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Download the Adobe CS6 Production Premium Datasheet.

Watch the CS6 Demos

Here are 12 sneak peek chapters covering many new features in the different CS6 video products (23 minutes runtime):

Check out this page for more CS6 walkthroughs in greater detail!

See also

— CS6 Grace Period! Buy CS5.5 Now + Get Free Upgrade to CS6 When It Ships

— Adobe: CS6 on Track for “Late in Q2″ with Very Compelling New Features

— Sneak Previews of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash Pro, Illustrator & Premiere

— Win New Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 FREE! ($1000 Giveaway)

— What’s the Difference Between Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 – What’s New in Features?

Related Posts

• Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition CS6 FAQ and Highlights
• What’s New in CS6: Premiere Pro, After Effects & Audition Features!
• Sneak Peeks of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash, Premiere & More
• Adobe Sneaks New Video Features for Premiere Pro & After Effects
• Adobe Creative Suite 5 Is Now Shipping!

[UPDATE (May 7th) – CS6 is here!]

We’ve got the scoop on the new video features and software coming soon in Creative Suite 6 — and the go-ahead from Adobe to reveal them!

In particular, we can sneak peek and show you everything that’s going to be in the CS6 Production Premium video suite: Premiere Pro CS6, After Effects CS6, Audition CS6, Story CS6, Adobe Media Encoder CS6, Encore CS6 – plus two new applications, Prelude CS6 and SpeedGrade CS6!

The company is planning to make a really big splash with these new tools at the 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas next week.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 delivers a sleek, professional user interface; a powerful playback engine; and a host of fantastic creative features. Quickly stabilize shaky shots with Warp Stabilizer. Natively edit anything from low-resolution to RED EPIC 5K and ARRIRAW footage, finesse your work with dynamic timeline trimming, handle more multicam angles, and correct rolling shutter artifacts. Get flexible audio tracks, powerful color workflows, Adobe Prelude software integration, and more.

Adobe After Effects CS6 lets you deliver cinematic visual effects and sophisticated motion graphics faster than ever before. Take 64 bit to a new level with Global Performance Cache. Extend your creativity with the 3D camera tracker, built-in text and shape extrusion, new mask feathering options, rolling shutter repair, and more built-in effects to make your final project look the way you intended.

Adobe Audition CS6 offers high-performance, intuitive editing tools to help you produce audio efficiently. Powerful new features such as real-time clip stretching, pitch and speed control, write/latch/touch automation, control surface support, and automatic speech alignment help you deliver projects faster than ever. Many user-requested features have been added and improved, such as CD burning, clip grouping with group suspend, tone generation, and more.

[UPDATE – CS6 Grace Period Savings: Buy CS5.5 Now + Get CS6 Free!]

Top New Features in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 vs. CS5.5

• Sleek, highly intuitive, and customizable user interface
• New Adjustment layers
• Dynamic timeline trimming
• Warp Stabilizer effect for fixing shaky footage
• Dramatically expanded multicam editing
• Editing enhancements for smoother switching from other NLEs
• Enhanced Adobe Mercury Playback Engine for blazing performance & greater stability
• Support for OpenCL on some MacBook Pro computers for GPU-accelerated workflows
• Faster Project panel workflows
• Uninterrupted playback
• Native support for RED EPIC and RED SCARLET-X cameras
• Native support for ARRI Alexa and Canon Cinema EOS C300 cameras
• Rolling Shutter Repair effect
• Adobe Prelude CS6 software integration
• Improved Three-Way Color Corrector
• Refined default audio track design
• Cinema mode for full-screen playback
• Effects applied with a simple double-click
• Support for gestural control on the Mac computer
• Adobe Mercury Transmit SDK to better integrate with third-party I/O hardware
• Integrate with Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 software
• 64-bit Adobe Encore software for rock-solid performance
• Enhancements to Adobe Media Encoder
• Improved third-party tool interoperability

Find out more about Premiere Pro CS6 – what’s new and different…

Top New Features in Adobe After Effects CS6 vs. CS5.5

• Global Performance Cache
• Avid AAF and FCP 7 XML file import with Pro Import AE
• Ray-traced, extruded text and shapes created in After Effects
• Broadly-improved GPU acceleration for previews and rendering
• Variable mask feathering
• Rolling shutter repair
• 3D Camera Tracker
• Integration with Illustrator to convert/animate/extrude vector art
• 90 new and updated built-in effects
• Support for .Look files from Adobe SpeedGrade CS6
• mocha for After Effects CS6 and CycoreFX HD suite included (English)

Find out more about After Effects CS6 – what’s new and different…

Top New Features in Adobe Audition CS6 vs. CS5.5

• Faster, more precise editing
• Real-time clip stretching including new “varispeed” mode
• Automatic speech alignment
• EUCON and other control surface support
• Parameter automation
• Powerful pitch correction/manipulation tools
• Tools for efficient session management
• Loudness standard compliance
• Expanded output options including output to CD
• Media browser with file preview
• HD video playback
• New effects
• Powerful effects routing and VST3 support
• Simplified Metadata and Markers panels
• Expanded audio and video file formats
• Improved batch processing
• User-driven workflow improvements
• Editing preview with selective skipping
• Clip grouping including suspend, trimming & stretching
• Trim to Selection
• Multiple clipboards
• Metronome
• Sum to Mono
• Support for more frame rates
• Hardware controllers support
• Save effects rack as favorite
• Automatic retrieval of CD titles
• Improved keyboard shortcut manager

Find out more about Audition CS6 – what’s new and different…

Top New Features in Adobe Encore & Media Encoder CS6 vs. CS5.5

Meanwhile, Adobe Encore gets 64-bit support and faster MPEG import with asynchronous processing… while Media Encoder gets a Preset browser.

What is Adobe SpeedGrade CS6?

Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 color grading software allows you to craft the perfect look for your productions with the new Lumetri Deep Color Engine. Designed for file-based workflows and sporting a sleek new interface, SpeedGrade CS6 opens the full dynamic range of your footage with GPU-accelerated performance and broad file-based format support – including RAW, HDR, and stereoscopic content. Originally published by IRIDAS and now part of the Creative Suite, SpeedGrade gives you the power to push your stories further.

• Lumetri Deep Color Engine
• Powerful, layer-based grading
• Real-time performance
• Unlimited primary and secondary corrections
• Streamlined user experience

Find out more about new Adobe SpeedGrade CS6…

What is Adobe Prelude CS6?

Adobe Prelude CS6 provides a unified interface for ingest and logging workflows, allowing you to work faster, stay organized, and streamline your production process. Copy and transcode to your storage infrastructure and begin logging immediately, intuitively adding searchable temporal markers that flow through post-production. Create rough cuts with production notes that flow into Premiere Pro software, communicating the vision for the project through final editing.

• Easy, time-efficient full and partial ingest and tagging of footage
• Footage transcoding and tagging upon ingest
• Searchable marker-based metadata
• Keyboard-driven logging
• Easy rough-cut assembly

Find out more about new Adobe Prelude CS6…

Watch the CS6 Demos

Here are 12 sneak peek chapters covering many new features in the different CS6 video products (23 minutes runtime):

Check out this page for more CS6 walkthroughs in greater detail, as well as First Look: CS6 Production Premium!

See also

— CS6 Grace Period! Buy CS5.5 Now + Get Free Upgrade to CS6 When It Ships

— Adobe: CS6 on Track for “Late in Q2″ with Very Compelling New Features

— Sneak Previews of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash Pro, Illustrator & Premiere

— Win New Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 FREE! ($1000 Giveaway)

— What’s the Difference Between Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 – What’s New in Features?

Related Posts

• Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition CS6 FAQ and Highlights
• First Look: Adobe CS6 Production Premium Suite — What’s New?
• Sneak Peeks of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash, Premiere & More
• Adobe Sneaks New Video Features for Premiere Pro & After Effects
• Adobe Creative Suite 5 Is Now Shipping!

[UPDATE (May 7th) – CS6 is now shipping!]

At Photoshop World last week, we had the chance to sit down with Adobe Senior Product Managers Bryan O’Neil Hughes and Zorana Gee for hours of in-depth walkthroughs of the new Photoshop CS6 release. And all we can say is – on top of what we already knew and experienced – this is the Photoshop version you’ve probably dreamed about…

And with over 1 million downloads in a week, clearly we’re not the only ones thinking that. Gizmodo calls it, “The best update in recent memory” … PC Magazine says, “The future of creative image editing is upon us – this new version will thrill nearly all categories of users, from photo­graphers to designers” … USA Today writes, “Having lots of fun with the new tools – the new inter­face is a huge improvement, and the images really do look sharper and more pronounced.”

For expediency we put together a quick “cheat sheet” below of the top differences and new features in Photoshop CS6 as compared to PS CS5. Naturally if you’re still on CS4, CS3, or earlier, then you’d also need to add in the differences between CS5 vs. those older versions.

But really, it’s also a fit and polish thing – with two years since the last major release (and having no architectural challenges to worry about), the Photoshop team had plenty time to hone this into a smooth and polished product. This is reflected in the 62% more new features added in this cycle contrasted to the previous one, and nearly twice as many JDI requests (user-focused “Just Do It” items) addressed.

Importantly, Photoshop CS6 will run alongside any previous PS version(s) you may have installed, without difficulty or conflict. So you can safely download and check out the free trial version for 30 days, and then easily uninstall it if you decide not to purchase it in the end.

Photoshop CS6 System Requirements and Performance

How about performance? This is always a big question for users, because sometimes moving forward in software necessitates moving up in hardware. But not so here. We asked Bryan about this directly on how Photoshop CS6 performs versus CS5 on identical machines. The answer (thanks for streamlining, optimization, and much broader use of the GPU): “On the same hardware, in almost all cases, Photoshop CS6 is considerably faster than CS5… and not just on the newest computers, but CS6 will support older machines as well.”

Now, some notes on support and system requirements. Officially, Photoshop CS6 is not supported on Windows Vista, because Adobe found that current Vista use is tiny compared to Windows 7 and XP. So Win 7 and XP will continue to be supported – which was a relief to those worried the same thing might happen with Photoshop and XP as what they did with Lightroom 4. But note importantly, though Windows Vista is not “officially” supported for Photoshop CS6, Adobe does not restrict users from installing and using it on Vista… Also, PS Extended’s 3D features and some GPU-enabled features are not supported on Windows XP.

On the Mac, the major specification change is your processor must be 64-bit capable (most Macs are, but here’s how to tell).  But the good news is outside of those spec changes, the system requirements remain the same as they are now for Photoshop CS5, on both platforms. And there are no known issues running Photoshop CS6 on the future Windows 8 or on Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

What’s New in Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5?

Here’s the lengthy list:

• The long-rumored darker and modern user interface
• Redesign and clean-up of all icons, buttons, dialogs – plus rich cursors
• New Content-Aware Move, Extend, and Patch Tools
• Terrific [DSLR] video editing in both Standard and Extended versions
• Skin-Aware Masking with Face Detection – auto-generation of skin-tone masks
• Complete overhaul of 3D in Photoshop CS6 Extended – 1 tool now does work of 14
• Some great new (and realistic) brushes – Erodible Tips and Airbrush Tips
• Brand new Camera Raw 7 technology like in Lightroom 4
• White Balance and Noise Reduction as a selective Brush
• Text/Character Type Styles and Paragraph Styles
• Adaptive Wide Angle Lens Correction to fix distortion and straighten lines
• PixelBender now built in to Photoshop CS6 for oil painting filter
• Enhanced and more flexible Brush Pose, Brush Projection, and Color Dynamics
• Rewritten vector engine, real vector strokes with Dashed and Dotted Lines
• Mercury Graphics Engine gives 10-100X faster Liquify, Transform, Warp & more
• Big gains in performance throughout due to much greater usage of the GPU
• Blur Gallery for creating shallow depth of field, tilt-shift blur and graduated blur
• Much smarter “Auto” for better starting points and one-click corrections
• Lighting Effects is back and better than ever, with much improved controls and 3D
• Completely reengineered and nondestructive Crop Tool, like Lightroom’s
• Background Save, including tunable Auto-Save and Crash Recovery
• Integrated Layer Search/Filtering – by name, effect, style, mode, or attribute
• Easy migration tool that imports/exports custom presets and settings
• New “Bicubic Automatic” default for Image Size always does the right thing
• Path snapping & anti-aliasing improvements – critical for exacting work
• Easy insert of Lorem Ipsum text from the Type Menu
• The return of Contact Sheet II and PDF Presentations in Photoshop
• A completely redesigned and enhanced Print dialog

For more information on most of these, see the Photoshop FAQ: New Feature Overview…

To the disappointment of some, the much-buzzed Photo Deblurring feature demoed at MAX hasn’t made it into CS6… that is still considered “early-stage research” – but we can always hope for it in Photoshop CS6.5 or CS7!

Top Favorite Features in Photoshop CS6

Here’s a great video series reviewing all the major new features in detail… (runtime 40 mins.)

Lynda.com also has an excellent and free 2½-hour video introduction to everything new in Photoshop CS6, with 29 chapters from Deke McClelland, who calls it “a remarkable upgrade.”

Your Turn

Have you used Photoshop CS6 yet – either purchased it or tried the beta or run the free trial? What do you think?

Share your thoughts in the comments below or at Adobe’s Photoshop CS6 Feedback Forum or the new published User Reviews…

Related Posts

• 8 Photoshop CS6 Sneak Peeks – New 3D, Video, Depth-of-Field Tools
• Photoshop CS6: New Content-Aware Move, Patch, and Extend Tools
• Adobe Photoshop CS6 – Another Look? More Sneak Peeks [VIDEO]
• Sneak Peeks at Illustrator CS6: New Gradient & Pattern Features
• Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition CS6 FAQ and Highlights

[UPDATE (April 23rd) – Creative Suite 6 is out!]

Similar to how they did before the launch of CS5.5, Adobe has been quietly slipping out a bevy of “sneaks” (now numbering 16 videos including those for Photoshop CS6) for new features that may be in a forthcoming release of the Creative Suite…

“Check out what new technologies, features and innovations the Adobe product teams are working on behind the scenes.  Stay tuned to get an early glimpse of what could be next from Adobe.”

The latest CS6 products previewed include: Dreamweaver, InDesign (2), Premiere Pro, Audition, Flash Profes­sional, Illustrator (previously), and of course Photoshop.

The drumbeat has been getting louder with plenty of news lately about Creative Suite 6:

• We now know when Creative Suite 6 is likely to ship,
• …as well Adobe’s official grace period for free CS6 upgrades.
• The free Photoshop CS6 beta release is out with its lengthy list of what’s new.
• Not to mention, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition CS6 being revealed early!
• And we’ve even got chances for you to win Photoshop CS6 for free.

So things are starting to get a little exciting.

Here now are some of the significant new preview demos… For the complete set, please see the Adobe Technology Sneaks 2012 page.

Related Posts

• Adobe Creative Suite 5 Is Now Shipping!
• Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition CS6 FAQ and Highlights
• First Look: Adobe CS6 Production Premium Suite — What’s New?
• What’s New in CS6: Premiere Pro, After Effects & Audition Features!
• CS5.5 or CS6? New Adobe “Sneak Peek” Preview Videos Out

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

NEWS FLASH – Earlier today Adobe surprised everyone by announcing a free public beta release of the eagerly-anticipated Photoshop CS6…  The company has slipped out 8 different sneak peeks of the upcoming product since January – and considering there are now about two months left before CS6 ships, the timing for a beta was right.

“The world’s best digital image editing software is about to get even better. Explore Adobe Photoshop CS6 beta for a sneak preview of some of the incredible performance enhancements, imaging magic, and creativity tools we are working on. Discover for yourself why Photoshop CS6 will be a whole new experience in digital image editing.

You can probably tell from the number of “sneak peeks” we shared with you that we’re proud of Photoshop CS6, and excited by the opportunity to get this beta into your hands now, as an advance preview.”

16 Top New Features in Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5

• The much-discussed modern and darker user interface
• Content-Aware Move, Extend, and Patch Tools
• Excellent [DSLR] video editing in both Standard and Extended versions
• Complete overhaul of 3D in Photoshop CS6 Extended
• Some great new (and realistic) Brush Tips
• Brand new Camera Raw 7 technology like in Lightroom 4
• Text/Character Type Styles and Paragraph Styles
• PixelBender now built in to Photoshop CS6
• Adaptive Wide Angle Lens Correction
• Custom vector strokes with Dashed and Dotted Lines
• Core productivity enhancements, blazingly fast performance
• Blur Gallery for creating shallow depth of field and other effects
• New and improved non-destructive Crop Tool, like Lightroom’s
• Background Save, including Auto-Save and Crash Recovery
• Migration tool that imports custom presets and settings
• The return of Contact Sheet and PDF Presentations in Photoshop

See What’s New in Photoshop CS6? for the complete list and more details.

Photoshop CS6 Beta Download Availability

The free Photoshop CS6 beta program is open and available to the public. Anyone with an Internet connection can download and test it out in full. You do not need to own (or have tried) a previous version of Photoshop, and there is no serial number required. The Photoshop CS6 beta is fully functional and will not overwrite or interfere with any existing installation of Photoshop – it is completely separate and can be run side-by-side with older releases.

You can download the software immediately and use it freely until the PS beta expires which will be shortly after CS6 is released (mid-May). The file size is about 1.7 GB on Windows and 1.0 GB on Mac. There is also some good news on the minimum system requirements – unlike what happened with with Lightroom 4, Windows XP continues to be supported with Photo­shop CS6. However on the Mac side (only), you must have a 64-bit system (here’s how to tell).

Note that the beta is for the Photoshop CS6 Extended version, so take this opportunity to try out the 3D image and motion graphics editing capabilities of Photoshop Extended… (Learn more about the differences between PS Standard vs. Extended)  Both Photoshop editions will be available for purchase separately or as part of a suite. Customers running CS3 or CS4 will have until the end of the year to receive discounted upgrade pricing.

Please see this Photoshop CS6 FAQ for more details plus installation instructions, as well as more information on the new features and known issues. Also be sure to give your feedback to the Adobe developers…

Introduction to Photoshop CS6

And here’s a great video series on what’s new and to get you started…

See also:

— CS6 Grace Period! Buy CS5.5 Now + Get Free Upgrade to CS6 When It Ships

— Adobe: CS6 Available “Late in Q2″ with Very Compelling New Features

— Sneak Previews of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash Pro, Illustrator & Premiere

— Win New Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 FREE! ($1000 Giveaway)

— Revealed! What’s New in CS6 for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition

Related Posts

• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• What Are the Differences in Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 — What’s New?
• 8 Photoshop CS6 Sneak Peeks – New 3D, Video, Depth-of-Field Tools
• Photoshop CS6: New Content-Aware Move, Patch, and Extend Tools
• Adobe Photoshop CS6 – Another Look? More Sneak Peeks [VIDEO]

[UPDATE (May 7th) – Here it is, Creative Suite 6 is out!]

On a publicly-available conference call this week, Adobe’s CEO shared some new details on the timing and features of an upcoming CS6 release…  It was the most information given to date on the question, and it confirms the expectations from our recent forecast.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen

In our Digital Media business, recent research shows our customers are excited about our upcoming launch of Creative Suite and the Creative Cloud. Among creative professional customers and students, we found that over 40% of those surveyed are waiting for the new release to upgrade.

Our upcoming Creative Suite release will include major updates to all of the core CS products, including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. We have created significant anticipation for the release through a series of “sneak peeks” of great new features. One sneak video featured a break­through Photoshop innovation called Content-Aware Move, which has driven more than a million online views.

The upcoming CS release will also advance our HTML5 and mobile content creation and app development offerings, where we see strong interest to help our customers deal with the complexity they face.  All of this is on track for delivery late in Q2.

Q2 means the second quarter – which for Adobe’s Fiscal Year will run through the end of May… So Narayen can be interpreted here to mean: expect CS6 to ship sometime in May 2012. This concurs what we’ve seen posted elsewhere, as well as the new grace period for free CS6 upgrades that the company just announced.

But in recent years, both CS5 and CS5.5 came out during the month of April – so wouldn’t this be a bit later than in the past?

And, how about the launches of CS6 outside of the U.S. – in languages besides English – don’t those usually come later still?

Answer:

I would say it’s probably a little bit later than you would have seen in prior releases. As we move to the annual cycle, we want to make sure that we get both the desktop products as well as the Creative Cloud offering available at the same time. So I would say it’s a little later in the quarter than in prior cycles.

As it relates to international releases, we are moving increasingly to a simultaneous release in the major geographies, which, in addition to the U.S., tend to be the U.K., Germany and Japan and France. So expect to see that.

What about new features in CS6, any color there?

Let me talk a little bit about what is coming in the next version, so to set the stage for what we are going to do as it relates to pricing and what we are hearing from customers.

The first thing is, clearly with imaging and Photoshop, it’s not been updated for close to two years. And that’s our longest gap in a Photoshop release and with significantly more features. So imaging continues to be very high among what people are looking for with the next release, and folks are really excited about what’s coming.

But the second one is HTML5. On the HTML5 side, the innovation with brand new products like Edge and Muse, as well as mobile application development. PhoneGap is being downloaded, for example, at almost 1 million a year run rate, and we had the most number of unique visitors there. So as people are creating applications across multiple app stores, that’s continuing to gain traction. So we now have support for that, both as new services that we’ll introduce, as well as in Dreamweaver and our other applications.

On the Publishing side, we’ve continued to make InDesign a must-have to go with the Digital Publishing Suite so that enterprises can deal with multiple screens. As of Q1, approximately 600 publishers have delivered more than 1,500 applications for devices like the iPad, generating 16 million downloads of their apps. We expect this growth to continue, particularly with the Single Edition of Digital Publishing and the upcoming release of InDesign with its innovative Liquid Layout capabilities.

Video. In high-end video, we’re now the leader. And clearly, in the next release, there’s significant new innovation that’s happening in the video market.

And on Flash-HTML compatibility, we have millions of Flash developers who will be able to continue to innovate using Flash and easily convert to HTML5 using CreateJS capabilities. We’ve demonstrated that as well.

So the millions of Flash developers who are out there, they can now, with a single button with the next version, not only output Flash, but they can also output HTML that will work within browsers. And so it actually enhances their productivity. And so while we continue to see the new version of Angry Birds taking advantage of Flash with Stage3D, suddenly the same tool opens up new vistas for all of these Flash developers to develop animated or interactive content for HTML5.

Clearly, what customers are telling us is they are excited about Creative Suite 6. And I think we have a fair amount of new innovation to attract developers and designers to upgrade when the next release comes out.

No official word yet on whether a Photoshop Image Deblurring feature will be part of CS6.

Regarding the additional availability of the Creative Cloud, do you expect people to move to that?

Frankly, most of the customers have been telling us, “Can we have a little bit more time to evaluate all of the offerings?” So I think new users will be the primary usage of subscription, that’s what we’ve seen in all of the pilots that we’re running. Piracy will be one of the issues that we hope to address with the cloud offering, better pricing for people to adopt the platform.

But like we said, we think adoption will be at a slower pace on the subscription offering. I think customers who’ve been relatively current with our products will probably continue with the perpetual [permanent] licenses.

And in fact, our own independent polling shows that 85% of Adobe users prefer the traditional model of permanently owning their tools rather than rentals/subscriptions.

What else are your customer surveys showing?

This recent survey was designed to really understand interest in CS6 and resonance of the value proposition with customers across designers and developers, and how much they knew about the product. So what was surprising was, first, the knowledge of CS6 was higher than what we’ve seen at similar cycles in the past. And that’s clearly as a result of us doing more sneak peeks, which gave us confidence. And the second one was the actual number of people who said that they would upgrade was quite a bit higher than previous.

In this particular survey, we didn’t survey for pricing – this was just about interest level, understanding of the message and value proposition.

If you buy CS5.5 near the time when CS6 is launched, will there be a “grace period” for free upgrades (as there has been in the past)?

The answer: quite possibly…

This is the quarter where we start building up some free-of-charge upgrade deferral for CS6 and for Lightroom 4.

[UPDATE (March 26th) – CS6 Grace Period Savings: Buy CS5.5 Now + Get CS6 Free!]

Any additional comments?

We feel confident that everything that we’ve shown customers, the long lead press, our advanced customers, the excitement and the value associated with Creative Suite, the next version, is going to be evident as soon as it ships. So we’re confident. As I said again, imaging hasn’t been updated for a long time. And the new features are very compelling.

Here’s a demo of the new HTML5 exporting feature that the Adobe Flash Professional team has been working on for CS6… The CreateJS extension will allow designers to continue to leverage many commonly used animation and drawing tools of Flash Pro and convert that content to nicely formatted, readable and editable JavaScript code:

Listen to the entire conference call here, or read the transcript for more details.

See also:

— CS6 Grace Period! Buy CS5.5 Now + Get Free Upgrade to CS6 When It Ships

— Sneak Previews of CS6: Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash Pro, Illustrator & Premiere

— Revealed! What’s New in CS6 for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition

— Win New Photoshop CS6 + Lightroom 4 FREE! ($1000 Giveaway)

— What’s the Difference Between Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 – What’s New in Features?

[Photo credit: Adam Hart-Davis, Atacama Desert, Chile, South America.]

Related Posts

• When is Adobe CS6 Being Released, including Photoshop CS6?
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• Adobe Releases CS6 – Now Shipping plus Download Free Trials
• What’s New in Adobe CS6 Upgrade? A Product Feature Overview
• News: All CS6 Upgrades Now Only Available through Adobe Direct

It’s no secret that Adobe lately has been slipping out little sneak peeks of “a future version of Photoshop” – presumably Photoshop CS6, when it comes out…

What’s surprising is that over the past two months we’re now up to 8 (eight!) different videos released in total, to date.

The first 5 previews arrived in January and February, and now we’ve got 3 more so far in March…

This latest set shows off new capabilities for working with 3D and Video, as well as easily creating shallow depth of field in any image (a.k.a. the bokeh effect, the technique of aestheti­cally blurring the background).

The new Iris Blur Filter can quickly add selective blur to any image without masks, layers, or depth maps – making it very easy to “pop out” a photograph’s subject with the appearance of shallow focus:

The 3D and Video features from the other two sneak preview demos would presumably be part of Photoshop CS6 Extended, as they fall into the higher-level categories defining the differences between the Standard vs. Extended versions of Photoshop.

So in this next demonstration, Adobe says they’ve completely overhauled and enhanced how 3D works in Photoshop, with focus on performance and usability… Check out how smooth and easy it is to manipulate and change the look of 3D objects:

And the final (8th) video was created entirely in a future version of Photoshop… Which means Photoshop will be able to do significant video editing, and naturally begs the question, how might this interact or overlap with Adobe’s dedicated production tools, Premiere Pro and After Effects?

Adobe answers this: Video is now being generated by photographers – everyone really… We see a lot of room between consumer offerings and Premiere Pro… The goal is to balance the power of Photoshop with an easy and approachable on-ramp to video editing …

See the 5 earlier Photoshop Sneak Peeks, or when we estimate that CS6 will be shipping.

Check out the Photoshop Image Deblur demo from Adobe MAX in L.A. – plus more before-and-after photos deblurred by the technology.

Related Posts

• What Are the Differences in Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 — What’s New?
• Photoshop CS6: New Content-Aware Move, Patch, and Extend Tools
• Adobe Photoshop CS6 – Another Look? More Sneak Peeks [VIDEO]
• Sneak Peeks at Illustrator CS6: New Gradient & Pattern Features
• Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition CS6 FAQ and Highlights

Following onto a successful public beta period, the long-awaited Adobe Lightroom 4 final release began shipping earlier this week, and has some folks pretty excited about the new features and capabilities. There’s a complete list further below, but some of the biggies include much better video support, soft proofing, integrated maps and photo books, enhanced sharing & exporting, and some amazing improvements to the Develop module.

We’ve got a new video set from the popular Julianne Kost giving a thorough review of what’s new and improved… (2 hours of coverage; see Table of Contents)   If you want to try out the software for yourself, the 30-day free trials are also now available for download.

New Features in Lightroom 4 (Video Collection)

What’s the Difference between Lightroom 4 vs. Lightroom 3?

First off, we should mention something a little controversial regarding older computers: Adobe is dropping support for the ten-year-old Microsoft Windows XP with this release… The official LR4 system requirements call for Windows Vista or 7, or if you’re running Mac OS then it must be a 64-bit capable (how to tell). And if you’re wondering why they did this, Adobe recently put up a new post explaining why.

So here’s the punch list of what’s changed, the top-level new features in LR4 (courtesy of Ian Lyon’s excellent review):

Adobe says most of these features remain the same from the Lightroom 4 beta version – except for a large number of tweaks and bug fixes.

Compare Versions: LR4 vs. LR3 vs. LR2

Click on the chart below for a release-by-release feature comparison:

Related Posts

• Sneak Peeks at Illustrator CS6: New Gradient & Pattern Features
• Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition CS6 FAQ and Highlights
• First Look: Adobe CS6 Production Premium Suite — What’s New?
• What’s New in CS6: Premiere Pro, After Effects & Audition Features!
• What Are the Differences in Photoshop CS6 vs. CS5 — What’s New?