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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this will not be possible going forward… For Creative Suite 6, you can upgrade to a newer version of the same application you already own (e.g., Photoshop CS5 -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

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

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

Major Changes to the Creative Suite Products

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

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

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

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

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Let’s face it, Adobe’s normal product prices can seem expensive, especially if you’re on a student’s budget. The regular prices for Creative Suite 6 range run from $399 for Dreamweaver through Photoshop Extended for $999 and up to $2,599 for the Master Collection suite, which contains every CS6 product available – nearly twenty in all. As great and powerful as this software is, it could be hard to afford these prices when you’re in school.

Fortunately, Adobe offers deep discounts for education customers – up to 80% off.  So the price for Dreamweaver becomes almost a third of what it was, $149 – while for the Master Collection it drops by over two-thirds, to $799. For some products the price cut is even larger – for example, Photoshop CS6 Extended (the top-of-the-line version) goes from $999 to $249. The top-selling CS6 Design & Web Premium suite becomes $449 instead of $1,899. And Flash Builder 4.6 falls from $249 to free – yes, FREE for students and educators…

In addition, it’s not just the Creative Suite products that are available with the savings. You can also get Lightroom 4, Acrobat X, and Photoshop or Premiere Elements 10. For example, Lightroom 4 for student photographers costs $79 instead of the normal price of $149.

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Adobe recognizes that many people use both Lightroom and Photoshop in their workflows, and so is offering a special deal where you can save 30% off the full version of Lightroom 4 if you purchase it together with the new Photoshop CS6 in any form. This means if you buy Photoshop CS6, Photoshop CS6 Extended, or any CS6 suite edition (which all contain PS), you’ll get 30% off Lightroom when you buy them at the same time.

And it works for either buying the full version or upgrading from an older version of Photoshop or the CS suite… So if you are buying Lightroom for the first time, you’ll get 30% off the price of the full version (normally $149/€109/£87) – and in the U.S. they round this down to just $99. No promotion code is required to activate the discount, which will be reflected in your shopping cart just prior to checkout. This offer is valid worldwide until Decem­ber 31st, 2012, but pricing is available only through the online Adobe Commercial Store (in other words, Volume and Education customers are not eligible, perhaps because the LR4 student edition is already US$79).

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[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.

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[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.

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This is one of the most common questions we get, and the answer may pleasantly surprise you… The place to look to find the answer is the Software License Agreement, also called the EULA. This agreement governs the use of your Adobe product, and is translated into 28 languages within each document. It also covers some basics about product activation.

So, in general, how many systems can you install Adobe software on, including CS5.5 and CS6? The answer for individuals (as opposed to businesses) in most cases is two. The catch is that both computers must be used only by you and the two systems cannot be used at the same time. This policy was designed so that you could run (say) Creative Suite at home on your desktop PC, as well as while travelling with your laptop. But the types of computers and their usage has blurred so much now that you can just pick any two you own and the product should install and properly activate on both…

For example, here is the key text from the EULA for Photoshop CS6:

2.5 Portable or Home Computer Use. Subject to the important restrictions set forth in Section 2.6 [having to do with volume licensees], the primary user of the Computer on which the Software is installed … may install a second copy of the Software for his or her exclusive use on either a port­able Computer or a Computer located at his or her home, provided that the Software on the port­able or home Computer is not used at the same time as the Software on the primary Computer.

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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:

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