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But this will not be possible going forward… For Creative Suite 6, you can upgrade to a newer version of the same application you already own (e.g., Photoshop CS5 -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

Read more…

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.)

Read more…

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)?

Read more…

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.

Read more…

[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…

Read more…

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.

Read more…

[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).

Read more…

[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.

Read more…

[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.

Read more…

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

Late last week we received these two inquiries via our Contact page:

“Could you please provide a proposed release date for CS6 Design Premium software? I can’t see anywhere on your site where this is mentioned except for the U-turn regarding upgrade policy from earlier versions.”

“I have a budget meeting tomorrow and need to know the approximate release date and projected cost of the CS5 to CS6 Master Collection Suite upgrade.”

So, this is something people really want to know now.  And we have written about it before, giving clues in posts here as far back as March and July of last year…

But it’s clearly time for an update.

Even today, we wish we could give you exact dates and numbers for those questions, but Adobe hasn’t publicly disclosed that information – and likely won’t until CS6 is launched… However, we can make a best estimate of the possible timing for the Creative Suite 6 release window.

On Adobe’s site now there is a document referencing the new CS Release Schedule.  Here are a few of the key elements contained within this Message Summary:

Read more…