Features Premedia Software
Adobe Announces CS6, Creative Cloud

Adobe Systems has formally announced its CS6 suite of software, which includes a new subscription service. The new version is scheduled to be available within 30 days.

The service, known as Creative Cloud, costs $75 a month (or $50 per month with an annual membership, all prices in US$). Current CS3 to CS5.5 users are eligible for an introductory price of $30 per month. Creative Cloud users also get online storage and sharing capabilities as well as ongoing updates and new products (such as Adobe Edge, a HTML5 development tool) as they are released.

Of course, CS6 applications can be purchased the traditional way, with the Master Collection to retail for $2,599. The CS6 Design & Web Premium will retail for $1,899 while the Design Standard suite will go for $1,299. Upgrade pricing starts at $275 for Design Standard, and goes up to $549 for the Master Collection for current CS5.5 users ($699 to $1,399 for CS3/CS4 users).

New features for CS6 include:

Interface and performance revamps to take advantage of hardware acceleration

Expanded content-aware technologies (including the much-hyped Content Aware Move)

Adaptive Wide-Angle, to straighten distorted images

Skin-tone-aware selections and masking

New image tracing engine

Pattern creation tool

Application of gradients to strokes

Alternate Layout feature for designing the same document for multiple media

Content Collector Tool, which allows users to grab content from existing layouts for repurposing

Linked Content, for syncing content across documents

Hover Scrub clip handling

Advance trimming tools

New adjustment layers that can be applied to multiple clips