The latest iteration of Adobe’s flagship software suite has been launched. Available in May 2012, there will be 4 suites, comprising different combinations of 14 print, web and video software.
The suites are: Master Collection (S$3,924), Design & Web Premium (S$2,868), Design & Web Standard (S$1,962), and Production Premium (S$2,868).
Adobe has also launched the new subscription-based Creative Cloud (US$600 per year). This is not available in Singapore yet.
Adobe Creative Suite 6
Singapore was the first venue in the world to launch Adobe Creative Suite 6.
Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO, and David Wadhwani, SVP, Digital Media Business, Adobe, will host a launch event and press conference on the release of Adobe Creative Cloud and CS 6 at 10:00 am Pacific Time, 23 April.
Content-Aware XXX
The Content-Aware Scale (CS4) and Content-Aware Fill (CS5) features have new siblings in CS6 – Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move.
Ever used the Content-Aware Fill on a photo and see it pick up pixels from wrong regions of the image?
Don’t you just wish you could simply specify and constrain from which portions of the photo Photoshop took the pixels from?
Content-Aware Patch now allows you to do so, just like the regular Patch tool.
Content-Aware Move combines a few steps into one. You just need to roughly select the subject that needs to be moved (quick-select the subject and then expand the selection), and use the feature to move it to another part of the image.
Photoshop pastes the selected subject to the destination, smooths out the border between the subject and the new background pixels, and then Content-Aware Fills the hole left behind by the moved subject.
CS6 is part of Adobe’s 2-year renewal of its creative suite of software. One year on from each major release is a mid-cycle update, as with Adobe CS5.5.
The Mercury engine that was introduced in Premiere Pro in CS5 has been implemented in other products in CS6, notably Photoshop and Illustrator.
For Photoshop, the impressive Content-Aware Fill feature in Photoshop CS5 has been supplemented with two new enhancements – Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move.
Dreamweaver and other component products in CS5 was based on perpetuating the Flash platform.
Having had the rug pulled from under its feet by the late Steve Jobs, Adobe has shifted the emphasis for Dreamweaver in CS5.5 and CS6 more towards facilitating HTML5, “an open Web standard that’s replacing Adobe’s older Flash tools for many Web designers” (quoted from Bloomberg).
There are also more tools for designing apps for smartphones and tablets.
A big step for Adobe this time round is its foray into a subscription-based model, although it is not available in Singapore yet.
Creative Cloud will charge US$50 a month for a one-year commitment (US$75 without one).
Subscribers can access the 14 programs, which can be installed on an Apple Mac or on a Windows PC.
Users can use the installed software even when they are not connected to the Internet.
A cloud-based service will also enable users to collaborate and share work with colleagues and clients through a Web browser.
The list of software as well as the composition of each suite can be found here.
