Alongside the launch Monday of its Creative Suite 6, Adobe also unveiled a new cloud-based subscription service called Creative Cloud.
The new service does not only involve purchasing software, but also enables users to access new software versions, new technologies and community activities such as support and training, according to Mark Anders, Adobe fellow who spoke during a round table discussion on the new Adobe products in Toronto on Tuesday.
“The landscape of design is very, very quickly changing just like the manner in which we deploy content,” Anders said. “Creative Cloud is your next shipping distribution model. It allows us to ship products as we finish them.”
He said the new model provides users with greater flexibility. “They can order tools all at once or whenever needed,” Anders said.
Anders worked in the development of apps such as Edge Preview, an HTML 5 animation program.
Edge enables users to create high-end animation similar to those done in Flash. Edge is targeted at designers developing video and animation content for mobile devices such as Apple’s iPad and Android-powered tablets which do not work with Flash.
The cloud environment is also beneficial in application development and as a learning environment for design and coding professionals. “The online community, for example, showed us ways of how Edge could be used in ways that we never even thought of,” said Anders.
How much it costs
Adobe’s Creative Suites are software bundles priced to reflect multiple software packages. The Design Standard, Design and Web Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection are $1299, $1899, $1899, and $2599 respectively.
Nearly all of the CS6 apps present within software bundles can also be purchased individually, either as traditional perpetual licenses or as part of a Creative Cloud subscription.
Prices range from $999 for After Effects, SpeedGrade, and Photoshop Extended, to $699 for Photoshop, InDesign, and Flash Professional, to $399 for Prelude and Dreamweaver.
For users interested in trying out the company’s cloud-based subscription model, these tools can be downloaded online. Creative Cloud offers the entire CS6 collection and more-to individual creative pros at a single price of $50 per month, based on a year’s subscription. Month-to-month subscriptions cost $75 per month. A special introductory offer of $30 per month for CS3, CS4, CS5, and CS5.5 individual customers is also available. Adobe has more details about the special offer on its Web site.
With Creative Cloud, Adobe is focusing on four key areas: Delivering content creation tools to customers; integrating sync and storage services to facilitate fluent content exchange to and from the cloud; offering publishing services for creating Websites, digital publications, and apps, and providing technology updates for current and future new software releases.
“Adobe has solved the content creation model in every medium, but it didn’t solve the publishing dilemma, and with the explosion of mobile and tablets, there has to be a way to get to those two mediums,” said Scott Morris, Adobe’s senior marketing director. “Creative Cloud allows us to solve the problems of delivering content to every medium-we can’t do that with desktop tools alone.”
(With notes from Jackie Dove of Macworld)
Nestor Arellano is a Senior Writer at ITBusiness.ca. Follow him on Twitter, read his blog, and join the IT Business Facebook Page. 
