Digital photography

Adobe Systems today began selling Creative Suite 6, its mammoth but expensive collection of software for designers, artists, photographers, videographers, publishers, and others in the "content creation" business.

The software is available in the $2,599 Master Collection, the smaller $1,899 Design and Web Premium or Production Premium collections, or the yet-smaller $1,299 Design Standard collection. About three quarters of Adobe's unit shipments today are in these collections, but individual packages are available, too, such as Photoshop CS6 for $699 in its standard version or Illustrator CS6 for $599.

With CS6, Adobe tried to mix … Read more

Whether you're a fan of social video apps or not, there's something to be said for short, quick videos you make on the fly and then share with your friends. These apps are a lot like Twitter in that you can post your own short videos, follow other video creators, and view a feed of your favorites to see their latest updates.

This week's iOS apps have been out for some time, but over the past couple of weeks, social video app fans are choosing sides, downloading their favorites, and even posting to social networks to talk … Read more

I'm encouraged by the signs of change at Flickr -- enough so that I've decided my photos are staying put there.

After years of what amounts to neglect, it's now clear that management of Yahoo's photo-sharing site is aware of what it needs to do -- and that it's doing it. Step by step, the site is building itself into something more competitive.

It's got a ways to go, and I don't see any easy way to tap into the power that Facebook has for photo sharing, but I still see grounds for … Read more

Instagram's latest user numbers are sure to make Facebook a proud new papa.

More than 50 million people are now using the popular site and its mobile apps to upload and share photos with fellow users and friends. Instagram didn't officially release the news. The company's Press Center Web page still lists the number of registered users at 30 million.

Instead, the latest figure was obtained by tapping into the site's application programming interface, according to CNET sister site ZDNet. Instagram is apparently adding around 5 million new users per week.

CNET contacted Instagram for comment … Read more

Uploading photos to the Internet is about the least exciting part of photo sharing that you could imagine, but Flickr believes a new tool for the task will improve the site dramatically.

The new upload tool, set to arrive this morning, replaces an interface that's remained largely unchanged for years: select multiple photos, watch transfer progress bars crawl across the screen, then add titles, tags, and captions.

The new tool, which runs in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for now and will support Internet Explorer later, uses new standards such as HTML5's drag-and-drop so that you can copy image … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Adobe took over the modern art collections on the De Young Museum's off-day today to introduce its Creative Suite 6 and a modern, cutting-edge synchronization system called Creative Cloud.

What we already know about the Creative Cloud is this: It's a significantly cheaper way to get access to the Adobe Creative Suite, with the major difference being that you pay a monthly fee instead of a buying a one-time, "perpetual" subscription. The Creative Cloud license gets you access to the entire phalanx of software in the Creative Suite, along with online storage, synchronization, and cloud-only … Read more

Adobe Systems is about to begin a difficult -- but smart -- transition.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company will overhaul its core software business in May when it launches a subscription service called Creative Cloud, which bundles its new Creative Suite 6 products with a swath of other products and services. To make it a success, it'll have to convince customers that it's a better value than traditional software licensing.

Here's an indicator of how hard the change will be: A CNET survey in March showed a frosty reception, with 41 percent of respondents viewing Creative Cloud negatively, … Read more

Adobe Systems first showed a few paws, then a tail, then a couple ears and some whiskers -- but now the company is letting the complete Creative Suite 6 cat out of the bag.

After a series of sneak previews and early announcements, Adobe now is detailing the full CS6 line, the meat and potatoes of Adobe's business. It's important to a large number of people involved with photography, videography, design, and publishing on the Web or on paper, and it's set to be arrive within 30 days, Adobe announced today.

But CS products aren't cheap, … Read more

Quick access to software features is nice, but there can be too much of a good thing. That's what Adobe concluded when designing Premiere Pro CS6, the upcoming version of its video-editing software.

Adobe was pleased with the current CS5's Mercury Playback Engine, which on computers with higher-end Nvidia graphics cards provides a major hardware acceleration boost for some tasks. But the user interface was too cluttered, said Premiere Pro Product Manager Al Mooney.

"The car on top of the beautiful, powerful engine was not as nice to drive as modern editors wanted it to be," … Read more