creativity

Adobe ships CS6 software; Creative Cloud imminent

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

Adobe's aggressive plans for Creative Cloud

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

Five reasons Adobe's CS6 subscription is smart

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 makes the CS6 sales pitch

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

Stormy reception for Adobe's Creative Cloud

It looks like Adobe Systems has some more convincing to do when it comes to the Creative Cloud, the company's subscription for software and online services due to arrive later this year.

A survey of creative professionals by analyst firm Jefferies & Co. and CNET showed that people have concerns about the Creative Cloud and its price of $600 per year for individuals and $840 per year for corporate users.

Specifically, 41 percent said that they had a negative view of the Creative Cloud compared to 32 percent who expressed a positive view. Beyond that, 62 percent of respondents … Read more

Adobe drops 32-bit Mac support with Photoshop CS6

Last Wednesday Adobe announced the availability of the public beta for the Photoshop component of its upcoming Creative Suite 6 image manipulation and design software, which users can try before the suite is officially released later this year.

While past versions of Adobe's products have offered a decent spectrum of support for existing operating system and computing environments, new features and development directions in the program suite have had Adobe making some adjustments to the platforms that will support the new software.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 puts a major effort toward performance enhancements, primarily with the implementation of the new … Read more

Adobe revs Photoshop's engine (hands-on)

There's so much big news surrounding Photoshop CS6 that I'm not sure where to start. This is Adobe's first-ever public beta of its most important product (expected to ship sometime in the first half of this year). It's the first Adobe product to incorporate the company's new DRM architecture. It's the first version of Photoshop to take video seriously and to make it into the Standard Edition of the product rather than the extra-pricey Extended version. It's the first version to integrate the company's GPU-accelerating Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE). And for the first time in more than 20 years, Photoshop goes dark.

The beta, which is actually the Extended version of the product, is downloadable from Adobe Labs or Download.com, though at a hefty 1.8GB, it's not for the bandwith-constrained. While you can't run it simultaneously with previous versions, like every Adobe update it installs completely separately so that you can keep predecessors.

Dear Adobe: while that's very convenient, I still want the option to actually update from the previous version. I am tired of the cruft Creative Suite leaves behind every time a new version comes out; on my previous system, I had random directories left over from at least three generations of CS. Given that your new subscription model is designed to drive users to more-frequent updates, you'd better deal with better ways to clean up behind yourself.… Read more

Get free images for your Web site

The Creative Commons license system has been a real boon for publishers on a budget. If you need images but can't pay for them or create then yourself, CCFinder is a Windows app that lets you find them easily.

Install CCFinder.Launch the program and register with Abelssoft. It wants your e-mail address and name only.There are a few different varieties of CC licensing, so you'll need to choose whether you want pics that are freely usable without limitation, those requiring attribution, or those that require permission. You can also decide to search for pictures that may … Read more

Creative pros: Tell us what you think of the new Adobe

As Adobe Systems prepares to release Creative Suite 6, it's in the midst of two major shifts: the addition of its Creative Cloud subscription and the addition of design tools using Web standards.

And we want to know what you think of the change.

In conjunction with Jefferies, a financial research and investment banking firm, CNET is conducting a quick survey about Adobe's Creative Cloud and embrace of Web standards. It's only nine multiple-choice questions long, so it's very fast and easy to fill out.

We'll be publishing results of the survey later so you can see if other people see things your way. If you are open to us asking you follow-up questions, you can leave your e-mail address at the end of the survey, but it's completely optional. Of course, you also can leave comments on this post. … Read more