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Retina Display support coming to Adobe CS6 software

Photoshop, Illustrator, and a few other Creative Suite applications will get the Retina Display treatment through updates sometime this fall.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
Lance Whitney
2 min read
Adobe

Adobe Systems' Creative Suite 6 will soon tap into the higher resolution of Retina Display on the MacBook Pro.

Adobe said yesterday that the CS6 versions of Photoshop and Lightroom will receive free updates in the coming months to support the Retina Display. Other CS6 products slated for the update include Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, Edge Animate, SpeedGrade, and Prelude.

Also on the list is the mobile app Photoshop Touch, which is designed for the iPad.

Apparently out of the running for the Retina Display update are such CS6 products as Flash, InDesign, and Fireworks. The budget-conscious Photoshop Elements won't get the update either, however, Adobe said it's "investigating the effort" needed to support the new display.

First in line for the update will be members of Adobe's Creative Cloud service since they receive updates more frequently than do non-members. The $50-per-month subscription service gives members access to the full lineup of Creative Suite products along with online services.

Customers who buy Creative Suite 6 through Adobe's conventional perpetual license will then get their shot at the update. Creative Cloud subscribers typically get certain features that perpetual-license customers won't see until Creative Suite 7. But in this case, Adobe promises that such customers will receive the Retina Display support before CS7 arrives.

How will the new Retina Display support help CS6 users who own the new MacBook Pro? Adobe explained the advantages in its blog:

HiDPI (Retina) displays allow for a dramatic improvement in image fidelity and resolution. Naturally, designers, photographers and creative professionals want to take full advantage of this new technology. Software that is not native to HiDPI display uses interpolation to duplicate pixels to fill the screen, meaning text is not as sharp and images don't have as much detail. The increased resolution of these displays requires that each product update the interface of the application and ensure that the content or the creation itself is displayed accurately with the appropriate level of fidelity.

The initial announcement about Adobe's Creative Cloud upset some dedicated CS users who complained about the $600-per-year price tag.

But Adobe has pushed the cloud-based service, arguing that it offers several added benefits for members.

In other news, Adobe just released Photoshop 13.0.1, which squashes certain bugs and enhances the performance of the version included in CS6.