At Adobe MAX 2013 in Los Angeles on Monday, Adobe let loose with a pretty earth-shattering announcement...
Creative Suite 6 is the last Creative Suite release from Adobe. Though it will continue to be available for sale and supported, Adobe is moving its focus to the Adobe Creative Cloud.
With this shift, the Adobe applications are being rebranded using the Creative Cloud name, becoming the new set of 'CC' desktop applications instead of 'CS'. Presumably, this also resets the version numbers again.
The 'CC' release of Adobe desktop applications includes a host of new collaboration features, extended project space on the Adobe Cloud servers, and features for collaboration with and viewing on mobile devices. It also features integration with the Behance online creative community.
The updated Adobe 'CC' products, Photoshop CC, Indesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, and Premiere Pro CC, will only be available through creative cloud subscriptions. This represents a major shift from Adobe to a software as a service model as opposed to the more traditional Suites packaging. Really, it means there will be no 'packaging' at all, just downloads.
Tue Creative Cloud installers themselves will be slightly revamped to support the installation of either the CS or CC revisions of the applications in order to meet the user needs. No word as to how long the prior version will be left available -- in two years, when CC 2 comes out, will you still be able to install and use CS? Only time will tell.
Plans and Prices
Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions come with a variety of plans. There is a 'single application' plan, for $19.99 a month that allows you to download and install one application- they even figure most people will use it for Photoshop. The normal Creative Cloud membership is $49.99 per month with a one-year contract, and allows you to install all of Adobe's major applications, giving you the equivalent of the Adobe Master Collection, which retails for $2599 for a full copy and $1049 as an upgrade, for $599.88 a year. People who own CS 3 to CS 5.5 can get their Creative Cloud membership for $29.99 per month for the first year. Teachers and students can get the membership for $19.99 per month. There is also promotional pricing (at a rate not mentioned) for CS6 users.
Above the individual memberships is the team version, which improves on the individual membership by giving 100GB of storage instead of 20 GB, and centralized administration abilities. Team membership to the Creative Cloud costs $69.99 per seat, with a reduced rate of $39.99 per seat for users of CS3 or later. There are also more specific plans aimed at enterprise and educational customers.
Adobe expects the new Creative Cloud and new CC versions of their applications to be available June 17.