“We’ve seen a ton of excitement for both CS6 and Creative Cloud since our April 23 announcement,” Scott Morris, Adobe senior marketing manager told Macworld. “We want Creative Cloud to be an amazing experience for our customers and we feel that we just need a little more time to fine-tune it. At the same time, we are aware of the high demand for CS6 and we didn’t want to make customers wait any longer for it so we decided to release CS6 now and work on Creative Cloud a couple more days, putting the final finishing touches on it and then releasing it before the week ends.”
The traditionally licensed CS6 products and bundles available today include Design Standard (US$1,299), Design & Web Premium ($1,899), Production Premium ($1,899), and the Master Collection ($2,599). In addition, most individual CS6 applications are available for purchase at prices ranging from $299 for Fireworks to $999 for Photoshop Extended, After Effects, or SpeedGrade. Upgrade pricing is also available for owners of previous versions of all products.
Comparison chart of all CS6 products & bundles (credit: Adobe via CNET)
As mentioned above, however, the new service that has drawn the most attention is Adobe’s new Creative Cloud, which includes full access to every CS6 application, including exclusive apps like Story Plus, along with computer and device syncing and cloud storage for a single monthly price. The service costs $49.99 per month with a yearly commitment and $74.99 on a month-to-month basis. Additionally, current CS3, CS4, CS5, and CS5.5 users can get the service for $29.99 per month for the first year.
Like traditionally-licensed copies of Creative Suite, CS6 via Creative Cloud can be installed on two computers but, unlike past versions, the software can be installed on both a Mac and a PC under a single license. This flexibility, combined with the dramatically lower cost of entry, has made Adobe poised to dramatically alter the professional creative software market as well as create an easy way to legitimately introduce their premier software to students, educators, and other budding creative pros who, prior to Creative Cloud, could not afford it.
CS6 requires a Mac with a 64-bit Intel processor running OS X 10.6.8 or later and at least 1 GB of RAM.