Adobe Debuts Creative Suite 3
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3/27/2007—Adobe today debuted its all-new lineup of creative apps with the formal announcement of Adobe Creative Suite 3. Most of new versions of the individual apps will launch in April, with some stragglers holding out until the third quarter. The company has also completely revamped its K-12 education licensing and plans to launch new certification programs in the summer.
The new suite and editions In the new Creative Suite 3, almost every Adobe application receives significant changes, including the applications Adobe acquired through the Macromedia buyout. The only exceptions to this are Acrobat Professional, which remains at version 8 but is included in some of the editions of the suite; GoLive, whose future Adobe is not commenting on; and Director, whose future Adobe also is not commenting on, except to say that many of Director's features have been adopted by Flash and that, no, Dave, you shouldn't conclude that Adobe is going to drop your favorite former Macromedia application. We'll see about that.
In the meantime, all the other applications have been revised, updated, Universal Binarified, and otherwise updated for Intel-based Mac consumption (Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher, including 10.5) and compatibility with Windows Vista.
Of course, this will help ease the transition to Intel-based Macs for those of you who administer Macs in your districts or schools, as Adobe's slow transition to Intel-native support draws to a conclusion.
And while this means you might be spending the next year of your life sorting through the upgrade requests from all areas of creative on your campus--from film and video to Web design to graphic design and publishing--it doesn't necessarily mean over the top expenditures. All of the applications have been consolidated into one or more Creative Suite 3 editions.
The editions consist of the following (see pricing information below):
- Design Premium: InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, and Acrobat 8 Professional. It will be available in April.
- Design Standard: InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3, and Acrobat 8 Professional.
- Web Premium: Dreamweaver CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Fireworks CS3, Contribute CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, and Acrobat 8 Professional. It will be available in April.
- Web Standard: Dreamweaver CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Fireworks CS3, and Contribute CS3.
- Production Premium: After Effects CS3 Professional, Premiere Pro CS3, Encore CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Soundbooth CS3, OnLocation CS3 (Windows-only), and Ultra CS3. It will be available in the third quarter.
- The Master Collection: This includes all of the applications included in all of the premium suites (InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Contribute CS3, Fireworks CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Premiere Pro CS3, Soundbooth CS3, Encore CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional, OnLocation CS3 (Windows only) and Ultra CS3). It will be available in the third quarter.
Certifications
In addition to launching the new products and suite editions, Adobe is also revamping its certification programs for professional users, including faculty and other educators. The complete details of Adobe's new certification programs are not yet available, but they will be made public "soon," according to Adobe.
There will be two levels of certification in Adobe's new programs. These include:
- Associate-level certification, which Adobe says is designed to assess "essential entry-level skills that are needed to plan, design, build, and maintain effective communications using different forms of digital media."
- Professional-level certification, which is the higher-level certification designed for creative professionals.
Certiport will develop and launch the new certification programs, which are expected to roll out in final form by July of this year.
We will provide you with additional information on the certifications as it becomes available.
Licensing/pricing
As of press time, Adobe had not completely finalized its K-12 education licensing programs, but we do have several details to share with you right now.
According to Adobe, "The new Adobe Creative Suite 3 K-12 School Site licenses--available through Adobe volume licensing--are specifically set up for schools and districts that offer career and technical education programs and integrate multi-media education throughout the curriculum. These affordable site licenses allow K-12 institutions to make the most of their software budgets and include the latest graphic design, web design & development, and film & video tools used by professionals around the world.
"The Adobe CS3 K-12 School Site Licenses are available to qualifying K-12 public and non-public schools only, located at a single address. These site licenses are not available for sale or use by post-secondary or higher educational institutions.
The portions of the K-12 licensing models that we know about so far are designed exclusively for schools, not districts as a whole. Pricing for the licenses, which include 500 seats of a given suite edition, is as follows:
- CS3 Design Standard site license: $4,999;
- CS3 Design Premium site license: $7,499;
- CS3 Web Standard site license: $3,999;
- CS3 Web Premium site license: $7,499;
- CS3 Master Collection site license: $12,499.
The site licenses are available only to K-12 public and private qualifying schools at a single address and include: teacher home use rights and student computers that are owned or leased by the school.
In addition, Adobe will also offer education pricing for the boxed applications for individual users. More information about education pricing and site licenses will be available soon on Adobe's K-12 site, linked below.
New versions of the applications
On the user level, the new applications in Creative Suite 3 mark major changes in the creative workflow and the feature sets available for creative production. The changes in all of the applications are too numerous to name here. And so all this week we'll be providing in depth "first look" articles covering the new Creative Suite 3 applications. Check back on our home page throughout the week for coverage of the design, publishing and Web applications in the new suite. (Coverage of the video applications will begin some time after the NAB convention, which happens in April.)
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About the author: Dave Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's educational technology online publications and electronic newsletters. He can be reached at [email protected].
Have any additional questions? Want to share your story? Want to pass along a news tip? Contact Dave Nagel, executive editor, at [email protected].