Adobe's latest version of its professional design suite, Adobe CS6, is now available for purchase for both Windows and OS X. The software is available on Adobe's Web site and via authorized dealers worldwide. The upgraded suite of professional applications is designed for artists, graphic designers, videographers, photographers, multimedia specialists, and Web designers.

Adobe CS6 is broken down to four distinct packages, and offers upgrades of Photoshop and Photoshop Extended, Premiere Pro, InDesign, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Audition, Flash Professional, Fireworks, and companion apps Bridge and Encore. In addition, the new design suite also introduces two new video-related software packages: Prelude and SpeedGrade.

Prices, Licenses & Traditional Boxes

Each CS6 software title is sold individually, except for the two companion apps Bridge and Encore. The Adobe CS6 comes in four suite versions: Creative Suite 6 Design Standard, Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium, Creative Suite 6 Production Premium, and Creative Suite 6 Master Collection.

Design Standard

Design Standard is aimed at print-based artists and graphic designers and offers the standard version of Photoshop, along with Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat X Pro. It comes with a $1,299 price tag, with upgrades priced at $299. If you would prefer to purchase the products individually, the Standard version of Photoshop costs $699, with upgrades at $199; InDesign costs $699 as well, with upgrades priced at $399; Illustrator costs $599, with upgrades at $199; Acrobat X Pro costs $449, with upgrades at $199.

Design & Web Premium

Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium is the newly reconfigured suite for designers who deal with both print and Web. This package offers Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Acrobat X Pro. The package costs $1,800, with upgrades at $399. Individually, Photoshop Extended costs $999, with upgrades at $349; Flash Professional costs $699, with upgrades at $119; Dreamweaver costs $399, with upgrades at $119; Fireworks costs $299, with upgrades at $149.

Production Premium

The third suite, Production Premium, is designed for videographers and offers Premiere Pro, Audition, After Effects, Illustrator, Flash Professional, and Photoshop Extended. The package cost $1,899, with upgrades at $399. Purchased separately, Premiere Pro costs $799 with upgrades at $179, After Effects costs $999 with upgrades at $179, and Audition costs $349, with upgrades at $99. Prelude replaces Adobe's OnLocation software within the Production Premium suite, assisting with video ingest and logging workflows. Meanwhile, SpeedGrade is a video grading and finishing tool. Prelude costs $399, while SpeedGrade comes with a higher price tag - $999.

Master Collection

Lastly, the Master Collection suite includes all of the suite components, except for the standard version of Photoshop. Flash Builder 4 is available only through the Master Collection or via subscription, and costs $2,599. Adobe's official Web site offers complete pricing information on all products.

Creative Cloud

While most people expected Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription service to become available at the same time as CS6, Adobe has announced it will push the service release to May 11. "We've seen a ton of excitement for both CS6 and Creative Cloud since our April 23 announcement," said Scott Morris, Adobe senior marketing manager, in an interview with 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," Morris told Macworld.

All CS6 subscription offerings are planned to launch on May 11 as well, which means Adobe is offering its entire CS6 lineup only as perpetual licenses until Friday, when it will release all subscriptions. Individual subscriptions for major packages are $220 per month on a year's subscription and $30 per month based on month-to-month subscriptions.

Creative Cloud covers, but is not limited to, all CS6 software packages, and focuses on four major milestones of artistic workflow: delivering content creation tools; integrating sync and storage services to and from the cloud; publishing services for creating digital publications, Web sites, and apps, and updates for software releases. Subscriptions are available in multiple languages, and in 36 countries.

Creative Cloud membership for individuals costs $50 per month based on a year's subscription, and $75 per month for a month-to-month membership. Individual customers can also take advantage of a special introductory offer of $30 per month for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5.

Along with the CS6 apps, Creative Cloud also includes subscription-only software such as Edge Preview, Muse 1.0, Business Catalyst, TypeKit, Adobe Creative Cloud Connection, 20GB of online space, and Adobe's Touch suite of apps.

(reported by Alexandra Burlacu, edited by Dave Clark)