The new version of the graphics suite is priced at $899 for standard and $1,199 for premium.Adobe Systems announced Wednesday that the new version of its graphics suite, Adobe Creative Suite 2, is shipping in the United States and Canada, several days ahead of the company's projected May shipping date. Also, all of the products included in CS2 now are available as standalone applications.
According to an Adobe spokesperson, international copies of the suite still are expected to ship in late May or early June.
In addition, Adobe announced that its Stock Photos service, which comes integrated into both the premium and standard editions of CS2, is now functional. Stock Photos provides users with one-stop shopping for hundreds of thousands of images from stock services including Amana, Comstock Images by Jupitermedia, Digital Vision, Imageshop, Photodisc by Getty Images and Royalty Free by Zefaimages.
"Stock Photos gives creative professionals ready access to images without interrupting the creative process. The ability to search and purchase royalty-free images directly from within Adobe applications saves time and helps make the overall design process more seamless," said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief operating officer at Adobe Systems Inc.
CS2 presents a challenge for Quark. Click here to read Andreas Pfeiffer's column.
The standard edition of Adobe CS2 comprises its Photoshop CS2 image-editing program, Illustrator CS2 vector-graphics program, InDesign CS2 page-layout program and Version Cue CS2 file management program. It also comes with Adobe Bridge, the suite's centralized file browser, and Adobe Stock Photos, and has an estimated street price of $899.
The Premium edition comes with all of the applications included in the standard version, and in addition includes the GoLive CS2 Web design program and Acrobat 7.0 Professional. It is expected to retail for $1,199.
According to Adobe, upgrades are available to owners of Adobe CS, as well as Adobe Photoshop CS. Owners of Adobe Premium CS, version 1.3, can buy the Premium upgrade for $449, while owners of earlier versions of CS Premium and all owners of CS Standard can buy it for $549. Photoshop CS users need to pay $749.
In contrast, Photoshop CS2, considered by many to be Adobe's signature creative pro application, has a retail price of $599, only $300 less than the standard version of CS2, noted Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis at NPD Group.
According to Swenson, Adobe's non-video collection revenues rose by 126 percent in 2004 because Adobe offered extra value by packaging its applications into a suite. Creative professionals, realizing how much more they could get by paying a few hundred dollars more, bought the original CS version in droves, he said.
In fact, Adobe's biggest competitor is itself because CS as well as earlier standalone versions of its software all are feature-rich and mature products, Swenson said.
"Unless the new version does demonstrably a better job, people won't upgrade, [given that] graphic professionals often don't have a lot of money," Swenson said.
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