Adobe Creative Suite hits 5.5

Adobe has announced the new Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 product line, a mid-cycle update that includes the ability to create content for popular and emerging smartphone and tablet platforms.

Using the Roto Brush in After Effects CS5.5

Adobe now plans to have milestone Creative Suite product introductions at 24-month intervals- currently the product family encompasses Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium (for video and audio professionals) Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium for print and digital publishing and Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium for online and interactive content creation . Today also sees Adobe debut an affordable and flexible subscription-based pricing plan, attractive to customers that want to get current and stay current on Creative Suite products, have project–based needs, or try the software for the first time.

“Creative Suite 5.5 will drive the development of new digital experiences across devices, including all major smartphones and tablets,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe. “As publishers, media companies, advertisers and enterprises transform the way they develop and distribute their content, Adobe will be there to support them with technology innovations in content creation, management, measurement and distribution.”

Part of Web Premium, Dreamweaver CS 5.5 includes PhoneGap integration for native and mobile application design and development.

The new Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium suite  is packed with innovations in HTML5 and Adobe Flash authoring tools, empowering customers to create, deliver and monetize rich content and applications for virtually any screen.  This release helps enable designers and developers to deliver mobile applications on Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS, iOS and other platforms; create rich browser-based content across screens using HTML5; and leverage Flash Player to deliver premium video content, casual games and rich Internet applications. (see more details)

With today’s announcements, Adobe is extending the creative process beyond the desktop by helping integrate tablet devices into creative workflows.  A new scripting engine in Adobe Photoshop and an enhanced Photoshop Software Development Kit (SDK) enable developers to build tablet applications that interact with Photoshop from Android, BlackBerry and iOS devices.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 boosts performance by providing a smoother editing workflow, enabled by new trimming and editing tools that provide more precision

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium suite delivers breakthrough performance, workflow improvements, creative innovations, and powerful new audio editing capabilities. In just one of the innovations, the powerful Adobe Mercury Playback Engine, introduced in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, broadens its graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware support to include laptops and more supported cards, allowing users to open projects faster, get real-time feedback and work more smoothly at higher resolutions. (see more details)

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium suite includes Adobe’s recent product innovations in digital publishing, already deployed by some of the world’s leading magazine and business publishers to create stunning digital editions for tablet devices. Using InDesign CS5.5, in combination with the integrated Folio Producer toolset, designers can add new levels of interactivity to their page layouts targeted to tablet devices.  Documents can include video, audio, panoramic views, 360-degree object rotation, pan and zoom of images, integration of HTML and HTML5 content and other interactive overlays.  Leading to a much more robust and engaging reading experience.  Creative Suite 5.5 is tightly integrated with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to support publication, sale and analysis of content on an array of tablet devices.(see more details)

Part of Design Premium, InDesign CS5.5 simplifies object selection and editing to speed up the page layout process.

The launch of Creative Suite 5.5 comes at a time when mobile devices are exploding in terms of sales and capabilities, radically altering the way content and applications are developed and consumed.  With the launch of Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 (now available in Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium), and the Flex 4.5 framework, developers can easily develop and deploy mobile applications to the over 200 million Android, BlackBerry Playbook and iOS devices anticipated to be in market by the end of 2011.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 products are scheduled to ship within 30 days, with availability through Adobe Authorised Resellers, the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/uk . Estimated street price for the Suites is expected to be UK £2,303 for CS5.5 Master Collection, £1,509 for CS5.5 Design Premium, £1,429 for CS5.5 Web Premium, £1,509 for CS5.5 Production Premium and £1,032 for CS5.5 Design Standard. Upgrade pricing and volume licensing are available.

New to Creative Suite 5.5 is Adobe Audition CS5.5, bringing its audio-for-video multitrack editing environment to both Mac OS and Windows for the first time.

By subscribing to Creative Suite, customers can choose a one-year subscription plan for lower payments or a month-to-month subscription for greater flexibility. For more information about Subscription Editions, visit: www.adobe.com/go/cssubscription.

Education pricing for students, faculty and staff in K-12 and higher education is available from Adobe Authorised Education Resellers and the Adobe Education Store at www.adobe.com/education/purchasing/education_pricing.html. More information regarding education volume licensing for higher education and K-12 institutions can be viewed at www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/volumelicensing/education