In a press release this morning, Adobe announced a “significant mid-cycle product release” in the form of Creative Suite 5.5.
The announcement is fairly standard in most ways: Improved versions of all the Creative Suite apps, with new features specifically aimed at mobile developers, with “Substantive advances to HTML5, Flash authoring, digital publishing and video tools as well as new capabilities that kick-start the integration of tablets into creative workflows.”
More importantly, and the big jaw-dropper, is that they’ve announced a subscription pricing model. They announced prices as follows:
- Adobe Photoshop: “As little” as $35/month
- Design Premium: $95/month
- Master Collection: $129/month
This is an astounding change for Adobe users. You can essentially rent the software you need when you need it; at least on a month-by-month basis. This gives users who cannot afford the “Adobe Tax” the chance to get into software that may have been out of their price range in the past.
For those who already own Creative Suite, have no fear—you can still buy your license outright.
Another welcome announcement is that we’ll be seeing “.5” releases again instead of massive version leaps as we have been for the last few product cycles. Many people complained about the relatively minor differences between CS3 and CS4, and it appears Adobe was listening.
I’m personally excited about the complete Premiere CS 5.5 encoding engine overhaul. If we get our hands on a review copy, I’ll be benching hardware-accelerated performance between CS5 and CS 5.5.
They’ve also added support for more GPUs to Mercury Playback Engine.
Product release should be in 30 days, according to the press release.
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