Adobe unwraps Creative Suite 3

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 27 Mar 2007 at 11:07

Adobe has upgraded its flagship design software suite, which includes Photoshop and also accounts for more than half of the company's revenue. It is two years since the release of Creative Suite 2.

The 13 stand-alone products and six suites in Creative Suite 3, as the upgraded software package is known, represent the fullest use of Flash technology to date.

Flash is software used to give Web sites a slick, animated quality, turning static Web sites into television-like programming. It's one of the byproducts of Adobe's 2005 acquisition of Web design tools maker Macromedia.

Analysts said reviews of Creative Suite 3 have been positive and some expected it to provide further momentum for a stock that has gained nearly 20 percent over the past year.

Adobe executive Johnny Loiacono said the Macromedia acquisition meant it took 24 months instead of the typical 18 months to update this version of Creative Suite products.

The suite of products also includes versions of art graphics software Illustrator and Web site publishing tool Dreamweaver.

The company paid $3.4 billion for Macromedia to add Macromedia's offerings in Web graphics and advertising from its Flash technology to Adobe's existing strength in software for editing and distributing static digital text, photos and graphics.

Loiacono said Adobe has now extended the Photoshop line by providing users with the ability to work in both video and 3D-animation within the software program. It is banking that wider use of Flash in its products will appeal to customers.

'We really focused on true integration of the products and services,' he said. 'We started bundling Macromedia in other products but we hadn't yet done things like where the interfaces are aligned.'

Adobe said it would begin shipping Creative Suite 3 in April. It estimates that Creative Suite 3 Design Premium will sell for $1799, Creative Suite 3 Web Premium for $1599, Creative Suite 3 Production Premium for $1699 and Creative Suite 3 master collection for $2499. UK pricing has yet to be announced.