Adobe CS3

Well, after a year or more of anticipating, and 4 months of using Photoshop CS3 Beta, Adobe has finally announced the availability, pricing, and some of the features of the new lineup of CS3 products. About time!

Not only have the usual suspects been updated, (Photoshop, inDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, Flash, Dreamweaver) but Adobe is also including PremierePro, Encore, and the new SoundBooth app in this madness of new apps.

The additional applications is leading to a restructuring of the family, there are now Standard and Premium packages in "Design" and "Web" variants, as well as a Premium Production package for audio/video, and an all-encompassing "Master Collection."

The restructuring of the family is cool, it ensures that creative professionals are paying just for what they need, not apps they'll never use. Thusly, Dreamweaver and Flash aren't included in the Standard Design bundle, which is intended for print designers.

Unfortunately, the restructuring means that Educational pricing is very confusing now. All of the bundles are available, and the prices to get approximately what was available in the old CS2.3 bundle are a bit outrageous.

To get both Dreamweaver and inDesign, which I want to do, will cost $200 more than it would have under the CS2 structure. I would need to buy the Premium Design package to do that. The bad thing about that is that the Premium Design package is $599 whereas the old CS2.3 was $399. (Educational Pricing)

I'm excited that all of this is coming out, but it makes me a bit sad that it costs so much more to get the same functionality I would have had with the older suite. For a hot moment I was actually tempted just to buy CS 2.3. I wouldn't get Flash, and performance would basically be awful, but I would have a legal version of the apps I want.

I think my solution may end up somewhere in the middle, I will probably try to get my hands on one of the standard packages, and either "acquire" the pieces I think of as missing, or use the old Dreamweaver and Flash MX I've got, either on the PowerBook G3, or I'll just bite the proverbial bullet and use Rosetta.

Of course, we'll see if the parentals approve any kind of AdobeCS related shenanigans at all, especially since I also might have designs upon the next version of Apple's operating system, Leopard.