Adobe Begin shipping CS3

Adobe have commenced shipping CS3. Quite how many folks will upgrade initially remains to be seen. I've heard the opinion from a few designers that although the U.S. price is excessive, even higher pricing in the UK presents a huge purchasing barrier there. Many UK-based designers are thinking about buying grey market US versions. Can't say I blame them. For more information on the release visit Adobe.

Adobe & European Pricing Issues

It seems that Adobe have also not woken up to the fact that people are not happy with their pricing policy. Prodig are reporting that European pricing is up twice that of the US prices. Come on Adobe, how can this be encouraging a fair market. you're going to be driving more people to buy grey market or dare, I even say it, Pirating your software. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Upgrade US £224 / $440 UK £465 / $912 Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Full US £916 / $1,799 UK £1,409 / $2,766 According to Prodig, "Members of the AOP, EPUK, Hasselblad and German Freelance forums have all joined the bandwagon demanding reasons why pricing can be up to double that in the US." Come on, don't make us pay more because we're not American or you think you can get away with it ... I smell an investigation from the fair trade agencies...

Adobe CS3 Bundles

Adobe announced their new CS3 configurations. The will consist of the Adobe CS3 Design Standard Collection and also the Adobe CS3 Design Premium Collection. The Adobe CS3 Design Standard collection collects the essentials for print production. The collection includes: InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3 Standard, and Illustrator CS3, Adobe Acrobat® 8 Professional, and a new CS3 version of Adobe Bridge®, with support for Adobe Version Cue® CS3, Adobe Stock Photos, Adobe Device Central CS3, and Adobe Acrobat Connect™. The Adobe CS3 Design Premium collection is the version for designers who want that extra power. This includes new versions of InDesign® CS3, Illustrator® CS3, and the new Photoshop® CS3 Extended. For Web desing you have the newly Adobefied Dreamweaver® CS3 which supports XHTML. Adobe Flash® CS3 Professional, Which has also been completely rebranded with an interface to match. Prices are estimated at US$1799 for the Premium edition, with upgrade licenses from CS or CS2 for US$599. The Standard edition is expected to be priced at US$1199, with upgrades from earlier CS licenses at US$399. Both editions of the CS 3 Design Collection will require Microsoft® Windows® XP or Windows Vista,™ and a full Universal Binary for Mac OS X running on either the Power PC or Intel® processors. In addition to the bundles, Adobe Photoshop CS3 will ship in two versions and included many new features. The new "Extended" version has all of the features of the standard version of Photoshop CS3, but also features capabilities for 3-D, motion graphics, image measurement and analysis. Both editions are available as stand-alone applications or as part of the Creative Suite 3 Production bundles.Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended will begin shipping in April 2007 for estimated prices of $649 and $999, respectively. For more info visit this page at Adobe.