Yesterday, March 27, Adobe^R Systems, Inc. announced the release of Creative^R Suite 3. It is said that you can't please everyone. Well, Adobe just might argue with that philosophy. They listened to their customers and the new CS3 comes in six editions. To meet the needs of designers and developers in various publishing media and across media, each edition contains a different combination of Adobe's integrated design and development software applications.

A little over a year ago, Macromedia^R became part of the Adobe family and we have all waited to see how the two product lines would merge into one. We knew it would be impressive but this new release is more than expected. Adobe has done an amazing job of integrating both product lines into a set of tools for the design and development of content for print, web, mobile devices, interactive applications, film and video. At first, this may sound like you will be purchasing a lot of software that you don't need just to get the applications you do need. That's where the six different editions come into play. These new upgrades are optimized for increased efficiency with the new PowerPC Microsoft^R Windows^R XP and Vista^R and Intel-based Macs.

The Creative Suite Design Premium is a toolkit for layout design, image editing, illustration, animation and PDF production for print, web, mobile and interactive content publishing. The Design Standard concentrates on print production.

The Creative Suite Web Premium and Standard is a group of tools for design and development of interactive websites, applications, presentations and other content for web and mobile devices.

The Creative Suite Production Premium is a total set of design, video and audio tools for publishing film, video, DVD and more.

The Creative Suite Master Collections has it all.

Besides the emphasis on the new Flash technologies and publishing for new types of mobile devices, there is a great improvement in the integration between the Adobe applications such as the ability to pass files between applications in their native formats (psd, ai, etc).

Stay tuned for more detailed reviews of the new Creative Suite 3 individual applications. But for now here is just a sneak peak. Photoshop Extended is a new version of Photoshop that has increased support for mobile devices and 3D graphics. Yes, I said 3D graphics. Illustrator also has increased support for mobile graphics and has a new Live Color feature which allows you to easily change color schemes during design, testing and production. The Flash user interface has been given a complete overhaul to match the Adobe-standard UI which will greatly help with the integration when switching between Adobe applications. Another new feature in Flash is the ability to convert Timeline animations to ActionScript code. Finally, the new application called Device Central will allow you to test your design against built-in profiles for various mobile devices. This new application will help you test and publish your project for a maximum number of media.

The release date for the Design Premium and Standard and the Web Premium and Standard editions is April 2007. The Production Premium and Master Collection is scheduled for the third quarter of 2007.

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