Adobe unveils new product versions, industry sector

Adobe today announced the eventual availability – staggered through the year – of their 'CS3' suite of applications, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Premier Pro, Contribute, After Effects, Soundbooth, Photoshop Extended, Bridge, Encore, After Effects Professional, Photoshop Extended Again, Web Design Production Master Encore Professional Edition, and Would You Like Fries With That? Pro. Upgrade pricing options are available from earlier versions of all Adobe and Macromedia products, except the ones you actually own. Prices range from a few hundred dollars up to 'My God, you could buy a car for that! And not a Daewoo, either!'

Adobe also announced a new training and certification process, by which a new breed of Adobe Solutions Specialists can attain detailed knowledge and understanding of the bundling, upgrade, sidegrade, crossgrade and retrograde pricing options. This training process is anticipated to take rather longer than the shelf-life of the CS3 packages, and should allow certified Adobe Solutions Specialists to charge about as much as the Professional Production Showcase Additional Extended Web Extreme Workgroup Pro Bundle Edition Plus Suite, for all client purchases.

Adobe's CEO Bruce Chizen was quoted in the New York Times:

CS3’s prices may seem steep compared to other shrink-wrapped software. But Adobe customers — particularly graphic and video artists with deep-pocketed corporate clients — spend money relatively liberally compared with average software buyers, Chief Executive Bruce Chizen said.

“Our customer is not typically price sensitive,” Chizen said last week. “The cost of the tool isn’t what’s critical — it’s the productivity and what their output can be. They want to pay for value as long as we deliver innovative features that allow them to be more productive and creative.”

Users who just wanted Photoshop for Intel Macs might as well look at The Gimp.