Adobe Checks Into the Creative Suite -- Adobe today announced major upgrades of their professional print and Web publishing applications, together dubbed the Adobe Creative Suite. Available later this year, the suite will include the next versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and GoLive. Like its rival Macromedia, Adobe has abandoned easily understood version numbers (such as Photoshop 8 or InDesign 3) in favor of marketing-inspired letters (Photoshop CS and InDesign CS). Behind the names, however, lie some significant upgrades. For example, InDesign CS incorporates nested styles, the capability to preview color separations before a piece hits the press, and a Story Editor where you can edit text independent of its layout (a feature present eons ago in PageMaker). Each application will be available separately, but Adobe hopes that the full Creative Suite will be more appealing, thanks to the addition of Version Cue, a version tracking and project collaboration framework that operates between the applications. The entire suite will be available in a premium pack for $1,230, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Acrobat 6 Professional, and Version Cue; a standard pack, at $1,000, will remove GoLive and Acrobat from the mix. The suite is expected to ship by the end of the year. [JLC]

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