Adobe Creative Cloud

Previous | Next Image 2 of 2

What's in Creative Cloud
Creative Cloud includes seventeen CS6 applications, four services and a full set of Touch Apps. The desktop apps are: Acrobat X Pro, After Effects, Audition, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Pro, Flash Builder, InDesign, Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop Extended, Premiere Pro (with Encore), Prelude, SpeedGrade, Story, Edge and Muse. The services are: Business Catalyst, TypeKit, Digital Publishing Suite and Sync & Storage. There are six Touch Apps for Andoid and (eventually) iOS tablets: Photoshop Touch, Kuler, Ideas, Collage, Proto and Debut.

Two applications — Edge preview (for building interactive web sites) and Muse (for coding-free web development) — are currently only available either via a Creative Cloud subscription or as a standalone product.

Creative Cloud is essentially a different way of paying for software, and a quicker way of receiving feature updates (if you want them) than waiting for the next boxed release of Creative Suite, although the offering will evolve over time. It's important to note that the applications listed above are not cloud-hosted: you download them, and install and run them locally. Your licence allows you to install each application on up to two systems — Mac or PC — at any one time. You don't have to be online to run your copy of Photoshop, or whatever: so long as your subscription is up to date, you can use them in the normal way.

Whether the Creative Cloud's economics work for you will depend on how many applications you use, and how regularly, and whether you're likely to want to explore Adobe apps that are outside your 'core' set just because they're available on your subscription. Adobe software hasn't necessarily become any less expensive, but you now have a wider range of options.

Photo: Charles McLellan/ZDNet UK