Adobe is continuing its strategy of low cost entry in an attempt to wrest market share from Quark, which appears to be fighting back with low cost versions of its own upgrades.

CS2 Premium costs $2209, while an upgrade from the original version is $999. A new Standard version is available through resellers for $1699, with the upgrade costing $699.

Adobe is also appealing to older users who may have moved away from their software by offering a special deal to anyone who can produce an old copy of PhotoShop, including any purchased as far back as 1990. Price for the Standard is then just $999, with Premium weighing in at $500 extra.

Some of the more significant new features to the products include:

Photoshop CS2: Vanishing Point, a groundbreaking ability to clone, paint and transform in the perspective of your images; Image Warp lets users warp any object (for example around a can), with customisable presets and adjustable control points; Noise Reduction brings advanced correction of noise created in high-ISO shooting, plus JPEG artifact reduction; Create and edit 32-bit, High Dynamic Range images; The Spot Healing Brush is a one-click retouching tool for dust, scratches and other image flaws; One-Click Red Eye Correction; Optical Lens Correction corrects common lens issues like barrel and pincushion distortion. Photoshop CS 2 also lets users create animated web graphics, intelligently counteract common photo blurring with advanced control, adjust shadows and highlights more simply, and allows enhanced 16-bit of images.

Adobe Illustrator CS 2: Live Trace lets you place raster images into a document and convert them to vector artwork; Live Paint lets users select areas and shapes for easy colour filling, even across gaps; support for placing Adobe Photoshop CS2 layer comps and for applying Photoshop CS2 filters and effects; custom stroke placement; type enhancements, and support for colourising grayscale images; context-sensitive Control palette; Customisable workspaces; support for the latest Wacom tablets. Illustrator CS2 also provides support for industry-standard PDF/X formats, and for mobile and Web formats such as Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Macromedia Flash (SWF).

Adobe InDesign CS2: celebrating its fifth major upgrade in five years. InDesign CS2 significantly extends its robust support for native Photoshop, Illustrator, and PDF files by giving users control over the visibility of layers in imported PSD and PDF files. InDesign CS2 introduces anchored objects; new transformation control; easy conversion of one shape to another shape; new drop shadow controls; and a new command for proportionally filling a frame with its content. New object styles present a major leap forward in productivity by allowing users to save commonly used object formatting for ongoing use. A dozen enhancements to text handling – such as smarter Microsoft Word import, faster application of styles, drag-and-drop text, and the ability to paste text without formatting – all improve the speed and efficiency of working with large amounts of text. InDesign CS2 also introduces the ability to save portions of an InDesign page as ‘snippets’, which can be reused in other files. The ability to more finely control XML import and apply XML tags to table content raises the XML control in InDesign.

Adobe GoLive CS2: this software celebrates its tenth anniversary with a new release that introduces new CSS layout tools, a rich environment for mobile content development based on open standards, and tighter integration with other components of the Adobe Creative Suite 2. GoLive CS2 unlocks the power of CSS with intuitive visual tools.

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 professional: If you attended the recent Acrobat 7 roadshows across Australia and New Zealand you will already be familiar with this product, released prior to the rest of the Creative Suite package. At a glance the new features are: the ability to include anyone in the design review process by enabling access to commenting tools in the free Adobe Reader software; accurately view PDF files containing overprints, which helps reduce costly print errors; PDF correction tools for RGB color, transparency, hairlines and printer’s marks; output preview tool; support for an expanded number of print standards including JDF and the latest PDF/X specifications.

Adobe Bridge: The new file browsing system in Creative Suite 2 is Adobe Bridge. Used within the other applications or on its own, the application lets users browse their collection of adobe files, showing thumbnails, metadata and other useful information.

Adobe Stock Photos: Accessible from within Adobe Bridge, Adobe Stock Photos is a tool that will enable designers to search dozens of online stock photography stores from one location. Users can then view, try, buy and manage these images from the one location.

Adobe Version Cue CS 2: the file-version manager that has been enhanced and improved in Adobe Creative Suite 2 to be more intuitive, visual, and robust. Users can now manage and share Adobe and non-Adobe project files, create and access historical file versions as well as version “alternates,” access Version Cue through Adobe Bridge, and use Version Cue to initiate Adobe PDF reviews.

Adobe Creative Suite 2 is due to ship in May for Mac OS X 10.3 and Windows 2000/XP.

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