May 3, 2010: Adobe has announced local release (at a vastly inflated price) of the long-awaited Adobe Creative Suite 5 product family, with an accompanying roadshow for Australia and New Zealand.

With more than 250 new product features, the Creative Suite 5 product line brings full-version upgrades of creative tools and workflow enhancements to designers and developers, ‘enabling the creation, delivery and optimisation of content across media for greater impact and results.’

Featuring integration with online content and digital marketing measurement and optimisation capabilities for the first time, Creative Suite 5 products include access to signature Omniture technologies, to capture, store and analyse information generated by websites and other sources.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 products also integrate with Adobe CS Live, a set of five innovative online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow. (CS Live services are free of charge complimentary for a limited time).

The Creative Suite 5 line-up includes five new versions: Creative Suite 5 Master Collection; Creative Suite 5 Design Premium; Creative Suite 5 Web Premium; Creative Suite 5 Production Premium; Creative Suite 5 Design Standard. Creative Suite now includes a brand-new component, Adobe Flash Catalyst, a professional interaction design tool that allows designers to rapidly create Web application interfaces and design interaction without writing code.

Also available as part of the Creative Suite 5 product family, sold separately or in one of the five Creative Suite editions, are new versions of the Adobe Creative Suite tools including Photoshop CS5; Illustrator CS5; InDesign CS5; Flash Catalyst CS5; Flash CS5 Professional; Dreamweaver CS5; Adobe Premiere Pro CS5; After Effects CS5 and more.

Image creation and editing get a boost with Truer Edge technology in Photoshop CS5, which offers better edge detecting technology and masking results in less time. Photoshop CS5 also includes the ability to remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels with Content-Aware Fill.

Engineering advances in CS 5 include native 64-bit support on both Mac and Windows in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, enabling users to work more fluidly on high-resolution projects.

CS5 is now available to purchase from Adobe’s authorised resellers, and on Adobe’s Australian and New Zealand stores online. Estimated street price inclusive of GST for the full suites is expected to be $4344 for CS5 Master Collection, $3175 for CS5 Design Premium, $3005 for CS5 Web Premium, $2840 for CS5 Production Premium, $2172 for CS5 Design Standard and $129 a month for a CS5 Design Premium subscription. (See Comment below on the issue of worldwide price differentials.)

Roadshow schedule

May 6: Melbourne Sofitel

May 10: Wellington – Hosted by Renaissance Corporation Limited

May 12: Christchurch – Hosted by Renaissance Corporation Limited

May 25: Adelaide – Hosted by Data#3 Limited

May 27: Perth – Hosted by Data#3 Limited

June 8: Brisbane Hilton

June 10: Canberra National Convention Centre

To attend one of these events, fill out the online registration form here:

COMMENT: Adobe’s pricing for these products has been inflated for the Australian/New Zealand markets. The US price for the top-of-the-line Master Collection is US$2600. The Australian price is A$4344. The US price, converted to Australian dollars and with 10 percent added to account for GST, amounts to just under A$3100. So why does it cost more than $1200 extra to to get a half-kilo cardboard box to these shores?

This is how Callum Russell, Adobe’s group marketing manager, ANZ, explained what to the average person might appear to be price gouging:

‘ In your article, you highlighted the area of pricing outside of US and why that pricing appears to differ between markets. We wanted to respond to this as Adobe takes seriously its commitment to making sure all customers, wherever they are, have access to Adobe’s tools as equitably as possible.

We establish our prices for Creative Suite products in US dollars, Australian dollars, Euros, Yen and British pounds on a regional basis using a consistent methodology which takes into consideration local market conditions, how we deliver and support our products in that market, and local market research.

Local market conditions significantly influence our pricing. These conditions include the costs of doing business in different regions. In Australia and New Zealand, as in many other countries outside North America, we conduct the majority of our business through our retail and licensing channels.

We depend on our retail partners in local markets to help us reach as many customers as possible, support those customers, and much more. In the Asia-Pacific region, we set prices in US and Australian dollars, and generally try to avoid price changes through the product life cycle.

In fact, the pricing for CS5 offers good value for our customers in a number of areas:

– It is now more cost-effective for customers to move from a suite, to the entire Master Collection – we have lowered the price of this by 20 per cent;

– The full price for Design Standard is lower than for CS4;

– For existing suite customers, we have lowered upgrade prices by 5 per cent;

– Special pricing is available for Acrobat Pro customers who wish to move to Creative Suite;

We also continue to add astonishing innovation to our products, adding new value to the suite without increasing the pricing. For example, in CS5 we have added Flash Catalyst to CS5 Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium and Master Collection.

In addition, CS5 customers can enjoy five online services, free of charge for the first year. We believe these innovations, together with the value represented by the quantum leap product features now available in CS5, make it genuinely good value for those professionals who will be using it.

What Adobe delivers to creative professionals, is mission-critical software. Our products are priced appropriately for the value that is delivered, and to reflect the investment we make in research and development; as well as the cost of bringing the software to markets globally including Australia and New Zealand.’