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Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3), announced Tuesday, is an upgraded line of software relevant — now, very relevant — to film, web and design projects in cinema.

Four kinds of packages:

• Design – Premium (Acrobat 8 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Illustrator CS3, InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended) and Standard (no Dreamweaver or Flash) options for print ($1799, $1199)
• Web – Premium (Acrobat 8 Professional, Contribute CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Illustrator CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended) and Standard (no Acrobat, Illustrator or Photoshop) options for development ($1599, $999)
• Production – One option for digital media and video ($1699)
• Master Collection – 17 applications ($2499)

A la carte upgrades are also available for the Adobe and Macromedia products. Most English versions available by the end of April 2007.

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia, gaining Flash (leading online video format) and Dreamweaver (leading web application). The end-result highlights their announced strategy for integration, like the ease-of-use to add rich media onto static web sites.

As a designer, Pablo Matilla noted the similarity to CS2 with one major exception: Flash. Adobe Flash. “It’s the most amazing thing. Import from Illustrator, Photoshop, straight to Flash. And now Premiere can export to Flash video. It’s pretty much everywhere now, so it’s a huge hook to have Premier. People might use Premier to release videos themselves with Flash.”

During Adobe’s launch event presentation, a mobile marketing and design firm, Punchkick Interactive, took some very clear notes, which point out the major feature improvements with programs like Photoshop and their integration improvements.

Leading up to this announcement, Adobe released a video, “What is in the box?,” on YouTube on March 1st to promote the launch. It’s been seen over 100,000 times.

Apple, a competitor for the video market, has a lot of collaboration in this campaign, including a new micro-site. The Apple Store had CS3 demos today, continuing tomorrow, and the online store has pre-ordering.