Which Adobe Creative Suite Package is Right for You?

You can learn all about the various creative suite packages on the Adobe Web site, but I've received enough questions from readers about which package they should buy that I decided to create this simplified guide to what you will find in each package and why you might choose one of another.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium

Retail price: US $1,799 | Student/Teacher Edition US $449

Created for Web designers, this suite includes all of Adobe's Web-related programs, such as Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks, but does not include video editing software or print-focused programs, such as InDesign or Premiere. Note: the popular Adobe Photoshop is included in all of the creative suite packages.

Software included in CS5 Web Premium

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium

Retail Price: US $1,899 | Student/Teacher edition US $449

Created for graphic designers, this suite includes print-focused programs, such as InDesign and Illustrator, as well as many of the Web design programs, including Dreamweaver and Flash. The Design suite does not include all of the web programs (Contribute and Device Central are not included) and it does not include any video editing software.

Software included in CS5 Design Premium:

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium

Retail Price: US $1,699 | Student/Teacher Edition US $449

Created for video editors, this suite includes video-focused programs, such as Premiere, After Effects, and Soundbooth. This suite also includes Flash, but does not include any of the other web design programs, such Dreamweaver or Fireworks, or print programs, such as InDesign.

Software included in CS5 Production Premium

Creative Suite 5 Master Collection Student and Teacher Edition

Regular price: US $2,599 Student/Teacher edition: US $899

Adobe offers this Master Collection as the 'best deal' because it includes all of the software included in all suites and costs up to 60% less than purchasing the individual products separately.

Adobe Photoshop® CS5 Extended

Adobe's exceptionally popular digital image editing program

Adobe Illustrator® CS5

A vector tool commonly used to create logos and other illustrations

Adobe InDesign® CS5

One of the most popular programs for creating page layouts for print and digital publishing. This program is commonly used for designing magazines, books, and newsletters. (It is similar to PageMaker and Quark)

Adobe Acrobat® 9 Pro

Used to create digital documents in the popular PDF (portable document format)

Adobe Dreamweaver® CS5

The most popular Web design program on the market, Dreamweaver can be used to design, develop, and maintain web sites and web applications using XHTML, CSS, PHP, and other more that conform to modern web standares

Adobe Fireworks® CS5

This versatile image editing tool was originally designed by Macromedia to work with Dreamweaver and continues to enjoy a large following among designers to appreciate how easy it is to quickly create web site designs. This program works well with Dreamweaver.

Adobe Flash Professional CS5

Creates animations and other interactive media in the Flash formats .swf and .flv (for Flash video)

Adobe Flash® Catalyst™ CS5

Used to create complex Flash-based interfaces and interactive content without having to write the Actionscript programming code

Adobe Flash Builder™ 4

Used to develop cross-platform Internet applications

Adobe Premiere® Pro CS5

Professional video editing program (one of the big changes in version CS5 is the ability to work with files created in the popular Mac video editing program Final Cut Pro)

Adobe After Effects® CS5

Used by video editors to create motion graphics and special effects

Adobe Soundbooth® CS5

Create and edit audio files

Additional components:

Adobe Bridge CS5
Adobe Device Central CS5
Adobe Dynamic Link
Integrates with new Adobe CS Live online services*
Adobe Contribute® CS5
Adobe Encore® CS5
Adobe OnLocation™ CS5

...

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