Will Adobe Creative Cloud boom loudly?

SAN FRANCISCO: Adobe Systems has started selling Creative Suite 6, its mammoth but expensive collection of software for designers, artists, photographers, videographers, publishers, and others in the "content creation" business.

CS6 product upgrades cost significantly less than the full versions, but starting Friday, there will be a very different purchasing option, Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription. This service costs $50 a month for customers who sign up for a full year or $75 a month for those who pay monthly.

The Creative Cloud service includes all CS6 apps -- running locally on a customer's machine, not on some server on the far side of the Internet as some have supposed given the typical meaning of cloud computing. The service also will grant access to new features as soon as they're done rather than when CS7 ships.

Adobe is confident customers will gradually shift to the Creative Cloud. But it's going to be a hard sell for many: a CNET survey in March showed a frosty reception, with 41% respondents viewing Creative Cloud negatively compared with 32% who viewed it positively.

Also in the survey, 62% reacted negatively to its price. With CS6, Adobe tried to mix in performance improvements such as a cache-related speedup for video effects and interface improvements.