Adobe to officially unveil Creative Suite 5 for Mac April 12

For the April 12 introduction, Adobe will begin accepting preorders and has scheduled a launch event for CS5 at 11 a.m. Eastern. The event will be streamed on AdobeTV, allowing users the ability to see the features of the product. It is then the company will also announce its price and details.

The company's CS5 launch Web site has been outfitted with a clock counting down the days until users can get their first official look at CS5. A handful of "sneak peek videos" are also available.

Adobe Systems Inc. announced the date during its quarterly earnings report Tuesday, in which the company revealed its profits fell 19 percent in its fiscal first quarter. But Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen said the company expects better results next quarter, which will feature the debut of the latest Creative Suite.

"We will be giving many more details of CS5's features, functionality and pricing on April 12 with shipping of the English version about four weeks later," Narayan said with analysts Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Investors are said to be optimistic about Adobe's next quarter, as CS5 is expected to outperform its predecessor. CS5 for Mac will feature a new version of the Photoshop graphics editor rewritten in Apple's 64-bit object-oriented Cocoa framework. The Windows version of Photoshop went 64-bit in 2008 with CS4.

Flash CS5, codenamed Viper, marks a new strategy for adobe in trying to maintain relevance among mobile developers. The latest version will give developers the ability to output native iPhone apps from existing Flash-related assets for release on Apple's App Store. Adobe will offer the porting feature in response to Apple's refusal to support Flash as a Web plugin runtime on the iPhone OS.

For more coverage, see AppleInsider's exclusive look at CS5 from February, in "Sources offer peek at Adobe Creative Suite 5 for Mac."

Also this week, Adobe released a second beta of Photoshop Lightroom 3, its photography software platform for Mac OS X and Windows. The company said more than 350,000 users have downloaded the first Lightroom 3 beta thus far.

"We've worked on improving several key areas and have prepared a second public beta of Lightroom 3 as we get closer to our final release," the company said. "Because this public beta is closer to our final release we are more focused on receiving feedback on the improvements we've made since the original public beta. And more importantly, by utilizing broader testing from a larger community of photographers we can help ensure that you can trust the quality of the final Lightroom 3.0 release."

The latest beta of Lightroom 3 features improved performance, faster loading of images, and native tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras.

While other Adobe products will receive the 64-bit treatment with CS5, Photoshop Lightroom 2 was the company's first 64-bit application back in July of 2008.