The Adobe Suite CS6 Master Collection includes the major Adobe products: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Flash, Premiere, and Fireworks, along with a host of other additional programs that compliment these, such as Flash Builder, Bridge, and Prelude. The CS6 suite doesn’t feel like as much of an upgrade as CS5 did, but there are some solid improvements.
Every program has now adopted the darker color theme After Effects has used for prior versions, allowing you to focus more on your work than on the interface. They’ve also consolidated the many individual windows and panels into one frame, as opposed to several like before. Each program includes one window, which makes the interface more organized.
I’ve also noticed they’ve made integration with other programs a lot easier. There are plugins and individual components that help integrate Cinema 4D (a 3D-rendering program) with After Effects, and vice versa, and there’s more support for SVG files in Illustrator and Photoshop.
Though the improvements are nice, in a way, CS6 feels more like a software update as opposed to an entirely new release of the programs. If they had included the early versions of their upcoming line of products — the Adobe Edge programs — then it would have felt worth the price tag.
Web design and development seem to be a fast-evolving arena right now, with new little tools and add-ons popping up every week online, so I’m surprised a company like Adobe didn’t try to have more of a stake here. Maybe those will be included in their now member-based suite, Creative Cloud.