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If you want a perpetual license for the Adobe Suite, go out and buy CS6. Yes it's a year old, but a year from now you will still have the same suite, no more payments, it will always be on your desktop.

Today at Adobe MAX, Adobe announced that the perpetual license—that which you buy and you are done—will no longer be sold. Now, if you want the latest from Adobe, you rent it.

This is a mixed bag, truly. On one hand, as Adobe releases updates, you will always have the latest greatest. In the past, Adobe could only send fixing updates due to the Sarbanes Oxely Act (from 2002) which said that publicly traded companies could not send out any new features in an update that wasn't paid for by the recipient. Since repair updates are not new features, they could be shipped out with X.0.1, X.0.2, etc. However, if you are renting software, the game is open and you can get consistent improvement updates.

But that is small dressing for what Adobe has in plans. Here is a small list of things that can, and will, be included to the full, new, Creative Cloud (in no particular order):

• Continual updates to all software
• You already own the software, you just go to their store to select what you want to use (and download). Hint, there's more there than the Master Collection.
• 20 GB of storage that will act like DropBox, but with features designed to work with the Adobe applications.
• Access to the full library TypeKit's fonts to your desktop
• Kuler on your iPhone that will include the ability to take your photo and extract the colors of that photo to use as a swatch collection that can be imported into other Adobe applications (via the CC of course)
• Complete access to Behance; if you are in the CC, you are a full Behance member
• Other dynamics
  

Now, some new features for some of the updates to the new Creative Cloud applications. (These were short demonstrations, and it's fair to say that there are more features than what was shown. More on these when I get my hands on the software to review.)

Photoshop CC:

• Adobe Camera Raw will be a filter in addition to its current implementation. Thus, you no longer have to open a JPEG or TIF first in ACR to make adjustments that are best done there, you can do it directly in PS via the Filter and it's a Smart Filter so you can go back and adjust in the future as you'd hope.
• New "Upright" (within ACR) feature that will take an image that was done on an angle or angled perspective and straighten if for you. You can fine-tune this as you need/desire.
• Radial Filter (in ACR) that provides vignette capabilities, but you can place as many as you'd like anywhere on the image and adjust in any angle or size.
• The repair brush (also in ACR) is no longer limited to only circles: you can brush a region and drag the replacement region to where you want it.
• Shake Reduction (demonstrated 18 months ago at the last MAX): if your camera "shook" during the image's capture, this will deconvolute the image and provide a better image.
  

Illustrator CC:

• Brushes can now be made out of bitmapped images not just vector images.
• Text Touch Tool: After placing text on the screen, you can select each letter and move it up down, left right, rotate, increase-decrease size without having to make each letter a separate item. Plus, if you have an appropriate screen, you can use your fingers to make the alterations.

After Effects CC:

• Now included is Maxon Light so you can work the power of Maxon and create 3D objects that you can use within your video.
• Selection of items now has the same Refine Edge that PS has.

Edge Inspect CC is now integrated with Edge Reflow.

New Products that have not seen the commercial light of day yet include Project Mighty, a cloud-based pen that works with an iPad and lets you draw directly on your iPad with significantly better results than your finger tip. Through your CC membership, if you go to other iPads, your link to your CC account can go with you.

So how much will this cost? If you currently have CS3-5, it the first year will be $29.99 per month. If you currently have CS6, your first year will be $19.99. Otherwise it will be $49.99.

Lastly, in the past, Adobe MAX was for developers. Now, Adobe MAX is rebranded for the Creative Community.

We'll have more information on Adobe CC as we get closer to release.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.