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Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen hailed the firm’s new Creative Suite as "a whole new platform for design and publishing" at its worldwide launch this week.

Creative Suite comprises "CS" versions of InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and GoLive – all significant upgrades in their own right.

It also includes Acrobat 6.0, and at its heart is a new Adobe software package for file and asset management, Version Cue, described as "a drop-dead simple way of managing files" and the "glue" that transforms the individual packages into a creative platform. "The longer you use it, the more you will understand its elegance," Chizen stated.

A host of new features were demonstrated to spontaneous applause from clients and journalists at New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s executive vice president of worldwide products, said: "We believe this is the only true cross-media solution out there."

Apple’s Steve Jobs gave a testimonial via video and Glamour UK creative director Geoff Waring took part in a panel discussion.

Upgrades to Creative Suite, which comes in two versions – Premium Edition (all packages) and Standard Edition (minus Acrobat and GoLive) – will be available to anyone who owns a copy of Photoshop. It’s the first time Adobe has offered an upgrade to a collection.

Creative Suite will ship by the end of November. It will cost £700 (E999) to upgrade to Premium Edition.

Adobe also has aggressive plans for InDesign CS and said resistance to change from Quark users was "slipping away". "People were waiting for XPress 6 then realised there was nothing there," said director of product management Mark Hilton. "The battle is not on features, it’s on the whole infrastructure."

Story by Jo Francis in New York