Adobe released details of its upcoming publishing platform, which it is positioning as a one-stop community for designers and publishers.

The new Creative Suite 2 (CS2) is not expected until next month, even though details of the announcement accidentally made their way onto Adobe's Web site last week. The upgrade is Adobe's latest upgrade against rivals such as Quark.

When it does ship, CS2 will come in both Premium and Standard flavors, Adobe said. The standard package includes Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe InDesign CS2, Adobe Illustrator CS2, and Adobe GoLive CS2.

The Premium edition adds an all-new file-version manager and collaboration tool called Version Cue CS2 as well as the recently released Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional.

San Jose, Calif.-based Web publishing software giant also released a couple of new tools in order to help design, advertising and publishing customers speed up their print and Web design process. In concert with the CS2 upgrade, Adobe said it is launching Adobe Bridge, a visual file browser that lets designers organize and process images. Designers can drag and drop PDF files from floating Compact Mode windows, process images with built-in Camera Raw 3.0, edit and search for Adobe XMP metadata, and track assets managed in Version Cue CS2.

The company is also debuting its Adobe Stock Photos resource application. The collection of about 230,000 images comes from stock photography providers including those from Photodisc by Getty Images; Comstock Images by Jupitermedia; Digital Vision; imageshop royalty free by zefaimages; and amana.

Adobe said its Version Cue CS2 is able to manage both Bridge and Stock Photo. For example, using a single dialog box in Adobe Bridge, designers can synchronize color settings for Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2 and GoLive CS2, which the company said helps avoid painful after-the-fact color adjustments. The software also has new global export presets so that PDF documents are consistent across the various components of Creative Suite.

For the print publishing set, Adobe is releasing its revised layout and design program, Adobe InDesign CS2, as well as InCopy CS2 as a standalone programs or as a part of the full CS2 release.

The latest iteration of InDesign adds in XML (define) import options, the ability to link to XML files, and new support for tagging tables. InCopy helps smaller design shops streamline their collaboration and editorial workflows. Adobe said it also licenses InCopy CS2 to systems integrators and third-party developers to design editorial solutions for more advanced, medium-to-large sized publishing workgroups.

Adobe said the CS2 platform will be available in May in the U.S. and Canada with international versions shipping in late May and early June.

The suite will be available for multiple operating systems including Mac OS X version 10.2.8 through 10.3.8, Java Runtime Environment 1.4.1, Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 or Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or 2.

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