Adobe continues to inch towards providing the scheduled release date of its suite of image, Web, and document handling tools known as Creative Suite 3 (CS3) by announcing that it has an announcement. CS3 comprises Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and InDesign, along with several support programs. GoLive will be dropped from CS3.

The company said it will "launch" CS3 on 27-Mar-07, which one presumes means that they will start taking orders and provide a date for the actual release; shipment isn't expected until sometime in the second quarter of 2007. All the applications in CS3 will be universal binaries, enabling Intel-based Mac owners to take full advantage of the processing power of their new boxes. In December 2006, Adobe released a public beta - with some provisos on how to activate it - of Photoshop CS3 to preview new features and the new speed possible on Intel-based Macs (see "Adobe Releases Universal Binary Beta of Photoshop CS3," 2006-12-18). One analyst predicts that Apple will see $900 million in revenue from computers sold due to the release of CS3.

In an announcement filled with marketing-speak, Adobe said that Photoshop CS3 will come in two editions: plain and Extended. The plain version will be much as we've been accustomed to. The Extended release will be, you know, longer. Or something. Here's what Adobe told me via email:

Extended is "a completely new edition of Photoshop which allows cross-media creative professionals to stretch the limits of digital imaging." Okay, then.

Drill down a bit, and you find that Extended integrates three-dimensional graphics (3D), motion graphics, measurement, and analysis, and thus makes Extended a better tool for audiences that Adobe wants to court, such as "professionals in architecture, engineering, medical, and science," as they put it.

In an interview with Macworld, Adobe cited 3D model visualization and texture mapping, as well as measurement and analysis tools, as Extended features. We'll see what other practical examples emerge during the CS3 unveiling.