Creative Cloud, which has at its heart the latest version of Creative Suite – CS6, marks Adobe's radical strategic switch to a low-cost subscription-based model for its flagship software.

Eric McCashey, senior marketing manager for Adobe Systems, said: "It’s fair to say Creative Cloud is a pretty bold move – it’s probably the biggest bet Adobe has ever made – it’s radically different from the current subscription offerings on our point products.

"We want to be a company that’s genuinely solved the problem of digital publishing and digital media. We think it’s an industry defining event and it’s really going to shape how creativity comes to life for years to come."

Members will be able to choose from an annual contract costing £38.11 (ex VAT) a month or a monthly membership costing £57.17, while users of CS3 or later will be eligible for an introductory offer of £22.23 a month.

"Unlike desktop software it’s going to be expanding constantly," added McCashey. "It will grow as we add new products, new services, new features and we overcome new workflow challenges that our customers face.

" They’re always going to have the most up to date technology and they get updates and new products the instant they’re made available from Adobe and they’re all included in this low monthly price – we won’t be coming back and asking for upgrade fee because provided the customer’s a member they will have access as soon as the product becomes available."

The subscription will give users access to all 14 Creative Suite applications to download and install, as well as Adobe's new HTML5 design and development products Muse and Edge preview.

Creative Cloud will also includes access to Adobe's tablet applications, such as Photoshop Touch and Adobe Ideas, and will enable members to sync, share and store files across their desktop and mobile devices.

"Our creative customers not only want to create content and deliver content to an iPad or Android device - they want to create on it as well," said McCashey. "Our touch apps allow them to create anywhere and then sync with their desktop computer using Creative Cloud."

McCashey added that a "roadmap" of future additions to Creative Cloud was already in place, with new software launches penned in as well as all future point releases of Creative Suite.

"Once it’s launched we’re going to continue to add value in terms of new products, like Lightroom, Digital Publishing Suite single, and the full release of Edge, as well as features like Creative Cloud Team, which is aimed at workgroups," he said.

"Members will get access to all of that long before they’re added into the boxed products. We’re going to be offering continuous value in a way that would be impossible to do with traditional software delivery methods.

"At the moment customers would have to wait up to two years between major releases and there is functionality that we would like to introduce to customers sooner than that and Creative Cloud will make that possible."