Adobe has announced a special upgrade for current owners of Creative Suite 3 and Creative Suite 4, which would allow users to upgrade to Creative Suite 6 for photo-editing, illustration and design applications upon its release.

Late last year, Adobe announced a change in its longstanding upgrade pricing policy, which provided discounted upgrade pricing to anyone who owned a license for a Creative Suite application going back three major releases. So under the earlier system, users of CS3, CS4, or CS5 were eligible for an upgrade discount on CS6. The change in the policy stated that only users of CS5 would be eligible for an upgrade discount on CS6. That meant anyone running Adobe CS3 or CS4 would have had to upgrade to the current version.

The new change will offer special upgrade pricing for CS3 and CS4 users. The offer will be good from the date that CS6 becomes available until Dec. 31, 2012. Adobe stated that it will announce more details, which presumably will include specific upgrade prices, when CS6 is announced.

CS6 will be a major new release of Adobe's creative desktop programs, with expected upgrades across the board to more than a dozen applications. It is expected to be released in the first half of 2012.

Adobe Software