Alongside new creativity hardware and apps, Adobe used its MAX conference to drop a major bombshell, there will be no Creative Suite 7 and all of its desktop applications, including Photoshop, will be moved to the cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud was launched last year and ran concurrently with the normal retail release of Creative Suite 6 and individual versions of the latest software packages. It is a subscription service which gives users access to the applications they need to use for a monthly fee. The major difference between the cloud and retail versions is that the end user never technically owns the software, but rather rents it. A benefit is that the subscriber will always get the latest version without having to pay for an upgrade.

Adobe has clearly decided that this is the way to go and, perhaps controversially, has therefore ditched any further plans for Creative Suites. Subscribing to the Creative Cloud will be the only way to access the latest versions of traditional creativity tools, such as Photoshop (renamed Photoshop CC and combing both Standard and Extended versions), Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Premiere Pro. Fireworks, it seems, has been ditched altogether.

Prices for the new Creative Cloud service vary depending on whether you are an individual upgrading from CS3 or higher, a student, a team, or whether you are new to Adobe products.

The complete package for someone upgrading will cost £27.34 a month, £46.88 a month for those new to the software. Students and teachers pay £15.88 a month, while access to a single app in the package will cost £17.58 a month. All of those subscriptions come with 20GB of storage to keep creations.

Team subscriptions come with 100GB of storage and cost £37.11 if upgrading, £65.44 a month if not.

The new Creative Cloud features will become available in June. Adobe will continue to sell licences for Creative Suite 6 for companies who frown upon the cloud.