Adobe’s most recent foray into the graphics world, Creative Suite 5.5, includes some very interesting changes to their business model—CS5.5, in addition to the traditionally-priced version, will also have a subscription-based model. While the software suite can end up reaching $1,299 to $2,599, extremely discouraging prices for individual freelancers; the subscription model is looking at $129 for the whole shebang or as low as $35 for individual components. Point-in-fact, many of us who use Photoshop only use one or two of the applications at a time and don’t need the entire suite anyway.

Adobe’s products are very expensive and that limits them from entering portions of the market they’d like to dominate. According to quotes from company spokespeople on Venture Beat, they also agree,

Dave Burkett, vice president and general manager of Adobe Creative Suite, noted that the subscription options give customers greater flexibility, as well as an affordable way to try the products before paying the full cost.

“A lot of our customers are freelancers coming on and off of a project,” Burkett said. “A month-to-month plan is a way to have flexibility to start and stop their licensing with Adobe.”

Burkett also said that CS5.5 is Adobe’s first product under a new release cycle. Traditionally, the company has released new versions of its products every 18 months. Now, the major releases (presumably the ones that are numbered 6, 7, 8, and so forth) will come out every two years, but Adobe will also launch new versions halfway between each major release. That better matches the rhythm of casual customers who only want to buy new software every two years, Burkett said, while also allowing Adobe to get new features onto the market every 12 months.

The development cycle rather emphasizes a problem that many people have with graphics suite software like Adobe. That 18-month cycle in the traditional pricing model meant that not only did people have to make the extremely expensive initial purchase, but often had to shell out even more along the cycle to upgrade. While the subscriptions will mean that a person ends up paying about $630 in 18 months for a single component (I guess that’s CS Image Ready) it won’t be over $1,000 for the initial application, plus the upgrade. However, it’s true that it’s not cheap and the end-problem is that it’s not rent-to-own either.

Chances are this business model will capture the interest of freelancers who expect to use a product for a few months at a time and need the latest-and-greatest right now. Anything in excess of 6 months at this subscription model and it’s probably better just to purchase the product and hold onto it for a few years.

Alongside this change of business model, Adobe is coming to market with stripped-down versions of their products for tablet devices,

The company has already released its own mobile apps, such as Photoshop Express, and now it’s opening the doors to allow outside developers to go even further. Specifically, it’s releasing the Adobe Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit, which allows developers to create apps for Android, Blackberry PlayBook, and Apple’s iOS devices that interact with Photoshop. It’s also releasing three sample apps built with the SDK — Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop, and Adobe Nav for Photoshop.

All these developments come alongside Adobe’s improvements to Flash and reigning in their capabilities with HTML5 by releasing a Flash-to-HTML5 converter and adding it to CS5 (which means it’ll probably appear in CS5.5) As these have shown Adobe’s desire to stay in the game when it comes to mobile devices, such as tablets and handhelds, especially iOS devices which eschew Flash for HTML5.

The Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit will invigorate their reach into that market and make certain that Adobe’s Flash and HTML5 products will continue to maintain their design and development supremacy.