Version Cue Lives in CS5 (in Beta)!

One of the least known members of the Adobe Creative Suite family of applications has been Version Cue. It was introduced in early versions of the Creative Suite as a way of creating, managing, and finding different versions of your Creative Suite project files. In early versions it was installed by default. Beginning with Creative Suite 4 it was an optional installation. In CS4, it was described this way in the Adobe Help file:

Adobe® Version Cue® CS4 now consists of two elements: the Version Cue Server and Adobe Drive. The Version Cue Server can be installed locally or on a dedicated computer, and it hosts Version Cue projects and PDF reviews. Adobe Drive connects to Version Cue CS4 servers. The connected server appears like a hard drive or mapped network drive in Explorer, Finder, and dialog boxes such as Open and Save As.

But in CS5, it wasn’t initially available at all. However, my friend and colleague James Lockman has discovered that a new version of Adobe Drive 2 has been posted as a beta on Adobe Labs. This morning he posted:

Adobe killed off Version Cue when it released Creative Suite 5. Unfortunately, I have several customers (including myself!) who continue to rely on Version Cue’s integration with InDesign and InCopy, for instance. For some, it makes Creative Suite 5 untenable until a decision can be made about version control systems. Imagine our surprise, then, when Adobe released Adobe Drive 2 at Adobe Labs….

Adobe Drive 2 is software in Adobe Labs, so please be sure to back up your work frequently. Adobe calls it a Technology Preview, so consider yourself warned.

Adobe Drive 2 is the next iteration of Drive, and it does offer desktop access to both Version Cue and to other Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems through connectors.