By AppleInsider Staff

Published: 01:35 PM EST

Despite rumors to the contrary, Adobe Systems has no plans to release its much anticipated Creative Suite 3 for Intel Macs and Windows PCs later this year.

In an interview with Forbes, Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen revealed that the software maker does not plan to launch Creative Suite 3 -- which will include the next generation of its applications like Photoshop -- until the second quarter of 2007.

"Acrobat is coming in the fourth quarter of 2006," Chizen said. "Creative Suite 3 will be introduced in the second quarter of 2007."

The Adobe chief went on to say that Acrobat will take advantage of the Macromedia assets acquired by the company and that "you'll see a lot of activity in the CS3 launch."

"There will be a lot of integration between [Macromedia] products and [Adobe] products as part of those offerings," he said. "By the time we launch CS3, the value of the two companies will be clear."

Commenting on specific applications, Chizen said the company is focusing Acrobat towards the architecture, construction and engineering market. The company is already working with manufacturers on Acrobat 3D, which it launched in January, he said.

On the other hand, Chizen refrained from making any specific announcement about what the company could potentially do with Photoshop.

"We've had a lot of customers coming to us and saying, 'We really love Photoshop for medical imaging, but it would be really cool if we could read the images coming out of the scanning system,' or, 'It would be really great if you had a measuring tool so I can measure with more exactness than I can today.' Or, or, or…," he said. "You can imagine us having a more sophisticated version of Photoshop that appeals to those unique industries. But other than that, we haven't said exactly what we're doing."

Earlier this month, overly-optomistic reports began to surface on Internet Web sites, suggesting Adobe could be ready to push Creative Suite 3 into market by the end of 2006.

In a February report, AppleInsider suggested that the software suite looked to be as many 14 months away at that point.

Adobe has also publicly stated that it will not deliver Intel Mac support of its Creative Suite applications until the 3.0 release.