Adobe released details Monday about Creative Suite 4, its first update to more than a dozen design and editing tools since Adobe CS3 some 17 months ago.
The costs of the applications, set to reach consumers in October, haven't changed since CS3, but remain hefty. Should longtime users upgrade?
Click on this image for more details about the Adobe CS4 suites.
(Credit: Adobe)Of course that depends on the specific tools you need. However, we suspect that only the most well-heeled will jump at the chance, as CS4 shares the majority of tools with its predecessor. Perhaps more dramatic, life-changing alterations will come with the next Creative Suite. That said, time-saving tweaks to Illustrator and Flash in particular could lure professionals immersed in them to upgrade.
With CS4, Adobe aimed to unify the interfaces of more than a dozen applications, including Flash and other former properties of Macromedia. You'll see similar pull down menus for toggling among workspaces that you can customize, as well as Flash-based panels that nicely snap open and shut. Corporate design departments will find plenty of enhancements for their teams to share work more quickly.
Adobe continues to improve integration among the applications. After Effects, as only one example, can import Photoshop 3D layers and export content directly into Flash.
Options for working with high-definition video and mobile content expand too, with support for the latest formats as well as for making Adobe AIR applications. Among other highlights:
Photoshop CS4 will use your computer's graphics chip for the first time, while offering support for 64-bit Windows.
At long last, you can handle more than one project at a time in Illustrator, thanks to the new multiple Artboards feature.
Flash CS4 has a rebuilt animation model, so you can make objects move on the stage in two quick steps. And Flash introduces a new, XML-based file format.
Dreamweaver provides plenty of shortcuts to CSS coding, including within the Properties panel.
We've been toying with the beta code of CS4 for several weeks. Check out our first take reviews and videos of the six suites and their individual applications for more details. We'll report back with rated reviews after working with the final code.
The math is incontrovertible: at $2,500, Adobe's Creative Suite 3 Master Collection non-upgrade is extremely expensive. However, once you start looking at the cost of the individual pieces of the suite, getting more than two of the major components--say, Photoshop and Illustrator--on their own isn't cost effective, either.
Just those two applications together cost $1,600 for their non-upgrade editions, and that same chunk of change will get you the CS3 Web Premium, which contains Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro and all the little ancillary apps that Adobe has been giving away.
But let's say you're only interested in editing photos, or you think your copy of Illustrator CS2 will work just fine with Flash CS3, but you need that Flash upgrade? Is there more going on than a new palette layout? Let's break down Adobe's powerhouse gestalt and take a look at the more popular parts that make up the whole: Photoshop for image manipulating and printing, Illustrator for drawing, Flash for animating, and Dreamweaver for designing Web pages.
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CNET Networks)
(Read about other alternatives for Adobe Creative Suite in the first part of Roll your own Adobe CS3 for free.)
Okay, so you can get the basic functionalities of Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Dreamweaver without the gut-punch to your wallet. What's that you say? How about Flash?
Synfig's editing system is managed with modular windows.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Synfig Studio is a great answer to the replace-Flash question. Like Flash, it's a 2D vector-based animation tool, and it's one of several programs I found that tries to conquer that particular programming mountain, and does an admirable job of it--especially for freeware.
Synfig takes a bit of effort, but if you're reading this blog post then you can probably handle it. There are four install files that need to be installed in order: Gtkmm, Gtk+, Synfig Core and Synfig Studio. (Apparently, I can't handle it, since it took me two tries to get a successful installation.) There's also what seems like several metric tons of documentation and tutorials on the Synfig wiki, which is befitting for any app with Linux roots that has been ported to Windows.
Neither Flash nor Synfig make for quick studies without a guide, but both are learnable. Whether Synfig is truly capable of competing with Flash for complex multimedia animations remains to be seen. Is anyone out there giving it a try?
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(Credit:
CNET Networks)
So, you need to finish up a design project that requires the image-editing capabilities of Photoshop along with the vectorized lines of Illustrator, and it needs to be animated in Flash with documentation in a PDF. However, you blew your budget on bling and a sweet alpaca-skin bongo set.
Take your head out of the microwave. There is indeed a way to save your project and your wallet from the $2,500 price tag of Adobe Creative Suite 3. You just have to be a bit...creative.
Photoshop is arguably the most powerful and certainly the most well-known of the Adobe set. Heck, the term "photoshop" is now a slang verb that describes altering an image. The program's popularity is well-deserved, with an array of features that is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, that incredible feature set comes with associated bloat, and Photoshop is quickly becoming the military tank of image editors: yes, it gets the job done, but no, the job description should not include cruising down Highway 101.
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