Integrate Review — Adobe Creative Suite Premium

Adobe Creative Suite Premium Version Cue helps integrate six
popular Adobe programs.

For years Adobe has packaged various of its products together,
usually along a common theme such as video or print. The suites
typically offered four programs at a really substantial value, usually
hundreds of dollars less than the price of purchasing the applications
separately. As with all Adobe programs, some crossover features allowed
you to move files from one application to the next, and a standard
interface shaped the look and feel from, say, Photoshop to Illustrator
to InDesign.

As a video producer I have always had Photoshop on the shelf. It's
the king for creating title screens and working with images going to
video. Many houses would get a boxed set of several programs in order
to repurpose video content to other platforms such as Flash, PDF, the
Web, and print. The new Adobe Creative Suite includes Photoshop CS with
ImageReadyCS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS, GoLive CS. It is similar to
previous boxed suites; however, never before has each program been
updated at the same time. All programs have dropped their version
numbers for this update. Adobe Acrobat Professional is along for the
ride, not as an updated CS version.

An overhauled file browser in Photoshop CS lets users search and edit extensive file metadata and features accelerated thumbnail preview.

Before we dive into the tasty new features, there are a few things
that tie the programs together that didn't exist in previous suites.
You now have one installer and one serial number that covers all the
programs. You can still choose to install only one program or all of
them. A single installation makes it much easier to install all the
programs at once. In previous suites, each application came on its own
disc.

Another thread sewing all the packages together is a new program
called Adobe Version Cue. Think of it as a database where you house
your images for sharing, searching, and tracking versions. You might
think this sounds like a system network — and that is pretty much
the concept — except it is software-based and can run from a
single computer. Think of the “network” as the different
Adobe programs. For example, if you wanted to search through some
Illustrator files to pull one into Photoshop, Version Cue makes it easy
to do.

The name Version Cue signifies the most important aspect of the
software — tracking versions of your Adobe files. At your
workstation you might have several people working on the same Photoshop
file, for example a DVD menu screen, and you are also creating
different versions of the file. Version Cue lets you preview and read
comments about each saved version. In addition, you can also find out
who last worked on a file and whether it's a final version, or you can
track back to an earlier version.

The best part is the ability to go back a version and tweak it. You
always have the most recent version, and at any time you can click two
or more versions back and “promote” that file so it becomes
the current version. Some users will never make use of Version Cue
— perhaps because they won't be dealing with multiple versions or
multiple users — but the program is worth exploring and
especially handy for creative teams, but also for individuals running a
one-person shop.

As for new features in the big CS box, I was pretty amazed at the
fact that these updates were so substantial across so many staple
programs. To touch on some of the highlights, Photoshop CS offers a
dramatically improved file browser. Not only can you search and edit
extensive metadata about files but thumbnail previews have been
accelerated so much that you no longer have to drum your fingers on
your console waiting for a directory to come up. The file browser now
grabs thumbnail data from the image and does not perform the hard
drive-grinding task of creating a new thumbnail for each and every
image on the fly — like previous versions of Photoshop did.

The new Match Color command in Photoshop takes the color temperature
from one shot and transfers it to another. This simple feature is
powerful for adjusting “off” lighting conditions, synching
up the look of two or more pictures, and also for creating dramatic,
moody effects. (Grab a still from The Matrix Reloaded and bring
the color over to your on-air talent headshot
images…“Whoa.”) Also new in Photoshop CS are new
text-on-a-path options as well as the ability to save different
combinations of layers in the same file as a nested layer comp.

Photoshop now is copy-protected. This is very unobtrusive for
registered users, but now you must initialize the program via the Web
when you first install it. It's unfortunate that there are a large
number of illegal copies of Photoshop floating around. At least Adobe
took steps to make copy protection as smooth as possible.

Illustrator CS has received a major overhaul in the speed
department. Now lots of tasks, including redrawing the display, happen
at a very peppy pace. Separate your Illustrator layers and export them
into Adobe Acrobat 6.0, keeping them separate so you can toggle
different elements on and off.

The new 3D effects are the “wow”-factor addition to
Illustrator CS. There have been third-party plug-ins for the program
and of course Adobe's own Dimensions program, a standalone 3D-vector
solution, but 3D effects have never been built in to Illustrator like
this. Very cool. Basically you can take vector shapes, spin them out to
full 3D, and add reflections and light sources. The toolset takes a
little time to master — thinking 3D in a 2D program is always a
little challenging — but once you get the hang of it you can
create some amazing shapes. Very simply, you can map an image of a
photo onto a white square so you can tilt and light the photo in 3D
space. Even if you use it just at this basic level, you can still get
some excellent results compared to previous versions.

I think that InDesign is the best desktop layout program out there.
Video producers can use the program to design graphic- and type-heavy
screens for video or web projects, as it exports to such formats as PDF
and JPG, as well as the web vector format SVG. You can even covert a
whole InDesign document into a GoLive web page or site. I use it
extensively for print ad promotion and brochures of my media services,
so I was really looking forward to the new CS version. It does not
disappoint.

InDesign CS has tons of tool changes and features that smooth the
workflow, but some of the best features are the new toolbar palettes
and workspace options. Tools and palettes are much more logically
arranged and now can fly out from the side after being docked. You can
also customize the workspace now; this capability combined with the
dockable palettes makes for much less on-screen clutter. The new Story
Editor makes it easy to work with large, text-based documents that
cover multiple frames.

Adobe GoLive CS also contains a sparkling group of new features.
Smart Objects places PDF, Photoshop, and Illustratror files directly
into GoLive. Packaging uses XML to transfer a print document to text
and images. GoLive CS offers 50 new templates designed by professional
artists.

What's not to love? This suite is like a big box of candy for Adobe
fans. The company's software has always been fairly rock-solid and
extensively tested, so when you get a new version of any Adobe program,
it just works. CS might as well stand for Cool Stuff. There are
literally hundreds of additions to the programs that I did not cover,
so be sure to explore.

Frank McMahon is a media artist specializing in directing,
editing, animation, and graphic design. He can be reached via his media
company at www.fmstudio.com or via Portland Media Artists
at www.mediaartist.com.

Company: Adobe
Mountain View, Calif.; (408) 536-6000
www.adobe.com

Product: Creative Suite Premium

Assets: Version Cue ties together the six included programs
and tracks file versions; enhanced Photoshop file browser; redesigned
InDesign interface.

Caveats: Photoshop now copy-protected.

Demographic: Video pros doing in-house promotion or website
creation.

Price: $1,299

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staff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.