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MillimeterIntegrate Review — Adobe Creative Suite Premium
Jan 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon
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.
BOTTOM LINE
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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