Adobe launched another masterpiece for creative designers to take their creativity to the next level. With the launch of Creative Suite 4, Adobe promises a product line which makes the creative process across print, Web, mobile, interactive, film and video production at your finger tip. With new levels of integration and expressiveness for Flash technology across the entire product line, Adobe’s biggest software release to date includes Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design editions, Creative Suite 4 Web editions, Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, Creative Suite 4 Master Collection, as well as 13 point products, 14 integrated technologies and seven services.
Creative Suite Master Collection CS4 combines virtually all of Adobe's new design and development applications, technologies and services in a single box — the most Adobe comprehensive creative environment ever delivered.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 offers unprecedented choice among editions and stand-alone products, with comprehensive support for the most cutting-edge workflows for virtually any design discipline. Customers can choose from six suites or full version upgrades of 13 stand-alone applications, including Photoshop CS4, Photoshop CS4 Extended, InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, After Effects CS4, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.
A simplified workflow in Adobe Creative Suite 4 enables users to design across media more efficiently by making it easier to complete common tasks and switch between mediums without leaving a project. InDesign CS4 includes a new Live Preflight tool that allows designers to catch production errors and a newly customizable Links panel to place files more efficiently. The revolutionary new Content-Aware Scaling tool in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended automatically recomposes an image as it is resized, preserving vital areas as it adapts to new dimensions. An expanded version of Dynamic Link in CS4 Production Premium enables users to move content between After Effects CS4, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Soundbooth CS4, and Encore CS4, so updates can be seen instantly without rendering.
Designers using the Adobe Creative Suite 4 product family will be able to gain unprecedented creative control using the new expressive features and visual performance improvements in Adobe Flash Player 10 to deliver breakthrough Web experiences across multiple browsers and operating systems.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 brings 3D center-stage providing the ability to paint, composite, and animate 3D models using familiar tools. Flash CS4 Professional now offers the ability to apply tweens to objects instead of keyframes, providing greater control over animation attributes. Also in Flash, the new Bones tool helps create more realistic animations between linked objects. With a searchable library of more than 450 dynamically updated device profiles from leading manufacturers, Adobe Device Central CS4 enables users to easily test mobile content designed using many of the Creative Suite 4 products.
Adobe ConnectNow, a service of Acrobat.com, can be accessed from InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, and Acrobat 9 Pro, allowing real-time collaboration with two colleagues or clients. Designers can also share color harmonies with Adobe Kuler™, which is now accessible from within InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 and Fireworks CS4. Other online resources include: Adobe Community Help for technical questions; Resource Central for accessing video and audio product-related news and tutorials, as well as Soundbooth scores, sound effects, and other stock media; and Adobe Bridge Home, a customizable resource for tips, tutorials, news and inspirational content.
“Designers and developers are shaping the way that people consume information, share ideas, sell products, tell stories and create memorable experiences—in print, online and via mobile handsets,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe. “Whether you’re creating a rich Internet application, a video or a best-selling magazine, Adobe Creative Suite 4 delivers powerful cross-media technologies that have the ability to elevate products, brands and ideas above the clutter,” he added.
Price and availability
Adobe Creative Suite 4 and its associated point products are scheduled to ship in October 2008 with availability through Adobe Authorized Resellers and the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/go/gn_store. Estimated street price for the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium will be US$1799, US$1699 for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium, US$1699 for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, and US$2499 for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection. Adobe plans to offer tiered upgrade pricing from previous versions. For a limited time, validly licensed customers of eligible versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Production Studio and Macromedia Studio will be able to upgrade to Creative Suite 4 for the CS3 upgrade price.
Adobe Flash Player 10 is currently available in beta as a free download from Adobe Labs at www.adobe.com/go/astro with general availability expected by the end of the year. Adoption of the previous update to Adobe Flash Player 9 set all-time records by achieving over 80 percent reach on Internet enabled desktops in less than six months and Flash Player 10 is expected to achieve a similar adoption rate.
Photoshop CS4
Adobe Photoshop CS4 software provides improved access to its unrivaled power through a more intuitive user experience, greater editing freedom, and significant productivity enhancements.
Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation: Now you can navigate to any area of an image with new, ultra-smooth zooming and panning. The new pixel grid allows you to maintain clarity as you zoom to individual pixels and easily edit at the highest magnification level. The new revolutionary Rotate View tool enables you to smoothly turn your canvas for distortion-free viewing at any angle.
Adjustments panel: The adjustment panel in Photoshop CS4 Extended simplifies image adjustment by easily accessing every tool you need to nondestructively adjust and enhance the color and tone of your images with on-image controls and a wide variety of presets that are available in the new live and dynamic Adjustments panel.
Masks panel: With the help of the new Masks panel, you can create and edit masks quickly. This panel also offers all the tools you need to create editable pixel- and vector-based masks, adjust mask density and feathering, easily select noncontiguous objects, and more.
Content-Aware Scaling: The new and revolutionary Content-Aware Scaling feature helps you to automatically recompose an image as you resize it, smartly preserving vital areas as the image adapts to the new dimensions. Now you can have that perfect image in one step without time-intensive cropping and retouching.
In addition to the above features, Photoshop CS4 comes with the enhanced versions of auto-blending of images, auto alignment of layers, better raw image processing and color correction to name a few.
Photoshop CS4 Extended
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended aimed mainly for 3D developers delivers all the features in Photoshop CS4, plus new features for working with 3D imagery, motion-based content, and advanced image analysis. Following are some of the new features which helps to boost your creativity.
Revolutionary 3D painting and compositing: Now as a creative artist, you can paint directly on 3D models and wrap 2D images around 3D shapes. Also with Photoshop CS4 Extended, you can convert gradient maps to 3D objects, add depth to layers and text, get print-quality output with the new ray-tracing rendering engine, and enjoy exporting to supported common 3D formats.
3D object and property editing: Now you can edit, enhance, and manipulate 3D images in a streamlined interface without dialog boxes with this new feature available in Photoshop CS4. Also you can adjust lighting, meshes, and materials and the objects can be easily oriented and position the camera using 3D axes and a ground plane.
Fluid canvas rotation: Now it’s time for giving your neck and head some much needed rest. Turning your canvas for distortion-free viewing at any desired angle is just a click away. No more tilting your head in the middle of painting and drawing.
Smoother panning and zooming: With the new Photoshop CS4 Extended, navigation has become a child’s play. Now you can gracefully navigate to any area of an image with new, ultra-smooth zooming and panning. Furthermore, you can maintain clarity as you zoom to individual pixels and easily edit at the highest magnification with the new Pixel Grid.
Content-Aware Scaling: Getting the perfect image in one step without time-intensive cropping and retouching is made easy with the new Content-Aware Scaling. With this feature, you can automatically recompose an image as you resize it, smartly preserving vital areas as the image adapts to the new dimensions.
File display options: Working with multiple files is not a nightmare any more. The new Photoshop CS4 extended allows you to work with multiple open files by using tabbed document display or n-up views.
InDesign CS4
Adobe InDesign CS4 breaks down the barriers between online and offline publishing. Now you can create compelling print layouts, immersive content for playback in the Adobe Flash Player runtime, and interactive PDF documents with the help of InDesign CS4 much easily.
Live Preflight: Preflight while you design. Continuous preflighting alerts you to potential production problems in real time so you can quickly navigate to a problem, fix it directly in layout, and keep working.
Customizable Links panel: The new customizable links panel enables you to find, sort, and manage all of your document's placed files. In addition, you can view attributes that are most critical to your workflow such as scale, rotation, and resolution.
Page transitions in SWF and PDF files: Applying page transitions such as curl, wipe, dissolve, fade, and more to individual pages or all spreads, and output to SWF or PDF becomes easier. Furthermore, you can preview a page transition before it is applied, and experiment with speed and direction for greater design control.
Export to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (XFL): Another innovative feature of InDesign CS4 is you can export documents to the XFL format and open them in Flash CS4 Professional with the visual fidelity of your original InDesign layout maintained.
Interactive document design with SWF file export: How about adding some interactivity to you page layouts. With the new InDesign CS4, you can transform page layouts into dynamic SWF files without working in the Adobe Flash authoring environment. Create digital documents with interactive buttons, hyperlinks, and unique page transitions for playback in the Adobe Flash Player runtime.
Smart Text Reflow: Using this new preference, you can automatically add pages at the end of a story, selection, or document when text is overset. Smart Text Reflow works hand in hand with conditional text as pages are automatically deleted or added when conditional text is hidden or shown in the document which makes it very user-friendly.
Smart Guides: Quickly align, space, rotate, and resize single or multiple objects with the help of dynamic guides. The guides, object dimensions, rotation angles, and x and y coordinates appear dynamically so you can quickly snap an object's edge or its vertical or horizontal center to another object or page edge in the layout.
Illustrator CS4
Adobe Illustrator CS4 software is a comprehensive vector graphics environment with new transparency in gradients and multiple artboards that invite you to explore more efficient ways to design.
Multiple artboards: Multiple artboards allows you to create files containing up to 100 artboards of varying sizes and display them any way you want — overlapping, side by side, or stacked. Save, export, and print artboards independently or together. Not only that, you can save a selected range or all artboards as a multipage PDF file.
Transparency in gradients: Now you can define the opacity of any individual color stop in a gradient. You can also reveal underlying objects and images, and create rich color and texture mixes using multiple layers, knockouts, and cover-up fades.
In-panel appearance editing: Editing object characteristics becomes much easier with the option of editing it directly in the Appearance panel, eliminating the need to open fill, stroke, or effects panels. You can also achieve faster rending by working with shared attributes and control display.
Blob Brush tool: Another key feature of Illustrator CS4 is Blob Brush tool. The Blob Brush tool generates a single clean vector shape, even when strokes overlap. You can make your drawings look natural by using the Blob Brush tool together with the Eraser and Smooth tools.
Gradients exposed: You get full control over the gradient in your object. You can set gradient angle, position, and elliptical dimensions as well as add and edit colors using sliders — all with immediate feedback where you work.
Flash CS4 Professional
With the new Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, you can quickly create animations, easily modify motion paths, and enjoy complete control over individual animation attributes with object-based animation.
Object-based animation: Object-based animation, which applies tweens directly to objects instead of to keyframes enables you to gain complete control over individual animation attributes. Bezier handles helps you to make changes to motion easily.
3D transformation: Transforming 2D objects to 3D becomes much easier with the exciting new 3D translation and rotation tools, which allow you to animate along the x, y, and z axes. You can apply local or global transformation to any object.
Procedural modeling with Deco and Spray Brush: With this new feature, you can turn symbols into instant design tools. Apply symbols in a variety of ways: Quickly create kaleidoscope-like effects and apply fills using the Deco tool, or randomly spray symbols across any defined area using the Spray Brush.
Inverse kinematics with the Bones tool: Bones tool allows you to create chain-like animation effects with a series of linked objects, or quickly distort a single shape.
Motion editor: Experience detailed control over keyframe parameters, including rotation, size, scale, position, filters, and more, using the new motion editor with the Motion Editor. Refine easing control with graphical displays similar to those in After Effects.
Motion presets: Jump-start your project with prebuilt animations that can be applied to any object. Select from dozens of presets or create and save your own. Share presets with others to save animation time.
Dreamweaver CS4
Live View: Dreamweaver CS4 allows you to design your web pages under real-world browser conditions with the new Live View, while still retaining direct access to the code.
Code hinting for Ajax and JavaScript frameworks: With this advanced feature, you can write JavaScript more efficiently with improved support for JavaScript core objects and primitive data types. The extended coding functionality of Dreamweaver CS4 enables you to incorporate popular JavaScript frameworks, including jQuery, Prototype, and Spry.
New user interface: Dreamweaver CS4 works faster and smarter across Adobe Creative Suite 4 components with a shared user interface design. The workspace switcher will enable you to toggle quickly from one work environment to the next in a fraction of seconds.
Related Files and Code Navigator: Click any included file shown in the Related Files bar to see both its source in Code view and the parent page in Design view. The new Code Navigator feature shows you the CSS source code that affects your current selection and allows you to access it quickly.
CSS best practices: Creating CSS style sheets made easy with Dreamweaver CS4 without actually writing it. You can create new CSS rules in the Properties panel, and get clear, simple explanations of where each property fits in the cascade of styles.
After Effects CS4
With the flexible tools of Adobe After Effects CS4, you can create compelling motion graphics and blockbuster visual effects which help save you time and deliver unparalleled creative power.
Live Adobe Photoshop 3D layers import: You can import Adobe Photoshop 3D layers into Adobe After Effects CS4, move them, animate cameras around them, adjust lighting, and composite them with other elements.
Searchable timelines and projects and easier nested comp navigation: QuickSearch allows you to locate any element in a comp or project. Youc an also navigate between nested comps with the new Mini-Flowchart quickly.
Compositions exported as layered projects: Export compositions as layered, XFL format projects that can be opened and edited in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional software. Many After Effects assets such as text and Adobe Illustrator artwork are preserved as vectors.
Cartoon effect: With After Effects CS4, you can instantly give live footage the look of cell animation. All you have to do is stylize video by reducing the color palette of a clip and by emphasizing edges. |
