Adobe Creative Suite 4 Unleashed
Creative Suite 4 is Adobe's largest software roll out to date and includes Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design editors, Creative Suite 4 Web editions, Creative Suite 4 production premium, Creative Suite 4 Master Collection. CS4 Master edition is billed as combining "virtually all of Adobe's new design and development applications, technologies and services in a single box."
"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," Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe, said in a statement. "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."
Designers who work with Adobe Creative Suite can look forward to a simplified workflow, streamlining the design process and making it easier to complete tasks. Additionally, artists will no longer have to abandon a project when switching between mediums.
Users of InDesign are treated to a new Live Preflight tool that allows designers to catch production errors and a customizable Links panel to place files. The Content-Aware Scaling tool in Photoshop automatically recreates an image as it is resized, meaning parts of the image won't be lost as it adjusted for size.
One other area where Creative Suite 4 offers an upgraded set of tools and design capability is in 3D rendering. CS4 allows designers to paint, composite and animate 3D models. Animation also gets an upgrade in CS4. Flash Creative Suite 4 allows users to apply tweens, or generating intermediate frames between two images, to objects instead of keyframes, creating more control of animation attributes. The new Bones tool, also a part of Flash CS4, creates more realistic animations between linked objects.
The Adobe Creative Suite 4 is currently scheduled to ship in October 2008. Street price for CS4 starts around $1,699 depending on the version purchased. The company also plans to offer tiered upgrade prices to customers with previous versions of the software.