Many have been expecting to be disappointed by Adobe Creative Suite 4, as they were with CS3. the industry standard for video, web, and design solutions. Adobe’s recent buyout of Macromedia on Apr. 18th, 2005, led to a rapid and partial integration of Macromedia and Adobe technologies. Despite all this, Adobe has impressed customers with their announcement and preview of the new CS4 lineup of programs and services on Tuesday, Sept. 23.
Adobe hosted an invitational event in San Jose, Calif., and broadcast live coverage on their website at 9 am. EST. Those interested could register to receive an e-mail invitation to watch the unveiling of the new products.
After a brief introduction to the lineup, several beta testers and early recipients of the program suites were invited on stage to share how CS4 improved their efficiency and the quality of their work.
Adobe revealed hundreds of new features for their 13 products (individual programs), 14 integrated technologies (only available in packaged suites), and seven online services, which promise to save time, improve integration, and inspire innovation. Overall, Adobe has spent over 1,700 man-years developing the new Creative Suite, according to Senior Vice President of Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business Unit, John Loiacono.
For Photoshop, some of the new features include content-aware scaling and 3D volume rendering from imagery data. In Illustrator, multiple artboards and transparency in gradients were some of the major improvements. Live View and Adobe AIR authoring support for Dreamweaver promise to streamline the user experience and publishing process. After Effects and Premiere Pro, Adobe’s video editing and effects software, received major improvement to the work flow, making it easier and faster to do what used to be difficult and extremely time consuming.
The most impressive of all these programs is their redesigned integration, which allows the seamless movement of media across every platform. Before, as with many other program suites, users have had to save files in acceptable formats before importing them to where they were needed. Additionally, changes in the original file were not reflected in the imported versions. Adobe’s complete integration now allows users to copy and paste or drag and drop files from one program to another, and there is also a method in placing one document into another so that changes are reflected under all version.
Adobe CS4 will be available in 178 countries and 19 languages, ranging from $299 to $2,499. Educational discounts and volume licensing are also available.