Revealing the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Magic

Yesterday was a special day for Adobe users around the world, as Adobe revealed the new Adobe Creative Suite 5. This is the show that Adobe used to surprise us with along with every new release of its products.

With each release, the creative community and the world look with the eye of concern to Adobe’s new features and how these features will change the workflow for most of Adobe users; and how it will create new technology trends such as introducing the Adobe AIR and Flex technologies.

I have been working in the pre-release program for some of Adobe CS5 products, and I was not able to share the fun with you. Now is the time to open wide and be loud about all the fun and the massive number of new features in this particular Adobe product; I am sure it will rock the community with all of its possibilities.

Before we review the new features in Adobe CS5, let us have an over view of the Adobe Creative Suite 5 bundles and the usage of each bundle.

Overview of Adobe CS5

Few years ago Adobe started new policy to provide its products in bundles based on its usage and relation to each other. After the merge between Adobe and Macromedia, the Adobe creative suites extended to cover more products and tools, which is for the benefit of the users all over the world. This does not mean that you cannot purchase any of the Adobe products separately, but the bundled versions provide a way of saving money if you are looking to get more than one product.

Adobe Creative Suites provide different bundles of products based on the user’s profession and needs. For example, the Adobe CS5 Web Premium provides solutions for web designers and developers while the Design Premium provides solution for the printing and publishing fields.

Adobe Creative Suites include the following bundles:

Design Premium

This Adobe CS5 bundle includes the solution targeted to the print and publishing experts such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Flash.

Web Premium

The products included in this bundle are targeted to the web designers and developers such as the Dreamweaver CS5, Flash Builder 4 and Contribute CS5.

Production Premium

This bundle is directed to the video production and includes products that provide solutions to professionals in this field such as Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth and Encore CS5.

Master Collection

This collection gathers all the products into one bundle for the Adobe user experts who work with most of the Adobe products. The Master Collection includes all the products bundled in all of the other suites.

You can compare the different Adobe Creative Suites 5 editions, prices and the applications that are included in it by visiting the comparison table page.

Along with each Suite of the new Adobe CS5, Adobe includes comprehensive tools that enhance the workflow between different products, these products are:

Adobe Bridge CS5

Adobe Bridge CS5 is the center point to exchange, navigate and explore Adobe files and resources. You can reach the Adobe Bridge from inside any Adobe product and the new Adobe bridge CS5 includes a mini-bridge version that allows faster navigation for files with the minimal Bridge features.

Adobe Device Central CS5

You can export your Adobe content to view on different mobile and handheld devices. However, this application lets you test and preview your application based on the different mobile profiles and specifications before sending them to mobile device preview.

Adobe Dynamic Link CS5

Dynamic Link is available in the Adobe CS5 Master Collection to enhance the workflow between Adobe video tools: After Effects CS5, Premiere CS5 and Encore CS5. Instead of taking time in rendering your projects into each application separately, Dynamic Link reduces the intermediate rendering process. You can read more about the Adobe Dynamic Link here.

Adobe CS Live

On the other hand, Adobe Creative Suites integrated with the Adobe online tools that take you beyond your desktop and provide more free online features that can be accessed directly or from Adobe CS5 products. The Adobe CS Live tools include:

• Adobe BrowserLab, which let’s you test your web application and see how it looks like in different browsers.
• Adobe CS Review let’s you share your experience and reviews about the CS products and provide you with feedback about each application
• Acrobat.com, is a set of applications that lets you share files, hold online meetings and create online documents.
• Adobe Story let’s you create scripts and workflow for video production.
• SiteCatalyst NetAverages, helps you optimize your content for both web and mobile devices

Flash Catalyst

One of the new Adobe applications that are presented in all the Adobe Creative Suites is Flash Catalyst. This is a new tool that turns the static Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks design into interactive experiences without any previous coding experience. However it is a comprehensive tool for designers to create interactive web and desktop content. While building interactive design and build menus, scrolling bars and other developing function without coding, Flash Catalyst provides features that improve the final interactive output such as providing page transitions and use building blocks to get more control over navigations and interaction.

Flash Catalyst also provides rich content such as video and the ability to build and preview the design without dynamic content from database. Furthermore, Catalyst allows you to edit the design in Illustrator or Photoshop without affecting the interaction applied to it and preserve the layers.

What’s New in Photoshop CS5

It is obvious most of the Adobe users are waiting for the new feature in Photoshop, because Photoshop is the most common Adobe application that is used by web designers, graphic designers, photographers, digital artists, 3D experts, video producers and even developers and non-specialized users.

This new version of Photoshop CS5 comes with revolutionary updates and enhancement that will make your Photoshop workflow much easier and more professional. Also, the new features will give you the ability to do simple tricks with fewer steps unlike those that used to take you the long way around.

Photoshop features can be divided into two main types of features; these major features will change our workflow in Photoshop by adding new capabilities or improve the workflow of existing features. The major features include:

New enhanced brushes for extraordinary painting effects

Enhanced brushes for extraordinary painting effects

The new Photoshop includes new brushes that create different painting effects such as an oil painting. The new brushes also include enhanced tips and allow mixing colors and blending the colors to create amazing digital art fast and more professional

Content-Aware Fill

The Content-Aware Fill

With this new feature, you can remove any object or any image in the background; you can then smartly fill the empty background in the environment by matching the texture, light, shadows and tone. You can use this feature to remove content as it had never existed in the first place.

Complex selections

One of the problems that we used to face with older versions is the multiple selections. Now, the selection becomes much easier and you can select edges more professionally.

Puppet Warp

The new Puppet Warp

This is one of the features that will rock the Photoshop users. In previous versions, it was impossible to be able to change the object or it shape. The puppet warp allows you to change the object’s position through points of change while preserving the object shape. For example, you can change the way some one stands in front of the camera without any distortion.

3D Text with Repousse’

The new Repousse’ feature

The Repousse’ feature allows you to easily create 3D text and apply different extrude, twist and rotation effects on it. The new feature allows you to create different textures and effects on the 3D text.

In addition to the above mentioned new feature, this new Photoshop provides improved and enhanced features such as the enhanced HDR feature which allows you to create HDR content easily with just a couple of mouse clicks.

The new version includes enhancer RAW image processing, 3D feature and fast performance that is applied by using the cross-platform 64-bit support.

What’s New in Flash CS5

Adobe Flash gets a big deal of the enhancement and improvement as well. Some of the Flash CS5 features are new and the others are enhancements from already existing features.

Let’s see the major changes that happened in Adobe Flash CS5 that will affect the workflow process in Flash.

The New Text Engine

The Flash CS5 Text Engine warping feature

In the last version of Flash, there was a text engine that was used as a component inside Flash to improve the text functionality in Flash and provide support for different languages.

Now, this engine has been made a part of the Flash CS5 and provides more control over the text in Flash by supporting different languages and supporting the columns. You can now create text in Flash like you used to do with InDesign and Illustrator by creating linked text areas.

Code Snippet panel

The Code Snippet panel allows you to add interactivity

This new feature will cheer the designer up, as it will provide ready made AS3 code that you can apply directly by simply choosing the command you would like to do. This tool helps the non-coder that would like to create interactive content in Flash.

Integration with Flash Builder

Now, you can edit your Action Script code directly in Flash builder along with your work in Flash professional CS5.

Bones and Deco tools

The enhanced Bones and Deco tools

New features added to these brand new tools which allow designers and animators to create cartoon animation and illustrations in Flash easily with simple drags of the mouse.

In addition to the above features, Flash includes other new and enhanced features such as an improved video streamline process, integration between Flash and other Adobe products and the distribution for your content on different devices.

What’s New in Illustrator CS5

The new Adobe Illustrator CS5 comes with new drawing tools that will improve your work in Illustrator and allows you to create new effects more easily without the usual work-around. The new Illustrator CS5 includes the following major updates:

Perspective Drawing

Drawing using the the Perspective Drawing feature

You can now draw Illustrator content with perspective to create real in-depth illustrations and proper vanishing points.

Bristle Brush

Drawing with the Bristle brush in Illustrator CS5

Adobe Illustrator CS5 includes a new vector painting brush that allows you to create artistic drawing and outlines.

Crisp graphics for web and mobile devices

Now you can create high quality looking content without pixel distortion for smaller graphics for mobile devices and web graphics.

Shape Builder tool

The Align to Pixel Grid option

Do you think that accessing a lot of tools to create a single shape is not the best method to create an object fast? The new Illustrator CS5 provide the Shape Builder tool that allows you to directly edit, modify and create your shapes without the need to access a lot of different tools and menus.

In addition to the above features, Adobe Illustrator CS5 includes more features such as the integration with Flash Catalyst and other Adobe products. On the other hand, the new Illustrator includes enhanced multiple artboard and drawing tool.

What’s New in Dreamweaver CS5

Now, let us move onto the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 and the new features for the Dreamweaver users. Adobe adds new features for web designer and developers who use Dreamweaver in building web applications.

The new Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 includes a new CSS inspection tool that allows you to easily work with the CSS properties without even reading the code. Also, the new Dreamweaver includes code hinting for PHP custom class codes.

Dreamweaver CS5 integration with the CMSs

With the increase of CMS users around the web, Dreamweaver CS5 provides authoring support to famous CMS frameworks such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. The new version of Dreamweaver includes site-specific code hints and integration with Adobe BrowserLab.

What’s New in After Effects CS5

Video professionals and producers have their part of the fun and Adobe After Effects CS5 comes with new and enhanced features for the After Effects users. These features will help with creating new effects and extend capabilities. Furthermore, the new features include improvement in the workflow and memory usage.

The Roto brush is one of the new features that allow you to isolate animated objects from the background in seconds. This tool will remove a lot of the pain that video experts have experienced when it came to removing the backgrounds in video animated characters.

The enhanced RAM preview process using the 64-bit acceleration

Now, you can turn any 2D object to 3D mesh using the Digieffects FreeForm which allows you to turn the 2D flat object into 3D objects. Furthermore, After Effects CS5 includes the Mocha 2 plug-in for After Effect that provide better motion tracking.

In addition to the above features, After Effect CS5 includes the Auto-Keyframe mode that allows you to start keyframes more easily and automatically, and the Color Finesse tool that allows you to enjoy the enhanced color correction workflow.

What’s New in Premier CS5

Adobe Premiere is one of the most commonly used tools to edit and improve video production. Now it becomes faster and more improved because of the 64-bit support. The new 64-bit acceleration provides GPU- acceleration which allows you to create HD video content much faster and more fluidly.

The new Adobe Premiere CS5 includes more support to the tape-less workflow such as working with DSLR and video cameras. Furthermore, Premiere CS5 includes better workflow through the video process from script writing to final production.

Industry-leading performance with the new Mercury Playback Engine

Ultra keyr is one of the new features that improve the performance and achieve faster chroma keying results.

What’s New in Soundbooth CS5

Adobe Soundbooth CS5 is made for audio experts to create, control, and edit audio production either for audio project or to integrate with video production tools. The new Soundbooth CS5 includes a couple of new features which are the improved multitrack editing and the royalty-free sound effects and soundbooth scores.

More than 10,000 sound effects and more than 130 customized sound scores are available in the new Soundbooth CS5

This is not the end; I tried in a fast preview to cover most of the important features in the new Adobe Creative Suite 5 applications. Almost every application the CS5, the new features will change the way we used to use that specific application and the way we integrate it with the rest of the adobe products. On the other hand, we should mention the enhanced features that are developer based on your feedback and reviews to be more suitable for your needs and project workflow.

Purchase or Not to Purchase

Purchasing a software or not is based on your needs and your business requirements. You have to decide if the new version is really worth the initial cost or the upgrade cost. The purchasing decision is completely yours and you also have to think if buying one of the bundle packages is a better choice than buying one of the separate products available. You can review more about the various features of every product and their pricing on the Adobe website.