Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Releases Updated Creative Suite
jonknee writes "MacMerc just noted that Adobe has dropped the motherload and updated most of its core non-video apps in a bundle called the Creative Suite: Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, InDesign and InCopy (a new product).It looks like Adobe PR popped the press releases a little early as not much is up on their site yet. The official debut will be tomorrow at a press event that looks to have a webcast."
I don't know what a "motherload" is. Is that about two toddlers, three bags of groceries, a purse, keys, coffee mug and cellphone?
It also occurs to me that perhaps we're talking about a mother lode, taken from gold mining and referring to a specific area of rich quartz veins, and now used to indicate "striking it big" or discovering a wealth of materials or information.
...
Now on to the meat of the matter, as has been discussed here numerous times before (albeit with the GIMP). Show me the CMYK and spot color handling (with licensed PANTONE libraries, no less) in these MS applications. Show me the fast super-high resolution image editting that these apps provide. Show me the strict adherance to the PostScript Level 3 file specifications. Show me a job house that will be able to take output from these consumer level applications and do anything worthwhile with them.
waiting...
Thought so...
And that is just for a replacement to Photoshop. Now provide me with software on par with InDesign. After that go find equivilents for Premiere Pro, Audition, After Effects, and Encore DVD.
Some Russian company built a circumvention device for Adobe's (arguably laughable) eBook encryption, yes. They sold it in the US. They got called on it. They were acquited. They stopped making it. If I were to catch someone using my copyrighted works in improper/illegal ways I'm pretty certain that I would pursue the matter to the extent of my abilities. Stealing is stealing. The DMCA, as written, gave Adobe the powers they used. Are the circumvention and reverse engineer portions of the DMCA wrong? Probably. Is that Adobe's fault? no. Your anger should be directed at the lawmakers that passed the DMCA and yourself for not asserting yourself to your representatives and ensuring that they understood that you didn't want it passed.
Care to tell us how many letters & phone calls you made to your senators and representatives against the DMCA?
Now with Product Activation
http://www.adobe.com/activation/main.html
Alot of people have animosity towards Adobe, myself included over various issues, but there is one thing that Adobe has that nobody else can hold a candle to:
Photoshop.
This one software package is single-handedly keeping me from migrating to Linux. For those who say "But what about Gimp? It's just as good..."
Those people have also never done professional graphics for print, video or even the web. The toolset within Photoshop is unrivaled, it's color acuity precise, and it's workflow caters to multiple mind sets. For every one way to do something there is a handfull of other, equally successful methods to achieve exactly the same result. It is an artist's tool.
Mature? Nope. There are dozens of features that the community has been begging to have integrated for years, and slowly but surely Adobe has listened. I can understand not implementing every little widget and gizmo that has been suggested by crackpot users over the years into their flagship product line, and each new upgrade offers something useful that can either save me time or opens up a new realm of creative flexibility. Photoshop has many years to grow, become better and more refined. Most people just don't see it because a histogram is this wierd spikey deal that screws up an image, filters are normally reserved for creating 'L3nZ FL4r3s', and the layer effects were the perfect time saving device for all those bubbly drop shadowed graphics with glowy mouse-overs your client is begging for.
There is no alternative, and by glancing at the top 10 new features, it seems that Adobe has not forgot that Photoshop is not a toy program. I didn't see any "Improved Applesque Button Creation" feature.
(yet)
Those who think that Adobe software is overpriced clearly are hobbyists, not professionals. If you bill by the hour, this stuff pays for itself in a couple of days.
For example, one single feature of Photoshop CS would make it worth the full purchase price for me, let alone the upgrade price, let alone the other new features:
Native non-square pixel support!
Since video doesn't have square pixels, it's always been something of a pain to author graphics in Photoshop. Getting this to work right will save me 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. At $300/hour, I only need to use this feature three times for it to pay for the upgrade!
For those who aren't professionals, the cheap Photoshop Elements is a great alternative at fraction of the price.
My video compression blog
Everyone here seems to be missing the point of this release. This is Adobe's attempt to kill off Quark. With InDesign, Adobe has arguably a better product than Quark, but most design houses have been slow to even give it a look. By selling the products design houses already use (Photoshop, Illustrator) as a package, and as a reasonably priced package ($1200 whereas Quark alone is $1000), they're going to put InDesign on the desktop of every graphic designer. Most will at least take a look, and many will probaby switch over. The production flow management tools are also a bonus.