Adobe CS4 Launch Singapore
I've read enough raved reviews in the design community about Adobe's latest CS4 release. The hype stated that the release is 'significant' enough to make you want to fork out your $$$ for an upgrade. As much as I am tech geek when it comes to the most popular software in the design industry, I cannot help but also feel I am playing a catch up game with all these new features and releases. Somehow it just didn't feel all that long ago since the Adobe CS3 Launch last year.
(From Left) Adobe Evangelists' Tim Cole, Karl Soule and Paul Burnett
The CS4 Launch was held at The Rock Auditorium at Suntec City (14 Nov), catering to a larger expected crowd. It was a full day of new feature presentation with Tips & Tricks from Adobe Evangelists' Tim Cole (showcasing Illustrator, Adobe InDesign & Photoshop), Karl Soule (showcasing OnLocation and the Production Premium products) and Paul Burnett (showcasing AIR, Flash and Dreamweaver). Having the chance to pick up some product insights from these masters alone made the trip worth every penny.
What is much improved throughout all the Adobe products is tighter integration. For this reason alone, the upgrade is well worth it. Imagine no longer having to go back and forth the different products when changes occur. There were also numerous updates that make daunting and repetitive tasks a thing of the past. For a product like Illustrator, it also highlighted the ridiculous number of steps to do a simple job.
So what's new in the box?
Adobe Photoshop CS4
- New 3D engine, draw directly onto 3D objects
- Improved 'Dodge Tool', included ‘Protect Tones’ so facial tones doesn’t change
- 'Content-Aware-Scaling Tool' which is smart enough to auto-generate according to patterns when scaling. No more awful picture scaling
- 'Active eyedropper' and Curves to modify portions of your picture based on colour selected
Adobe Illustrator CS4
- Spring-loaded Panel
- Multiple Artboards
- Live Gradient on Artboards
- 'Blob Tool'
- Crop by Artboard
Adobe InDesign CS4
- Output Flash Flipbook
- Smart Guides
- Error Indicator
Adobe Flash CS4
- Object-based animation model; eliminates the need for manual placement of keyframe and tween adjustments
- 3D transformation capabilities; 3D rotate and translate tools
- 'Bones Tool' delivers inverse kinematics to create chain-like animation
Adobe Video Production Suite
- New speech search in Premiere; imagine what this means to online video search ability!
- Dramatic cut in rendering time - You can almost see jaws dropping from Kenny and myself! We were impressed.
Karl Soule showing off OnLocation and the Video Production Suites
The launch ended with the trio's ‘Best Kept Secret of CS4′ and a set of CS4 Premium at the lucky draw. As usual, no luck this time round.
Best tip of the day has to go to Tim Cole to improve pictures taken with lower resolution cameras in poor lighting conditions
1. Take 4 - 6 shots.
2. Load in Photoshop CS4
3. Goto 'Tools/Load Files Into Layer/Auto-Align Layers/Convert Smart Objects'
4. Goto 'Layer/Smart Object/Stack Mode/Median'
Photoshop CS4 will rebuild for you an enhanced image.
This time round I learnt a great deal from the examples and solutions showcased. Unlike those usual hard sell product events. Still as much as I am excited by the new features, there isn't one thing that might compel me to make the immediate upgrade. CS4 may need to wait till next year...
*Photos above are from www.hardwarezone.com's forum
alamak. we bought the CS3 manual just a few months ago. And now it's going to be obsolete? So ex some more... *sniff sniff*
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't worry too much about it. CS3 is just as good if you don't cross use a lot of the products. Hope your manuals are those that teach you techniques which you can apply regardless of versions.
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