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Adobe Creative Suite 3 Review

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Adobe has finally released the majority of it’s new Creative Suite 3 (CS3) applications. A few of the versions are still forthcoming, but here’s a quick run down of Adobe’s new offerings.

Exactly which applications CS3 contains depends upon which version of the suite you choose. When it ships it will be available in six different configurations, targeted at three different user bases (full details of which are at the end of this article). There will also be a Master Suite, which will contain everything but the kitchen sink.

Photoshop CS3

Photoshop is now available as CS3 and ‘CS3 Extended’. Both offer a streamlined interface, live re-editable ‘Smart Filters’, automatic layer alignment and blending, Adobe’s ‘next generation’ camera Raw, multiple adjustable angle perspective planes in ‘Vanishing Point’, enhanced Merge to 32-Bit HDR, proper black and White conversion, improved curves adjustment, enhanced cloning, healing and photomerging, ‘Lightroom’ integration, a new printing interface co-developed with HP and various workflow enhancements. CS3 Extended adds to this specialised features and tools designed for professionals in film, TV, manufacturing, architecture, engineering and medical science, including 3D and motion support, time based cloning and healing on Photoshop’s new video layers, 3D model visualisation and texture editing, export of 3D models from 2D images, image analysis using new 2D & 3D measurement tools and support for DICOM images and MATLAB processing routines.

Illustrator CS3

Freehand is offically dead in favor of Illustrator. Illustrator CS3 now compensates for Flash’s continued lack of comprehensive image creation tools by tightly integrating with it. Now the entire Illustrator layer and grouping structure, including paths, anchor point positions, gradients, clipping masks, symbols and objects names are preserved in Flash, allowing you to move between the two seamlessly and to use Illustrator efficiently and reliably as the front end for your Flash creations. You can even use Illustrator to create Flash symbols. Some new tools in Illustrator include an eraser, a crop area tool and a point alignment tool which allows you to align points in same way you align and distribute objects. Document profiles enables you to create document for various mediums including video and Live colour offers a multitude of ways to work with colour.

Flash CS3

Photoshop has been integrated as tightly with Flash as has Illustrator and a comprehensive dialogue box allows you to choose exactly how Flash handles your layers when importing a PSD. To aid drawing, a pen tool, which looks and behaves exactly the same way as the pen tool in Illustrator has been added. Once you’ve finished using it to create animations, Flash allows you to automatically convert them to ActionScript 3.0, allowing developers, who know nothing about animation timing, to mess with yours irrevocably. On the upside converting to ActionScript will make your files substantially and impressively smaller and thus faster loading. QuickTime encoding and video export have been improved and ‘Device Central’, which can be accessed from a variety of applications in CS3, allows you to preview and test your content on simulations of just about every mobile device in existence.

Dreamweaver CS3

Adobe has also dropped GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver CS3. The absolute killer features are readymade CSS 2.1 layouts and a browser compatibility checker which generates reports that identify CSS related issues in a variety of browsers, together with solutions via Adobe’s online CSS advisor. Almost as good is the ability to visually design, develop and deploy dynamic user interfaces with Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which is all the rage at the moment in the world of the web, by drawing upon Dreamweaver’s library of Spry widgets (pre-built components for creating common user interface elements) and Spry effects (with which to jazz up your designs). Finally, advanced Photoshop CS3 integration allows you to natively paste any part of a Photoshop image (with or without multiple layers) into a Dreamweaver document, whilst retaining editability of the original PSD file in Photoshop.

Fireworks CS3

Fireworks has been kept on with tight integration with and native support for Photoshop and Illustrator. Aside from that, there’s very little else to say. Existing users can continue to work with the application of their choice (Fireworks or Photoshop) in one seamless workflow.

Contribute CS3

Macromedia’s tool for enabling your clients to update their sites now includes WYSYWIG blog templates, easy Flash upload, embedded PDF support, the addition of buttons to Microsoft Office, Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 that enable direct web page and blog posting from MS Office applications and direct editing of web pages visited in the aforementioned browsers, and support for FTP, SFTP, WebDav, MetaWeblog and Atom.

InDesign CS3

InDesign continues to get stronger. A variety of Photoshop effects, blending modes and opacity controls can now be applied to objects on a page directly from within the program. These include ‘Gradient Feather’, ‘Satin’, ‘Inner Shadow’, ‘Inner Glow’ and ‘Outer Glow’ and transparency settings can be applied independently of an object’s fill, stroke and content. Table and cell styles allow you to create and apply formatting to everything from cell regions to entire documents. These styles can be saved and reused,
allowing for consistent document wide changes. A default fit to frame behaviour means that when contents are placed in a frame, they fit perfectly. Productivity enhancements include import and placement of multiple files in a single step and an expanded ‘Quick Apply’. There is a new visual pages panel for easier document navigation and page rearrangement, enhanced long document support, expanded find/change, synchronization of master pages across a book, advanced bullets and numbering controls, export to XHTML and expanded scripting support.

Premiere Pro CS3

The biggest news about Premiere, is, of course, that it will be available for Intel based Macs, as well as PCs. It’s available for those few Mac users who aren’t already married to Final Cut Pro. The new Premiere has improved slow motion, improved FLV export (though still single pass) and comprehensive support for output to mobile devices by using the Adobe media encoder together with Device Central. Encore is now bundled with Premiere and now offers Blue Ray (but no HD DVD)
support and allows you to publish your finished projects direct to the web.

On Location CS3

Also bundled with Premiere is ‘On Location CS3′, which was previously ‘DV Rack’, by ‘Serious Magic’…another of Adobe’s recent acquisitions. It allows direct to disk recording from DV and HDV cameras (but not from HD cameras and certainly not uncompressed 4K). It also offers a stack of professional on set monitoring options including various scopes, waveform monitors, etc., that are designed to let you use a laptop in the field in place of a broadcast monitor. On Location CS3 is a PC only application. Although it is included in the Mac version of CS3, it requires ‘BootCamp’ or ‘Parallels’ to run it.

After Effects CS3

In sharp contrast to Premiere, After Effects CS3 has some substancial new features. A new vector graphics creation tool, similar to the one in Illustrator, allows you to create and animate complex shapes in seconds. The puppet tool enables the placement of ‘pins’ on 2D images. These pins act like joints in a cut out animation. Drag a joint…as opposed to take a drag of a joint and your images are instantly animated (with all of the keyframes set automatically). Layer styles, as found in Photoshop, have now been added, allowing drop shadows, inner and outer glow, bevel, emboss, satin, colour and gradient overlay. Photoshop documents using the new video layers can be seamlessly imported. Vanishing point data can be imported from Photoshop for compositing. Any stream of After Effects keyframes can be used to create cue points in Flash. FLV files can be batch rendered and can contain alpha channels. ‘Brainstorm’ lets you quickly and easily experiment with motion graphics by providing a grid containing full motion previews of your content, each of which varies depending upon the parameters you decide to explore. Color management can now be enabled, using ICC profiles. Performance improvements are claimed throughout and previews can now take advantage of multi processor and multi core machines. Finally, device central integration allows output to the full range of mobile devices.

Ultra CS3

This is another former Serious Magic product that offers some…serious magic. What it does is twofold. Firstly it offers chromakey, which might not sound like a big deal until you see it perfectly key an actor/presenter…shot against a completely unevenly lit background…on mini DV…now that’s magic!

Once you’ve extracted the star of your show, you can drop he/she/it into a GPU accelerated virtual set, of which there is a library included. Although these sets are put together in 3D Studio Max, it is not currently possible to build your own as a SDK has yet to bereleased.

Soundbooth CS3

Although Audition will continue life as a standalone PC only application, it has been dropped from CS3 in favour of Adobe’s brand new application, Soundbooth, which is designed to make it simple for non-audio professionals to work with sound.

Mastering is as simple as clicking a button. Spectral analysis together with Photoshop style marquee, lasso and healing tools enable visual repair of audio, while audio cleanup tools enable removal of hiss, hum, clicks, pops and other unwanted background noise.

There are 15 effects on offer (up to 5 of which can be used simultaneously) including EQ, reverb, delay, chorus, distortion, time and pitch stretching and Soundbooth ships with 3000 sound effects. It also includes dozens of customisable, royalty free scores.

CS3 Suites

There will be six different configurations of CS3 available, targeted at three different user bases, as follows:

Design Premium: Photoshop Extended CS3, Illustrator CS3, InDesign CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional, Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Bridge CS3, Version Cue CS3, Device Central CS3, Stock Photos, Connect.

Design Standard: Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3, InDesign CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional, Bridge CS3, Version Cue CS3, Device Central CS3, Stock Photos, Connect.

Web Premium: Photoshop Extended CS3, Illustrator CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional, Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Contribute CS3, Fireworks CS3, Bridge CS3, Version Cue CS3, Device Central CS3, Stock Photos, Connect .

Web Standard: Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Contribute CS3, Fireworks CS3, Bridge CS3, Version Cue CS3, Device Central CS3, Stock Photos, Connect.

Production Premium: Photoshop Extended CS3, Illustrator CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, After Effects Professional CS3, Premiere Pro CS3, Soundbooth CS3, Encore CS3, On Location CS3, Ultra CS3, Bridge CS3, Device Central CS3, Dynamic Link, Stock Photos, Connect.

Master Collection: Photoshop Extended CS3, Illustrator CS3, InDesign CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional, Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Contribute CS3, Fireworks CS3, After Effects Professional CS3, Premiere Pro CS3, Soundbooth CS3, Encore CS3, On Location CS3, Ultra CS3, Bridge CS3, Version Cue CS3, Device Central CS3, Dynamic Link, Stock Photos, Connect.

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Standard, Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard and standalone versions of Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended are expected to ship in April 2007. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection will begin shipping worldwide in the third quarter of 2007.

US pricing on the packages is as follows: Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Web Premium will be $1599, Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Master Collection is $2499, Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Production Premium will go for $1199 and Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Design Premium will be $1599.

          

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