Creative Suite 4 goes gold!

By the time you read this post, Adobe will have finally announced the release of Creative Suite 4 after a successful period of open and public beta testing.

Creative suite as a family consists of:

• Adobe InDesign® CS4


• Adobe Photoshop® CS4 Extended


• Adobe Illustrator® CS4


• Adobe Acrobat® 9 Pro


• Adobe Flash® CS4 Professional


• Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4


• Adobe Fireworks® CS4


• Adobe Contribute® CS4


• Adobe After Effects® CS4


• Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4


• Adobe Soundbooth® CS4


• Adobe OnLocation™ CS4


• Adobe Encore® CS4

So why should you upgrade from the already very capable CS3?  Well, in short:

New versions, new integration—Enjoy updated versions of the creative tools you rely on. Creative Suite 4 Web Premium includes new versions of Adobe Dreamweaver,® Flash® Professional, Photoshop® Extended, Illustrator,® Fireworks,® Acrobat® Pro, Soundbooth,® and Contribute.®

Complex pages made approachable—Design and develop more sophisticated websites with new Live View in Dreamweaver CS4, featuring interactive code editing. Rely on the new Related Files and Code Navigator features to dive deeply into complex pages.

Powerful animation tools—Give your content a greater sense of depth with the new 3D transformation tools in Flash CS4 Professional, complete with multireference rotation options. Bring your animations to life with the advanced inverse kinematics of the Bones tool.

Multiple export options from a single creative source—Design once and deploy to many formats without having to re-create your work. Move from Photoshop, Illustrator, or Flash Professional to Fireworks with confidence, thanks to a universal interface design.

Faster, more expressive design tools—Photoshop CS4 Extended introduces greater precision, more intuitive selection, and smoother image navigation, along with comprehensive 3D painting and ray-trace rendering. Illustrator CS4 incorporates multiple artboards, live preview, in-place editing, and robust gradient handling.

Intuitive audio—Amplify your impact with Soundbooth CS4. Multitrack recording capabilities and professional audio editing features make Soundbooth an essential component of your creative toolset, fully integrated into Web Premium.

Advanced application development—Design and create your Adobe AIR™ interactive prototype in Fireworks for deployment in Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, or Flex® software. Enhance your Adobe AIR application with HTML and JavaScript in Dreamweaver—and then preview or deploy it immediately.

Mobile authoring integration—Adobe Device Central CS4 offers tighter integration with Flash Professional and other Creative Suite 4 components and enables full-featured content testing including web pages, video, images, and interactive SWF files.

Direct connection with clients and coworkers—Share your ideas by accessing the Adobe ConnectNow web conferencing service. Browse and create color themes using the Adobe Kuler™ web-hosted application. Visit Adobe Community Help for quick access to tips, Adobe Help, and community-generated tutorials.

PDF collaboration—Communicate with your clients professionally with PDF export from Fireworks CS4. Fireworks automatically transforms linked pages into interactive PDF elements so clients can quickly experience how your design flows from one page to another.

Here, at Monochrome, we’re positively wetting ourselves with the thought of what we can do with CS4, and in most particular Flash from an RIA point of view.

If you would like to talk to us about CS4, or find out more about how Monochrome can help you, please get in touch.

Posted by Neil Middleton on 15 Oct 2008