Nate Update

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a few hours with the AIGA and guests at the new Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce at Town Square, reviewing the new features in Adobe’s new Creative Suite 4.

Most of the feedback I had going into this demo  about CS4 was pretty negative. A few people I talked to love the new interface, but a lot of people hate it. I’m on the fence still… (All the new apps have a tabbed interface familiar to some web development applications).

Some say that it still seems a little “clunky” performance-wise. That has a lot to do with your internet connection and the system you’re running it on. This is a professional-grade software suite, folks. Your Dad’s PC or your sister’s laptop just won’t do for these pro applications anymore. My rule of thumb: your hardware should cost more than your software. If it doesn’t, you’ll probably have some struggles.

Here’s the highlights from my notes from Wednesday’s demo:

CS4 Bridge is beefed up. Review mode is very cool, contact sheets and web galleries are upgraded big time.

CS4 Photoshop functions similarly to the way PC photoshop has for years, with the tabs and rotation through open photoshop docs. Mac users will eventually like this, I think.

Photoshop’s new content-aware scaling is cool. I gotta play with this more before I give an opinion.

Photoshop’s new press and hold zooming, flinging / panning, rotating previews, etc. is very cool. You need a beefy graphics card to use it though. Again – hardware is vital to CS4, love it or hate it.

Photoshop’s Adjustments Palette is new. Could take some getting used to, but overall looks to be a nice improvement.

Photoshop’s Pixel Grid View could be very cool to web users.

Photoshop Extended has improved the use of 3D tools a LOT.

Illustrator CS4: Mutiple Artboards are new (finally!) Freehand users will dig the hell out of this.

Illustrator CS4 has a whole new way of doing gradients, which I’m pretty sure I’ll hate for a while.

Illustrator CS4 has a blob tool. This is sweet. you can modify vectors via painting them out – big time saver.

InDesign CS4 has a new links panel, that’s interactive. You can jump to a link and double click to view details of the link.

InDesign CS4 has real-time preflighting at the bottom left of your screen. Looks cool, but scary to simply “trust it”.

InDesign CS4 can access Kuler from a menu now. Nice.

InDesign CS4 can export .swf (Flash) slideshows, sites, etc. This is huge to print folks who may never make a leap toward interactive or online design.

Flash CS4 has some serious overhauls in it. Don’t take my word for it. Go straight to the source. I don’t do Flash. In fact, I kinda hate it for most things. Another topic for another time.

Fireworks CS4 – seems like it’s got some minor tweaks. Again, go to Adobe. Not a Fireworks user.

Dreamweaver CS4 – additional support for Spry. If you know what this means, you don’t need my review.

Perhaps the most versatile takeaway from the event for me was the discover of the new Acrobat.com. It is still in beta, but it’s awesome as is. Go there, check it out. Sharing screens, files and documents will be completely revolutionized once this is accepted.  ConnectNow (free screen sharing), MyFiles (free ftp), Create PDF (up to 5 PDFs free), Buzzword (free word procesor that is shared with other invited users).

Whether it’s intentional or not, Adobe has seemingly “had it out” for smaller, innovative creative software companies that produce plugins, scripts, etc. over the years. (Reference: Kai’s Power Tools, Macromedia, Quark, Aldus, Extensis, Alien Skin, among others). Now, it seems they’re targeting utility software companies, too. By using Acrobat.com, you may never need to .zip or stuff a file again. You won’t need any proprietary screen sharing software, and even some internal project management software could easily go by the wayside, too. The other companies may argue that theirs is more complete, or more stable or more ____. The simple fact is that people demand convenience and speed. Acrobat.com delivers both. And the price (free) isn’t painting a pretty picture for smaller software developers, either.

*EDIT: Event photos can be found on Flickr. Here’s the LINK.