Sources offer peek at Adobe Creative Suite 5 for Mac - Page 3

I hope InDesign CS5 will be faster and make better use of multiple processor cores (Grand Central Dispatch). Especially when printing and exporting to PDF. I hope the same for Photoshop too.

Looks like I'll be sitting this one out, again. CS3 is just right and zippy, handles everything fine. Adobe had a real problem after Lightroom, trying not to make the two overlap too much so people would buy both. Now they've got a real weird model with LR, PS and BR. How they go together is anybody's guess. I'm using Aperture mostly now, with seldom trips to PS for the big stuff. CS4 added very little, and CS5 seems like another baby step. Adobe just keeps getting more and more greedy. PS10 got one little update and left many bugs untouched. 11 added very little. now 12 seems a bit pointless. 8% isn't much.

I'd like to see Apple take Adobe full-on with a pro suite. CS is a dinosaur. Heck, I can almost do everything in Pages that I do in InDesign. We need an Illustrator alternative, though.

I'm 100% with you. Adobe have specific tools for each job - when the barriers are blurred, an intuitive work flow is ruined. The software has become bloated, unstable, unresponsive and very bad at it's basic stated functionality.

While I agree about Dreamweaver being easily replaced by Textmate, Pixelmator is still no Photoshop and Vector Designer doesn't seem to do well with very complex illustrations (slows down to a crawl) last time I tried it.

I really want to like Pixelmator and Vector Designer because both are made to work well with OSX and both are better designed than Photoshop and Illustrator but they are still lacking so many features and above all don't allow opening PSD/AI/PDF formats properly. By comparison for example iWork does just fine for my office app needs because it handles the MS Office formats fairly well.

I really wish the developers of those two would get some serious backing and more developers behind them.

I suggest you RTFM - customisable grids, librarys and styles all there. I agree - fireworks exists for web layout and image optimisation. It's tool set is lacking - no decent vector drawing tools.

I hate fireworks but I'd never, ever use photoshop, indesign or illustrator for web lay out - that just seems crazy. Repurposing content isn't as simple as saying print this, or upload it - the canvas are different ratios with different technical requirements and colour spaces, the user experience fundamentally different. The web and print do not share enough commonality to warrant an integrated software to create content for print and for online, and to try and blur this boundary is a mistake.

It makes for a counter-intuitive mess. As we are seeing with each release of CS.

In InDesign and Illustrator you can customise the canvas size you want and use RGB mode, I do not print out website designs and would not want to, nor do I export designs from Illustrator or InDesign to the web. I design using layout tools and once I have a composition I am happy with I move to Dreamweaver and code it, using the pixel measurements as a basis for my positioning. I know a lot of designers who use exactly the same process, including After Effects to show animations etc.

FYI I did not say Fireworks could not use grids it's just not as quick or easy as InDesign.

Who cares. Nothing creative happens in Creative Suite anyways. All of those agencies smiling and drooling on Adobe.com did it for exposure and free stuff. You think they're serious? The truly creative work happens beforehand, then its passed off to the monkeys who like to sit on their butt all day in front of a computer... wasting their lives figuring out the latest crap UI. Thank god for them. If they're using more than 10% of the features in any given CS product, then they're doing it wrong.

We don't want clients who want to update their website with Contribute or have Flash crapping all over their site. We don't care what software our video editor used when they give us an MPEG. We don't care what software our freelance illustrators use when they give us an EPS. OUr writers can write longhand for all I care. Our programmers use BBedit. We like when photographers shoot on film and the lab scans it on Hasselblad gear with whatever software that uses. The last thing we want are creatives who claim to be "experts" in CS. Yes its true, and Adobe workflow is industry standard. We dont do standard work. We win awards and get the good stuff.

The update cycle is every 2 years, just like the transition from CS3 to CS4. You're always welcome to sit out the upgrade, some people just like the latest features. Did you throw a hissy fit when Tiger was released 18 months after Panther, Leopard 2 years after Tiger and SLeopard less than 2 years after Leopard? Or did you like getting the new features and faster operation? I know OSX is cheaper than CS, but the $600 update to CS is for 5 or 6 products. Compare that to the $200 you'd pay to upgrade Aperture + $ 200 to upgrade logic + $300 to upgrade Final Cut, and it doesn't seem so different, does it?


First of all, Adobe's update cycle is 2 years, and the Master collections is $900 to upgrade and includes 13 programs, plus the Bridge. That comes to about $70 per app, which is much less than upgrading Logic or Final Cut, and on par with most OSX updates. Snow Leopard was an exception to normal Apple pricing, mainly because it's more of a "Service Pack" fixing a lot of problems in Leopard than anything else.


Very funny.


I think most Lightroom users are very happy with it's workflow as a photograph cataloguing and developing program. (Hence the name Lightroom). Adding a bunch of extra features would take away that workflow. Photoshop is for deeper photo editing and manipulation. Keeping the 2 programs separate makes sense in the same way the Numbers and Pages are kept separate, even though lots of people stick spreadsheets into text documents; combining the 2 would slow down Pages from it's main use...

Also, John B.: You can buy Photoshop CS4 Standard, and not have the 3D editing features or the extra cost. 3D is only available in Photoshop CS4 Extended. I think we can assume Adobe will continue this product model as there are lots of folks who only work in 2D.

They bought and killed the competition. Why bother?

(If Illustrator is still not multi-cpu aware, I will kick something, hard.)

Wrong... most professional web designers use Photoshop then fireworks as a sub program. I've contracted for some very big companies... it's never been a question of what program to use for layout before CSS conversion. Photoshop.

Hopefully you have sent that request to Adobe, and not just to this forum?

For my line of work there is some competition: CorelDraw. It's PC only and it does technical drawing with dimensions VERY well. The whole Creative Suite focus on web oriented tasks makes it harder and harder for me to justify using Illustrator. If CorelDraw ever came back to the Mac, I would have to seriously consider it because of it's out of the box superiority in the areas of technical drawing.

I agree. Illustrator needs some attention. So much more could be done with it.

Photoshop is an awful program for layout, it's a photo editor with added features. I have no interest in getting into an argument about this but in my experience designers use Illustrator or InDesign for sketching out ideas.

awesome features.
looking forward to using Cs5

I wonder how flash will be more integrated within all of the software

I welcome puppet tool in Photoshop. For a long time it's been the only thing that keeps me using After Effects. Puppet Tool is brilliant! (It's been around for many years in After Effects, so calling it new technology is a bit going to far, isn't it?)

Brushes in Photoshop. Seriously? Finally? I thought Adobe was fundamentally AGAINST serious brushes. What took them so long? It's been around since I dunno... over 15 years in Corel Painter.
This is gonna be huge for illustrators.

ok I was a bit scared by the first half of the sentence...

Any word on about the video side of things? After Effects? Encore?

I am a pretty regular participant at Adobe's forums. I think they're well aware of Illustrator's single-cpu-ness.

Man you're really missing the boat if you aren't using photoshop for laying out websites. It's extremely powerful. All websites start off as rasterized... InDesign was never meant for websites... but do whatever works for you. It just isn't what the pros use for website layout and development.

I disagree with the folks who say Dreamweaver and Fireworks are irrelevant to web design. I do all my coding in DW and use Fireworks in place of PhotoShop because I can really see what I'm doing and the Javascript is very clean.

My beef with CS4 is that DW is not fully compatible with Snow Leopard and will not support file formats and add-ons such as those from Web Assist which are written in Cocoa and follow standards. When I wrote to Adobe about DW incompatibilities their awful support system (no single person but some sort of robotic thing) the answer was that it was Apple's problem. Meanwhile, DW lags behind and is slow, clunky, and can't handle PHP coding well at all. Fireworks should be more integrated with DW and I would love if they brought back Macromedia's cool ability in DW to correct broken links and see the functionality of your site in several different ways to validate it against Web Standards.

Sounds like they haven't updated DW or FW so that they keep up with whats happening on the Web. I've abandoned Flash because it is not 508 compliant and is a real resource hog.

I have to admit also that I use Photoshop Elements because it was $99 vs. the bloated price of PS which I can't afford. It works great.

A few years ago, when Adobe bought out Serious Magic, I was excited and hopeful that they would bring the vector keyer from Ultra to the Mac. So far, they only shipped a rebranded version of the Windows only Ultra with the CS3 release and then completely dropped it for CS4.

If the vector keying engine from Ultra is included in After Effects in CS5, I'll buy it. That all by itself will be worth the price of entry.

On the graphics and web side of things, I agree that there should be some more serious competition - especially on the Mac side. My go-to application has always been Canvas, but when ACD bought out Deneba, they killed the Mac version. The last version of Canvas made for the Mac will still run on Snow Leopard. I'm used to its quirks but it really kills me that it was discontinued for Mac, since I can get work done fast in Canvas.

If I had the cash, I'd buy Canvas back from ACD, tear it apart and fix the bugs I'm so familiar with and maybe buy the rights to the excellent but currently comatose TypeStyler and add those features to it. Oh, and I'd drop the Windows version out of spite. (OK, I wouldn't but I would enjoy thinking about it...)

You almost made me punch my beautiful Mac... and if there was a thing as location aware time travel... you'd be in some serious pain right now!

Sorry... but as bad as some things are with Adobe... they are a world of difference better than ANYTHING from C****!

So why am I so "violently" opposed to that company? Well I've wasted literally days of my life getting projects to print or RIP... or do anything with data sent to me from this un-Gawdly FU of a program. You name it, from EPS to PDFs, even JPGs are a mess... which is pretty friggin' hard to screw up.

Yes... the users on the other end are mostly to blame, with their love of "rainbow gradients" with Faux-3D text, and a solar-eclipse-like shadow... but hey, it's C****'s problem if they can't find a way to flatten the damn thing to make it usable for anything other than monitor-sickness.

Sorry buddy... I sure hope your not one of those types of users.... and yes C**** is a dirty word here in this studio!

PS: my cat took a look at me and jumped out the window... no kickin' that clever beast

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Oh man, I'd forgotten Canvas. I used it too and loved it. I was very upset when they dropped Macs as I also got a lot done with that product. TypeStyler was my other tool of choice and I miss it greatly. It would be cool to develop a suite of individual small tools that quickly build up the buttons, navigation bar, and user interface for websites. That's why I like Web Assist's products and am so frustrated that they won't run on CS4's Dreamweaver.

OK... after calling my cat back in and calming down some, I thought you (cygnusrk727) might like to see what kinds of software that C**** does produce for the Mac, and "it's" problems.

CGTalk Painter Thread
C****Painter Thread
ConceptOrg Painter Thread

Gawd forbid if they ever decided to try and port anything to the Mac again!!!

That guy is Russel Brown and he's the most competent fool you could get to speek about Adobe Photoshop. He knows his voice is wacky and yes he plays it up. But he knows more about that program than most people could ever dream of.

Is Adobe adopting Apple's philosophy of releasing same product annually with few new features at the same price? I just got CS4 and now its CS5 coming.

I too am an old school designer. The last two years I was at college was when Macs were first being accepted as actual tools for print design. Web design, what was that? Still just a sparkle in Al Gore's mind.

I have been doing web design for close to 10 years now and I don't know what was so wrong with tables and Photoshop and ImageReady? But apparently, those are all bad words now. So I agree with you 100%. Please, someone, anyone, come up with a program that allows designers to design and not have to learn code. My productivity will go up 100%.

Trust me. I'm no fan of CorelDraw. It's a big player in my field unfortunately, and it's advantages over Illustrator for scaled drawings, importing and exporting with cad programs, all at a better price point, is the only reason I would HAVE to switch. Adobe has done little to cater to this market requiring expensive third party plug-ins to do simple tasks. It's hard to justify paying twice as much for a program to your boss who would in all honestly like to see Macs out of the office.

All of your examples are for Painter. I never said anything about Photoshop. To be honest, in the field of print, which you keep alluding to, I would have thought the exclusion of CorelDraw was a forgone conclusion many years ago not needing of a tirade on a public forum. I can see why you are a cat person.

CS4 was released in October 2008. An April 2010 release date for CS5 would be consistent with the 18 months release schedule which Adobe seems to try to adhere to. Apple's release schedule differs by product.

My apologies for the tirade. Sorry... but if I see or hear the "Dirty Word" I freak seriously!

As to that "program" being excluded years ago... maybe in the US, but here in Germany, every sign, silkscreen, and film-cutting firm uses it. Most of these shops are mom-n-pop, and I don't want to belittle their efforts... but the problem is that they think that they are also "Advertising and Design" firms. I mostly get their hideous creations to adapt to packaging and the real design world, after their client realizes that they are not saving anything (like money), or being badly served by having their image and branding done be the equivalent of an auto mechanic.

End of rant... again... sorry.

PS: yes, I have heard that C**** excels in the CAD cross-over category. Good for them. Please stay away from print is all I ask.

PSS: pointing at the Painter threads was just meant to scare you from wanting them to do the same to Draw. Check out the problems Mac users have trying to install the program... and later run it. Sad, because Painter was originally written specifically for the Mac... until C**** got their hands on it.

Well... I guess on the positive side it's still being developed for Mac users... unlike Adobe flat out killing FreeHand.

I do feel your pain. It is the design aspects of Illustrator which I trumpet when the C-word is brought up from my superiors. I'm actually a member of a CorelDraw sucks group on facebook if that helps to make amends.

Pretty much the same here except my 'mom and pops' are little sign companies and or manufacturers working with ancient PCs with ancient copies of Corel Draw...or worse....

Enjoy a delicious German Hefeweizen for me.

Yeah I hope they do use Grand Central, and OpenCL too. If they don't.... then they are idiots.

See what happens when Developers follow standards, and use modern API's, you get kick ass apps.

I think Adobe needs to stop acquiring other companies for the time being, and concentrate on cleaning up their 20 year or so old codebase, and get bloody FLASH fixed/cleaned up.

http://blogs.adobe.com/keyframes/200...it_native.html

Looks like the end of 32-bit with Adobe After Effects. I didn't see anything about new features but here is where 64-bit is really going to shine. Time is money and these under-the-hood improvements in CS5 are a real reason for me to upgrade.

They should stop using their damn home baked slow as molasses installers, Use Apples Installers, and stop spewing their private Frameworks and other bits, all over the place on users Hard Drives. And put all "Adobe related" preferences in an "Adobe Folder" too.

They are just damn lazy. I would hate to see their build process, its probably over complicated, and convoluted. No wonder so many weird bugs turn up in Adobe Software (yes Flash the finger is pointed at you).

I love how all the little kiddies are so knowledgeable about professional design. Pretty easy to pirate a copy, try it out for 15 minutes and then dismiss it as a piece of crap. After reading all the comments in this thread, it's pretty clear that having a rational discussion about CS5 or Adobe products of any flavor would be pretty much impossible here... sayonara whiners.

Yes. thats another thing. This should have been done AGES ago. There should not be a separate Middle East capable version, There should only be one version that Does ALL languages including Right to Left ones. In this Age of Unicode, and Cocoa etc... there is no excuse not too, except to rip people off. Middle Eastern Just works out of the box in Apple Products (even iTunes)... So get cracking Adobe. Microsoft Office, is another major offender. This is an Issue that has pissed me off for ages

You're right.

Does that mean you are taking your flattened PSDs and storming off for home too?