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Software Preview
First Look: Adobe Creative Suite 4
9/23/2008
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Adobe debuted Creative Suite 4 Tuesday, with all-new versions of its major development, design, publishing, and video/motion graphics applications, along with new and modified pricing and licensing schemes for both K-12 and post-secondary education. We have a inside look at the new features in the core design and Web applications, along with preliminary findings based on a pre-release of the Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.
In this Creative Suite 4 preview, we'll take a close look at some of the key applications in the suite, sketch out some of the changes in the other applications, and explain new education licensing plans. For this preview, I won't get into the new versions of After Effects of Premiere Pro but will save those for another time.
Now, Adobe's Creative Suite is the centerpiece of just about every specialized creative professional's collection of critical tools, but its use in education spans just about every niche in an institution--from classrooms to Web departments to administrative centers. It's used for campus publishing, for Web development, for videography, for graphic design, for podcasting, and much more. Adobe's software is also becoming more important in application development--also of significance to a number of education institutions--which is reflected in some of the new features in Creative Suite 4.
Historically, Adobe's major Creative Suite updates--timed at about 18 months apart--have contained a few blockbuster new features, along with hundreds of minor revisions designed to improve workflow or enhance pre-existing features. In Creative Suite 3, which debuted almost 18 months ago to the day, Adobe undertook the additional challenge of integrating the former Macromedia applications--Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks--into the fold. Now Creative Suite 4 follows largely this historic formula but with a much more meaningful effort not only to bring the former Macromedia applications further into the fold, but to give them some long-needed overhauls and even a few new blockbuster features themselves.
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver CS4 is a prime example of this last statement. Until now, Dreamweaver had been on something of a downhill slide, in my personal experience, since version 3. Dreamweaver MX was clunky and buggy, and subsequent releases didn't do much to improve the situation.
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