The Creative Suite from Adobe has become a staple for all graphic artists and designers. It is the standard in most creative services offices and departments. Adobe recently released an update to their Creative Suite package with the latest CS3. One of the most anticipated announcements was which products would remain after the merger of Adobe and Macromedia. In the previous Creative Suite, Adobe provided both software products but the combination or elimination of some of these products was imminent. Overall, Creative Suite 3 is divided into three categories more specific to different industries: web, print and video post production. Adobe will offer the different version of standard and premium for each of these categories. In general, there isn’t anything revolutionary but Adobe made some adjustments to improve the current products, provide a uniform interface and better ability to jump between programs and use them all together.
In the Web professional version of Creative Suite 3, you receive Dreamweaver CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, Fireworks CS3, Contribute CS3 and Acrobat CS3 Professional. The merge of Adobe and Macromedia so far is an even split. Half of these software products are Macromedia and half are Adobe. They did a wonderful job of providing the strongest tools available. One of the greatest additions to this suite is Flash CS3 Professional which has always been missing from Adobe’s Creative Suite packages.
After you complete the lengthy (which is expected for this much software) installation process, you’ll notice a new look to the interface. Adobe has tried to make the different products more uniform with new icons which have a two letter identifier on them. Adobe began the process of integrated all the products but have done an excellent job of tying them all together so it is simple to edit graphics or text in the appropriate program and then easily return to the program you were in.
One of Macromedia’s flagship products, Dreamweaver, is included in the software package. Adobe GoLive has been dropped. Dreamweaver has also been more common so this comes as no surprise to most people. Dreamweaver itself didn’t change too much in CS3. The biggest change is probably the addition of AJAX programming language capability. AJAX is becoming a more common web programming language and the latest Dreamweaver now supports it. There is also better integration with Photoshop which was missing before the Adobe/Macromedia merger.
The majority of the other programs didn’t change a whole lot besides a few additional features but again, no major changes. The programs each have a little different feel to them, mostly minor appearance changes. Photoshop is the only application that allows you to change the interface back to one you may be more familiar with. Version Cue and Bridge are the only two that had major redesigns but their basic functions are still the same. Overall, the biggest change and most exciting improvement is its integration among all the products. Adobe still reigns in the graphic design arena.
I have tried my hands on new Dreamweaver cs3 few weeks back and its great, addition of “spray” makes some part of designing easy and best part is that its now more stable and doesn’t crash frequently as ver. 8
Another change that I noticed was in the flash embedding javascript, its better now.
Comment by Mohd. Hashim Khan — May 26, 2007 @ 1:24 pm