articles/Review/cs5designpremium-page2
by Mike McNamee Published 01/02/2011
THE SUITES
As well as selling individual applications (of which Photoshop is arguably the best known), Adobe also bundled together 'suites' of applications targeted at particular types of users. Hence the Design Premium is aimed at designers whereas the Production Premium is aimed at those who create video content.
For those who need all types of output (print, web and video) the Master Collection provides the entire set of Adobe applications. Buying a suite saves a considerable amount over the purchase of individual applications (saving typically from 50% to 65%).
There is a certain amount of overlap between programs but integration across programs is one reason for the pre-eminence of Adobe in the field of creative imaging.
Although it is difficult to condense the various program capabilities into single-line bullet points, we have attempted to do so in the table. For example Photoshop can generate web-ready images, something that Fireworks specialises in. Photoshop has limited vector-handling capabilities which is something that Illustrator specialises in.
Photoshop has text-handling facilities but InDesign is expert in this. And so on! All we can hope to do in a review such as this is expose the reader to the tools that are available and point to likely uses. We have spoken of this before but it is worth repeating: the ability to shoot photographs and then provide added value by incorporating them into a designed page, then arranging for press-ready output files is a money spinner.
Today photographers are asked more and more to provide video content as well, utilising the HD capability of their dSLRs - more than ever we need to get to grips with Premier and Soundbooth! The education hill to climb is quite daunting, for not only do we have to get to grips with programs of equal or greater complexity than Photoshop, but we also have to educate the expectations of our clients - you cannot make a fully featured movie of Acme Engineering's widget on the back of an afternoon's still shooting. Mr Acme needs to be told this (and also perhaps that his daughter's broad, regional, untrained accent might not play well in a movie!).
PHOTOSHOP - THE KILLER FEATURES!
Photoshop needs no introduction to our readers. Many changes to both CS4 and CS5 are not immediately apparent - 64-bit operation does not change the look of the GUI! The ramifications are, however, profound, opening the possibility of limitless amounts of RAM being brought to bear on the job. On the downside, when you upgrade to 64-bit you may find that your favourite plug-ins no longer work (despite what the box says), some will be awaiting upgrades but a small number will be lost forever.
Most Photoshop users with legacy equipment also load the 32-bit version for running scanners and plug-ins. On the other hand some users are forced to upgrade so that they can open the RAW files of the newer SLR cameras.
Content-Aware Scaling
The buzzword for CS5 is 'Content-Aware' editing across a number of tasks and tools. It is a significant increase in functionality for many tasks. Jane Conner-ziser gave us a sneak peek for the October issue of Professional Imagemaker but the underlying technology pervades a few other areas including filling and cloning. The most useful thing that Content-Aware scaling can do is extend the image canvas, especially in page and album design when the aspect ratio of an image does not quite fit.
For magazine page design this most often occurs when it is desired to place a masthead over a portrait, if the photographer has not left a generous amount of space above the head you can be stuck - a front cover might not have been on their mind when they took the shot!
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