Corrosive Online

Adobe CS5 Launch

Introduction

Adobe have been at the cutting edge of design software since the first release of Photoshop 20 years ago. They snapped up Macromedia in 2005 adding software such as Dreamweaver, Flash, Coldfusion and Flex to their portfolio and finally the 'Master Suite' was completed with video editing and effects software packages including Premiere and After Effects

Adobe have made a big song and dance about their new CS5 suite of software. There have been reports, videos and other teasers all over the web, probably a concerted effort not to repeat the luke-warm reaction they got to their CS4 suite launch in 2008.

The format of the 'Global Online Launch' had some of the Adobe boffins give their top five new features of each product. In a not-so-subtle homage to this format I thought I'd pick out the five features from the launch film that made me go 'Wow'.

Photoshop Content Aware Fill

This particular feature of Photoshop CS5 looks like bona fide magic. You have always been able to cut things out of photos using Photoshop and the results have got better and better whilst getting easier to achieve with every new release. The problem has always been how to plug the gap that is left behind. With Content Aware Fill, Adobe has deveoped a feature that can take the background of the rest of the photo and create the rest of the image, filling in the gap left by your cutting out.

I'm not sure if it was the particular images that they have chosen for the various online demos of this feature but it doesn't half seem to work. The software cleverly works out angles and orientation of background items to make sure that the newly created section of the image flows seamlessly. Combined with the Smart Edge Detection feature that was also given a demo in the launch film it should put a final stop to painstakingly going round an object with the 'Magnetic Lasso' tool. Perfect for cutting your ex out of your favourite snaps after a messy divorce!

Flash CS5 iPhone packager

There has been some tough talking between Apple (creators of the iPhone) and Adobe in the last couple of months. Apple iPhones do not support Flash as Apple say that it is power hungry and not up-to-scratch for its products. They go on to say that "applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++ or JavaScript", and prohibiting "intermediary translation or compatibility layers".

So it was a little bit of a surprise to see Adobe choose the iPhone packager as one of the key features to shout about in the CS5 launch. This will either force Apple's hand (with an almighty shove from the design community) or lead to the longest software/hardware cold war in history. That said, if Adobe prevail and force Apple's hands on this one then the iPhone packager looks like a winner. The software will even emulate hand-held devices to get good feedback on how a Flash application will look and run.

Dreamweaver Discover Button

When a website is created using a CMS (Content Management System) as its basis, the obvious problem is that the component elements of a page, header, footer, sidebar, navigation etc. are broken up into separate pages. This means that it is hard to get an overall view of how the layout looks unless you are building the website 'live' or running a local Apache server.

Realising the way that many websites are now built using CMS such as Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress, the Discover Button will allow the user to look at all the component pages and to view all of the parts of the CMS as one page in Live View. This should eliminate the need for designers to have multiple programmes running or to build 'on the fly' on hosted web space.

Dreamweaver Browserlab Integration

Browserlab has been around for a little while now but Dreamweaver CS5 boasts full integration for the little tool that should finally see the end to running lots of browsers on one machine. Browserlab will faithfully reproduce a design exactly as it would look on most of the popular web browsers used today. I was also pleased to see IE6 on Windows XP on the list for obvious reasons!

The software also allows you to line up two browser renderings side-by-side and even use what they call an 'Onion View' to show the browser renderings in overlayed layers to really weed out those tricky cross-browser differences.

Illustrator Perspective Drawing

The Perspective Drawing tool allows you to create a perspective grid on the page and then create a perspective illustration based on that grid in a matter of minutes. You can adjust the perspective, height and vanishing point of the grid and also move it about on the page until it is just right.

Once you have the perspective as you want it any tools, shapes, fills and so on are mapped to that perpsective grid to allow the easy creation of a perspective based 3D image.

Conclusion

It doesn't look like CS5 will hit the UK until mid May so I guess we'll have to sit back and wonder if it really is going to be as ground-breaking as Adobe say. I guess that also gives us time to fully understand the impact of the Apple/Flash row.

The price? Well... The Master Suite is looking at being just shy of £2,300 in the UK. Nearly 25% more than the release in the US. I could rant on about how we get ripped of for software and hardware in the UK but I'll save that for another day.

Hopefully there will be a full review of the web and design parts if the CS5 release coming soon.

Check out this competition to win a copy of Adobe CS5 Premium Edition: Graphic Design Forums - Competition

Advertisements If you would like to advertise on Corrosive Online then get in touch through my Contact Page for details. If you have found anything on this site useful or entertaining or you have enjoyed one of my Online Web Design Lessons then I would love you to make a donation. Use the Paypal button below to make a donation.