Adobe Creative Suite 5 Brings Sexy Back

Adobe will unveil its new Creative Suite 5 on Monday April 12th at 8AM PDT, just a few hours from now.

You can catch the official launch online here, however, if you can’t wait, we’ll be revealing all the juicy details before the official launch… right now!

The Adobe team kindly invited us to an exclusive sneak peak demo of Creative Suite 5 and they also provided us with a pre-release copy for this review.

In this post, we’ll be sharing some of the highlights of each application in this exciting new release, with some detailed info on the new applications. We’ll also discuss whether we think CS5 is worth upgrading to or not.

That being said, get ready to be amazed… there are tons of new features to get excited about in this release.

Overview

There are five editions of Creative Suite 5: Web Premium, Production Premium, Design Standard, Design Premium and the Master Collection. Adobe decided to drop Web Standard as web developers seemed to mainly purchase the Premium version.

Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects in CS5 are available as 64 bit (including both Windows and Mac). This will dramatically increase performance across these products.

Creative Suite 5 introduces over 250 new features. There are all-new versions of fourteen point products (all products except Acrobat Pro), and there’s a brand new product called Flash Catalyst, which is included in all of the editions except Design Standard.

Flash Builder 4 (previously Flex Builder) is now also bundled with the Design Premium and Master Collection editions.

Adobe is also introducing CS Live, a collection of online services that work within the CS5 applications. The services are designed to help you speed up your productivity and make it easy to collaborate with others on your projects.

Adobe has centered this release around the fact that with CS5 you can create amazing work, and deliver it virtually anywhere across all types of media, furthering the reach and impact of your creations.

CS LIVE

In addition to its regular applications and the new Flash Catalyst, Adobe is also introducing four new online services to accelerate workflow and to make collaboration with others more efficient and more professional. Here are the services and their main features:

Adobe CS Review
With CS Review, you can complete a creative review in three simple steps. First, you create a review from within Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or Adobe Premiere Pro. Second, with just a few clicks, you share the review online with clients or colleagues. Third, you view reviewers’ comments right in the desktop application from which you initiated the review—directly in the context of your work.

Acrobat.com
ONLINE WORKSPACES: No need for email anymore, as you can now set up a central online Workspace where your team can access documents, layouts and artwork.
ADOBE CONNECT NOW: Meet live over the web with your team or clients and share your screen with anyone.
ADOBE BUZZWORD: An online word processor where you can co-author copy for use in InDesign layouts as well as proposals, reports and any other docs.

Adobe BrowserLab
See how your web pages will appear in different browsers and operating systems. BrowserLab works by taking screenshots of your web pages in different browsers, and then displaying them directly in the BrowserLab window. You can preview a page in a single browser or compare the page in two browsers side by side as well as overlay options such as onion skin.

SiteCatalyst NetAverages
The service gives you insight into the latest Internet usage trends on browsers, operating systems, and more. Includes up-to-date aggregate data on critical factors that affect your designs, such as browser type, operating system, mobile device profiles, and screen resolutions.

Adobe Story
As a screenwriting tool, Adobe Story enables you and your colleagues to write and edit scripts online or offline from virtually any location. To help you organize your work and manage your projects, Adobe Story displays all your scripts, character biographies, reference links, and free-form documents in one place.

Flash Catalyst

The addition of Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5 seems to be an attempt by Adobe to bring designers back to Flash. As Flash evolved from an animation tool to software that creates rich Internet applications, many designers have complained about its increased complexity. This product seems to take things back to basics.

So what is Flash Catalyst? Using a very intuitive UI, it helps designers publish SWF files or Adobe AIR applications without writing any code. The project files can then be delivered to developers to add further functionality using Adobe Flash Builder, bypassing the need for designers to get involved in any coding.

You basically start your project by designing in Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks and then import your artwork into Flash Catalyst where you use menu commands to convert individual elements into functional interactive components such as buttons, sliders, and scrollbars. Flash Catalyst will write all the code for you in the background while saving the file in Flash Builder’s FXP format, ready to hand over to developers.

Is Flash Catalyst perhaps a way for Adobe to pull designers away from code based technologies such as HTML5, Ajax and jQuery?

The struggle between Adobe and Apple is well known with Apple’s reluctance to include Flash on the iPhone and iPad. As powerful as HTML5 can be, the power of Flash is undeniable and this product may cause a revival of Flash among designers, which could eventually force Apple to switch gears.

I believe that this is highly unlikely, however, a lot can be said about a strong determined group of designers who may just have enough collaborative power to force Apple to change direction. The suggestive name ‘Catalyst’ may be hinting at just that. As of today, Apple is the only mobile platform developer that does not support Flash.

Should you upgrade?

Ultimately, the decision of upgrading or not depends largely on your individual needs. However, in my opinion, the Creative Suite features enough groundbreaking features to force an upgrade at this time.

If that’s not enough, the power of the new online services alone (CS Live) would be worth an upgrade as this can really help streamline your workflow and save you tons of time.

I have listed the most relevant new features of each product below to give you a better idea of what the Creative Suite looks and feels like.

What’s New in Adobe Photoshop CS5

Photoshop CS5 redefines image editing with a strong focus on photography. With 20 years under its belt Photoshop has continued to evolve and with CS5, it brings not only evolutionary incremental changes, but what I believe are revolutionary new features that everyone is sure to use every day.

If you haven’t yet seen some sneak peaks of the new Photoshop features, such as Content Aware Fill and Puppet Warp, I’m sure your jaw will drop as you see it and wonder: “how did they do this?”

I was amazed by some of these features and thought that these things always seem to work well with the ideal photos used in the demos, but not in real life examples. But this is simply not the case here. After playing with some of these features in CS5, Photoshop delivers a remarkable job worthy of praise.

1. Complex selections made easier
Removing backgrounds has just become a whole lot easier. You can now make very accurate masks and selections much faster. The always tricky task of selecting hair is now a breeze using the refine radius and erase refinement tools.

2. Content-Aware Fill
This is probably the most exciting new feature in Photoshop CS5. Using this tool, image elements can easily be removed by having them automatically painted over with background details that are intelligently matched from the original image using a proximity match.

It’s super accurate and really feels magical beyond belief. This tool will probably become one of the most used tools in Photoshop from now on, with designers wondering how they ever managed without it.

3. HDR Pro and HDR Toning
Using multiple exposures of an image, you can combine them into a single high dynamic range (HDR) photo that keeps the full tonal range of a scene. With CS5, you get more control over the merging process and more power over the styling. The resulting images can be photo-realistic to highly surreal. This is a big improvement on HDR content merging in Photoshop CS4, which was not too good.

4. Mixer brush
The Mixer Brush lets you define multiple colors on a single tip, and then mix and blend them with the underlying hues on your canvas (similar to having a wet canvas), achieving creative results that rival traditional painting media.

Mixer Brush settings provide extensive control over the wetness of the canvas, the load rate to add paint to the brush, the mixing rate between brush and canvas colors, the angle of the brush and whether the brush is refilled, cleaned, or both after each paint stroke.

In the example below, you can start from a sketch (top), and use the new Mixer Brush and Bristle Tips to layer on colors to create a painting (bottom).

5. Puppet warp
Well, this one can truly be described as ‘magical’ as it’s simply unbelievable. The ‘puppet warp’ tool makes it possible to push and pull different elements of an image. In the image below, you can simply place ‘pins’ along the area you want to move and then simply move it in any direction.

6. State-of-the-art raw image processing
The Adobe Camera Raw 6 plug-on, which supports 275 camera models, provides you with excellent conversion of raw files. Remove noise with the new luminance and color noise reduction tools, achieve better quality sharpening, automatically correct common lens aberrations, and creatively apply new styles of vignettes and film-like grain. See the left example for the original photo and the right example after noise removal.

7. Automatic lens correction
This feature allows you to correct common lens-based errors: geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. Images are corrected with the Lens correction filter. Some lens profiles are included with the installation and there will also be a tool available at Adobe Labs to make your own custom lens profiles.

8. Dozens of workflow improvements
These are some of the improvements that Adobe implemented based on user feedback:

• Default value for Shadows/Highlights changed from 50% to 35%
• The ability to move a selection while the active layer is hidden
• A Neutral Density option is now available from the Gradient Picker presets menu.
• An on/off option for trackpad gesture support on Mac and in Microsoft Windows 7
• A new layer command for deleting all empty layers via scripts
• A Straighten button on the Ruler tool options bar
• A Close All Open Images Without Saving option
• A Save As option for always defaulting to the folder to which you last saved an image
• The ability to drag and drop a file onto an open Photoshop document to create a new layer
• Multiple improvements in Lens Correction filter options
• A new Cache Tile Size control in the Performance section of the Preferences dialog box
• Zoom in and out with the new scrubby zoom tool
• Presets for setting Cache Tile Size and Cache Levels simultaneously
• The ability to use keystrokes to set values in the Adjustments panel text fields
• Performance increases of up to 50% when importing OBJ files
• Sample colors faster using the new on screen color ring built into the eyedropper tool
• Customizable default values for Layer styles The Green/Magenta slider found in the updated Lens Correction filter dialog box provides great control over the manual correction of Chromatic Aberration. You can now simultaneously adjust the opacity of multiple layers.
• New creative resources, including actions, tools, presets, brushes, swatches, shapes, gradients, styles, and tool presets
• Window and Door shapes added to list of meshes that can be created from a layer
• An option for changing the opacity of multiple selected layers
• The ability to create a mask from the transparent areas of a layer
• Pick colors faster using the new on-screen color HUD
• Print settings saved with the image file, allowing one-button printing with user-selected values
• Selecting a printer automatically lists the profiles installed for that printer at the top of the profile list
• Printer-specific profiles are selected automatically when choosing a printer
• Customized print settings can be recorded as part of a Photoshop Action
• An overlay grid can be displayed when using the Crop tool
• Layer groups can be nested more than five levels deep
• New Paste Outside and Paste Inside commands, along with the previously existing Paste In Place option, are included in a new Edit > Paste Special menu

9. 3D extrusions with Adobe Repoussé (Photoshop CS5 Extended only)
You can now easily convert 2D artwork into 3D objects. This is great to extrude text for logos, for example, or 3D artwork.

10. Enhanced 3D realism (Photoshop CS5 Extended only)
Photoshop CS5 Extended comes loaded with a library of presets that you can use to enhance your 3D creations. You can also download more material, create your own or edit existing materials.

11. Better media management and Web Gallery integration with Adobe Bridge CS5 and direct access with Mini Bridge
You can now manage your content more efficiently with the new and updated features in Bridge CS5 software, with your assets being always available in Mini Bridge (a panelized version of Bridge), providing image access and management from within Photoshop CS5.

12. Easier interface management with the new Workspace Switcher and Live Workspaces
New Live Workspaces auto-save any changes you make to a task-specific workspace, so that if you switch to a different workspace and then back again during an editing session, your panels remain exactly where you left them.

What’s New in Adobe Illustrator CS5

Take advantage of exceptional new drawing tools to work in accurate 1-, 2-, and 3-point perspective. Control stroke width using finely adjustable width handles, and paint natural textures with a realistic new brush.

You can now build shapes by dragging your cursor to quickly combine, edit, and fill objects.

Multiple artboards can now be named, organized, and viewed more easily. Drawing behind and inside other objects is made easier with automatic masking and layer control.

Join paths with one keystroke, and use 9-slice scaling for better precision when scaling symbols.

1. Multiple artboards enhancements
Work on up to 100 artboards of varying sizes in one file, organized and viewed the way you want — overlapping or on a grid. Quickly add, delete, reorder, and name. Save, export, and print artboards independently or together.

2. Variable-width strokes. Arrowheads and dashes
Adjust stroke width interactively using new width handles. Precisely position arrowheads and symmetrically align dashes. Control stretch at any point when scaling art brushes on a path, and see how patterns behave beautifully at corners.

3. Art and pattern brush control
Define how art brushes scale along a path, choosing areas to stretch and areas to keep in proportion. Apply them to a path and get clean results, even at tight bends, corners, and uneven joins.

4. Shapebuilder Tool
Intuitively combine, edit, and fill shapes directly on your artboard. Drag your cursor across overlapping shapes and paths to create new objects and add color without accessing multiple tools and panels. Quickly unite, exclude, trim, and more.

5. Drawing in perspective
New grids enable drawing accurate scenes and objects that need the look of perspective. It’s now easy to create realistic depth on a 2D surface without needing to build horizon lines and guides from scratch.

6. Even more drawing enhancements
Work faster with everyday tools. Draw behind, disregarding stacking order. Draw or place an image inside, instantly creating a clipping mask. Join paths with one keystroke, see ruler origins at the upper left, and scale symbols with nine- slice control.

7. Natural painting with the Bristle Brush
Achieve the look of watercolors and other natural paint media with characteristics of a real brush, thanks to control over bristle length, density, stiffness, and opacity.

8. Tools for web and interaction design
Illustrator artwork for the web can now be quickly brought to life using the new Flash Catalyst CS5, whereby interactive experiences can be designed in Illustrator with actions added in Flash Catalyst, without writing any code.

9. Crisp graphics for web and mobile devices
Create vector objects precisely on the file’s pixel grid for delivering pixel-aligned artwork. Generate clean, sharp raster graphics by turning on Align To Pixel Grid and using text anti-aliasing options individual text frames.

10. Roundtrip Editing with Adobe Flash Catalyst
Take Illustrator designs into Flash Catalyst and create interactive experiences without writing code. Round‐trip editing allows you to perfect your vector art in Illustrator while preserving the structure and interactivity you added in Flash Catalyst.

What’s New in Adobe InDesign CS5

InDesign CS5 lets you bring your documents to life with pages that include interactivity, motion, video, and sound, without sacrificing control over typography or design.

Built-in creative tools and an intuitive design environment let you create stunning page layouts faster and more efficiently, allowing you to deliver a broad range of documents for print, online, and mobile devices.

New collaboration tools, production features, and interactive abilities help you to complete the most complex projects quickly and accurately and to connect your audience to your projects in innovative and memorable ways.

1. Access project assets easily through the Mini Bridge panel
Bring the power of Adobe Bridge CS5 directly into InDesign with the new integrated Mini Bridge panel, giving you quick access to your Bridge Favorites and image previews without leaving InDesign.

2. Streamline object selection and editing
Convenient new ways to select and edit frames, frame content, and even frame corners.

3. Add image information automatically with Live Captions
Easily create dynamic captions from a file’s metadata.

4. Combine different page sizes in one document
Streamline production by including gatefolds, smaller-size inserts, and other nonstandard page dimensions within the same document.

5. Manage page items with more control using the all-new Layers panel
Expand top-level layers to reveal a sublayer for each object, similar to functionality in Photoshop and Illustrator.

6. Format text to span across or split into columns on the fly
Reduce frame clutter and streamline layout tasks with these two oft-requested paragraph-formatting features.

7. Manage text edits with Track Changes
Enable the new Track Changes feature in any InDesign story to identify each user’s added, deleted, or revised text.

8. Speed up production by exporting PDF in the background
Export static PDF files without interrupting production tasks.

9. Interactive animated documents without writing code
Use the new Animation panel to apply motion presets and customize settings; preview the results before exporting to SWF.

10. Create multi-state objects that respond to reader’s actions
Make any image, text frame, or other object or group appear, hide, or change its look in response to clicks and rollovers.

11. Manage FLV and MP3 files with the Media panel
Preview and place FLV files, choose poster images and video controller skins, and set time-code markers so that button actions can navigate to specific points in a video.

12. Export to SWF
Exporting your project as a SWF file for playback in Adobe Flash Player.

What’s New in Adobe Dreamweaver CS5

Creative professionals can jump-start the design process with updated CSS starter layouts and leverage enhanced CSS features for increased control and creative flexibility.

With the expanded and more powerful Live View, designers can use the CSS Styles panel to create and edit CSS without writing code.

Simplifying the page design and testing process, Dreamweaver CS5 can visually display the CSS box model, allowing designers to interact with the code, or quickly toggle CSS properties on and off, with no separate browser-based utilities required.

1. Simplified site setup
Get up and running faster by allowing Dreamweaver CS5 to prompt you when it needs additional site-specific information.

2 Enhanced CSS starter layouts
With a simplified structure, the new CSS Layouts provide a solid, standards-compliant basis on which you can build your own pages.

3. Support for PHP-based content management systems
Go beyond static HTML and build your websites on third-party content management systems. Render your pages in Live View and test individual states of your applications.

4. Custom and site-specific code hinting
If you’re a developer focused primarily on writing JavaScript or PHP code, leverage the expanded custom code-hinting for your chosen framework, either
throughout the application or on a site-by-site basis.

5. Comprehensive CSS support
Reduce the need for third-party browser-based tools to visualize the CSS box model or to troubleshoot CSS issues by remaining within the Dreamweaver CS5 environment during the entire development process.

6. Integration with Adobe BrowserLab
Test your pages in multiple browsers in Adobe BrowserLab, a new CS Live online service. View actual states of dynamic pages and applications whether deployed on the web or in local development.

What’s New in Adobe Flash CS5

A powerful new text engine, expanded support for mobile and consumer devices, and enhanced coding tools are among the new features in Flash Professional CS5.

Offering integration with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects, and creating a design workflow that extends the potential of your interactive content across media formats, Flash Professional CS5 integrates support of Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR, and mobile authoring, allowing you to easily and consistently deliver interactive content, advertising, and video virtually anywhere.

1. New text engine
Set and edit text with brand new capabilities including print-quality layout features and bidirectional language support. Discuss how text elements imported from InDesign via XFL maintain fidelity.

2. XML-based FLA source files
Save uncompressed projects that appear like regular folders, allowing you to easily swap out assets and work collaboratively with others.

3. Easy and powerful coding
Use code snippets to add a variety of interactive elements and attributes to your projects with ease, and use code hinting to write ActionScript code with more efficiency and precision. Integrate directly with Flash Builder for authoring, debugging, and testing.

4. Spring for Bones
Add lifelike animation properties to your projects.

5. Video improvements
Quickly and easily incorporate video, and make the video content more meaningful by tying it into your content with cue points.

6. New Deco drawing tools
Quickly add graphical elements to your projects.

7. Distribute content virtually anywhere
Use the included Packager for iPhone preview (also included in the Adobe AIR SDK) to publish your ActionScript 3.0 content as AIR applications for iPhone.

New Product: Flash Catalyst CS5

Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5 software is an approachable new interaction design tool that lets you transform static artwork from Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks into fully interactive projects without writing code.

You can publish as SWF or Adobe AIR files, collaborate with developers who use Adobe Flash Builder software, and leverage the expressiveness, reach, and consistency of the Adobe Flash Platform.

Flash Catalyst is built with the designer in mind, combining an intuitive user interface and toolset that will feel familiar—similar to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks—with the expressiveness, consistency, and reach of Adobe Flash technology. The result: a feature-rich interaction design tool you can successfully use to publish SWF files without writing code.

1. Fully customizable components
Transform static content from Illustrator into functional interactive components with virtually any custom appearance.

2. Powerful layout tools
Use familiar tools and functions to adjust the layout of your design without having to learn or adapt to a new interface.

3. Roundtrip editing
Use Illustrator and Photoshop to adjust the appearance of interactive components, without damaging interactions or project structure.

4. Pages and states
Explore how basic concepts such as pages and states form the structure of interactive projects and components.

5. Smooth animated transitions
Easily define interactions that control how your content behaves when users interact with it. Use the Timelines panel to effortlessly create professional transition effects that glide smoothly across the screen.

6. Video and dynamic media
Wow your audience and incorporate high-quality video content into your project as easily as you would add artwork or a photograph.

7. Design-time data
Design and preview functional data lists and dynamically driven content by using mock data that simulates database connectivity.

8. Publish to SWF and AIR
Publish your interactive project as a finished SWF file or as a cross-platform desktop application via Adobe AIR.

9. Flash Builder integration
Open your Flash Catalyst project directly in Flash Builder and see how developers can get right to work on extending functionality while preserving the integrity of the design and interactions.

What’s New in Adobe Fireworks CS5

Improved performance, more precise control over the pixel placement of design elements, and a streamlined, accelerated workflow. Jump-start mobile projects with the correct specifications using device profiles in Adobe Device Central.

Import assets from Photoshop or Illustrator and export to PDF, HTML, CSS, or Adobe AIR.

Export your Fireworks designs in FXG format to Flash Catalyst CS5, where you can add interactivity.

1. Feature refinements
Get more work done in fewer steps. Based on feedback from users, Adobe focused this version of Fireworks on refining existing features in order to accelerate and streamline your design workflow. For example, now you can constrain object proportions, edit gradients, and adjust stroke alignment directly from the Properties panel. Also, enjoy higher quality and greater control of gradients, thanks to improved fidelity of gradients imported from Photoshop and Illustrator, a Gradient Dither feature for smoother gradients even with tighter compression settings, and a new control for swapping gradient stops.

2. UI responsiveness and performance
From launching Fireworks to opening panels to viewing context-sensitive information in the Properties panel, now you can work more smoothly, quickly, and confidently without interruption.

3. Cross-product integration
Enjoy improved mobile design workflows, including emulating your interactive designs, thanks to new integration with Adobe Device Central. Craft advanced user interfaces and interactive content using convenient workflows between Fireworks and the new Flash Catalyst CS5.

4. Document templates
Get a jump start on web, mobile, and application designs with professionally created templates included with Fireworks. Create your own design templates to reuse and share with others.

5. Type enhancements
Control and format text more easily with the enhanced capabilities of the Adobe text engine. Many new typographic features and enhancements are now part of Fireworks CS5.

6. Pixel-perfect precision
Produce designs more accurately and efficiently. Enhanced pixel precision helps ensure your designs look crisp and clean on virtually any device. Use the Snap To Pixel command to sharpen blurred edges or strokes on straight-edged vectors.

7. Vector tool enhancements
Create complex and editable vector shapes more easily with new Compound Shape tools. Quickly group multiple vector shapes as you draw, and apply nondestructive path effects such as Punch or Union.

8. Extensibility
Customize your workflows using simple JavaScript commands for batch processing.

What’s New in After Effects CS5

New native 64-bit support lets you tap more of your computer’s power to work efficiently with complex HD, 2K, and 4K projects.

Plus, innovative features—from the revolutionary new Roto Brush to dozens of subtle but important changes that streamline your workflow—enable you to create amazing motion graphics and blockbuster visual effects and deliver your work to the widest possible variety of screens.

With After Effects CS5, you can take advantage of all available RAM and processor cores to quickly craft complex 3D scenes and camera moves, work on large frames, and preview long, deeply layered composites.

1. Native 64-bit OS application
Benefit from the numerous advantages of working with a 64-bit application, including the ability to fully use all of your computer’s available memory.

2. Roto Brush
Isolate foreground and background elements in a fraction of the time of conventional rotoscoping.

3. AVC-Intra support plus expanded RED camera support
Import footage using the new AVC-Intra 50 and AVC-Intra 100 codecs, plus take advantage of expanded support for footage from RED cameras.

4. mocha for After Effects CS5 plus mocha shape
Track, mask, and perfect difficult composites with this powerful, greatly enhanced 2.5D planar motion tracker. Import shapes from mocha into After Effects using the mocha shape plug-in.

5. Auto-keyframe mode
Animate quickly by setting starting keyframes automatically.

6. Color Finesse 3 LE
Enjoy an enhanced color correction workflow with the new features in Color Finesse 3 LE

7. Color LUT support
Easily manage consistent color in your workflow by applying industry- standard color look-up tables (LUTs).

8. Digieffects FreeForm
Manipulate 2D layers into almost any shape using this popular 3D mesh warp plug-in.

9. Dozens of other enhancements
Benefit from dozens of customer-requested refinements that yield big productivity gains and smoother workflows.

10. Work with collaborative online services
Learn how to collaborate more efficiently using new Adobe CS Live online services for video professionals.

What’s New in Adobe Premiere CS5

The centerpiece of this exciting release, the Mercury Playback Engine lets yoeu work dramatically faster, even when editing complex timelines at high resolutions such as HD and 4K.

Industry-leading support for native tapeless workflows makes it possible to acquire video assets faster and with more flexibility, and expanded native format support helps ensure efficient, high-quality results with the latest formats, including RED R3D, XDCAM HD 50, AVCCAM, and AVC-Intra, as well as DSLR camera video formats.

Adobe Story, a new CS Live online service which is available separately, can accelerate production by turning your scripts into metadata-rich assets that can be used to create shot lists automatically in OnLocation.

1. Preproduction and on-set workflows
Develop and transform scripts into production-ready projects through integration with Adobe Story, a new CS Live online service*. Take advantage of the new script-to-screen workflow to accelerate on-set production, use OnLocation to import and log footage shot with tapeless cameras, and mark In and Out points in your OnLocation clips to form a preliminary rough cut when you bring them into Adobe Premiere Pro.

2. Editing workflows with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
Accelerate performance with the new native 64-bit Mercury Playback Engine. Play back and scrub through a complex, effects-heavy sequence. Use new editing enhancements and Ultra, the new high-performance keyer, to refine a mixed-format timeline that includes RED R3D, XDCAM EX, AVC-Intra, and DVCPROHD footage, as well as 1920×1080 video shot with a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera. Unparalleled integration with other Adobe creative suite software and the ability to import and export Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid projects let you use the unique tools in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and other Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium components, such as After Effects and Soundbooth, in every project.

3. Finishing and outputting engaging video experiences
Streamline client and team review and approval by taking advantage of how Adobe Premiere Pro can integrate with CS Review, another new CS Live online service. (Adobe CS Review will not be available for Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 when the software initially ships. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 users will automatically receive access to CS Review integration when it becomes available later in 2010.) Use new output options and metadata features in Adobe Media Encoder to gain more control over your content and streamline the encoding process. See how the new multipage menu feature in Adobe Encore CS5 gives viewers a smoother way to navigate your projects. Then, use Adobe Encore CS5 to deliver a searchable web DVD that uses metadata created during production.

What’s New in Device Central CS5

Adobe Device Central CS5 software simplifies the production of content for mobile phones and consumer electronics devices.

Now with support for HTML and the latest version of Flash Player, Adobe Device Central helps developers deliver engaging experiences to millions of mobile subscribers and consumers across an extensive range of devices.

1. Test with confidence on the latest devices
Use the online device library to browse device profiles that support Flash Lite 4 and Flash Player 10.1.

2. Author mobile content accurately
Create a new document optimized for a specific mobile device with Fireworks CS5.

3. Debug ActionScript 3 code
Test your content more accurately and help ensure high-quality results with support for debugging ActionScript 3.0 code.

4. Render HTML content
Use Adobe Device Central to preview SWF/FLV files embedded in HTML files, and HTML pages in general.

5. Test content with new device features
Test SWF content that utilizes features available on newer devices, including accelerometers, multi-touch screens, and geolocation services.

6. Use community-generated device profiles
Define your own device profiles for devices that aren’t available in the library, and comment on profiles defined by others

What’s New in Adobe Soundbooth CS5

In Soundbooth CS5, you can get projects off to a fast start with access to more than 130 royalty-free Soundbooth Scores and over 10,000 sound effects.

Work more efficiently by combining Soundbooth Scores, video, dialogue, and sound effects on multiple tracks, and easily view your entire project at once, or zoom in to work on specific clips. Improved multitrack workflows make it easy to move, copy, and clean up audio clips.

1. Edit multitrack projects easily
With new track-sizing options, it’s easier to work with multitrack projects. Combine multiple tracks of dialogue, sound effects, music, and ambient background sounds in your productions while keeping your creative focus. Copy, split, and move audio clips more intuitively with key commands.

2. Tap into Resource Central for sound design
Resource Central has been enhanced for Soundbooth CS5, making it easier to find music and sound effects for your productions. The selection of royalty-free Soundbooth Scores and sound effects has been augmented, and it’s now easier to audition clips, download them, and place them into tracks.

3. Find a Soundbooth Score that’s perfect for your project
Soundbooth CS5 gives you access to over 130 scores in nearly every musical genre, as well as ambient tracks that create dramatic soundscapes for your projects. Soundbooth Scores aren’t just static audio files; their sonic parameters can be adjusted to support the emotion of a scene, and they automatically adjust their internal structure accommodate length changes.

4. Collaborate and export
Save your multitrack project as an Adobe Sound Document (ASND) file, and open it directly in Adobe Flash Professional CS5, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, or Adobe After Effects CS5. Use the MP3 compression preview to get the results you need without having to go through a time-consuming trial-and-error process.

CS5 should be available for purchase around May 15th. You can follow the official launch at Adobe.com.

What do you think of the new features of CS5? Which one is your favorite? Will you be upgrading to CS5 when it’s released?

WDD Staff

WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there's something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.