Driving to Designwyse and the Adobe® CS5 Seminar, I was wondering what new surprises Adobe had in store. Adobe Suite has been a standard in all Design, Prepress and Photography for many years. What could they improve on?

Well, there is an interesting array of enhancements in all areas. Firstly for Photographers RAW Processing using Camera Raw 6®, HDR setting such as fixing ghosting, HDR Toning, Lens Correction, sharpening, noise reduction, vignetting and selection composites.

Bridge® has introduced Mini Bridge for Photoshop and Indesign users, file linking, collection sharing and drag and drop capability between applications.

Photoshop® has Content Awareness Fill (this is a highlight), Puppet Warp (spider web grid), Smart Radius (for fixing difficult selection like hair), 3D Repoissè, rotate, twist, extrude, your artwork, improved brush tools, watermarking and Mini Bridge, plus 64-bit support for faster performance.

InDesign® has improvements such as different page sizes, layer grouping, Mini Bridge, aligning, image scaling and for web designers video and animation support, like timing, 3D and sound. Better text control, multiple file placement, table creation layouts and better object controls like the Gap tool and Donut fill, the list goes on.

Flash Catalyst® is new software which allows Photoshop, Illustrator and Firework users to combine files into interactive projects without writing code, love it!

Illustrator® has Perspective drawing which allow you to place vector elements on a 1, 2, or 3 point grid. Variable width for strokes, arrowheads and dashes, Draw inside tool, Joining tool, Shape building tool, multiple art boards, Flash Catalyst and Bristle brushes, all good!

For video Premiere Pro® offers 64 bit performance, Mercury Playback Engine, expanded tapeless workflows, camera and program support metadata enhancements.

After Effects® again 64 bit support, the Roto Brush for isolating backgrounds, better colour correction, motion tracking and 3D mesh warp.

Overall Adobe has been listening to their customers, with new improvements like the Content Awareness fill, Flash Catalyst®:, 3D Repoissè, Mini Bridge, the Roto Brush and improvements to sharpening, noise reduction, text, video and image support, I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. CS5 only works on Intel® Processor Macs.

Unfortunately I didn't see the changes to Dreamweaver® or Encore®. I'm sure they will be on the Adobe® site, together with more information on what I've already mentioned.

Thank you to Designwyse and Mike McHugh for putting on an engaging seminar and luncheon.

Geoff Pinney, Artisan Candidate

For more information regarding Adobe CS5, check out the latest online
cs5.org