Adobe CS5 Launches Today!
This is a major update from Adobe’s CS4, released in Fall, 2008. Since CS4, Adobe has aquired a few companies and beefed up their design and development tools. If you are a marketing or design company with development or design staff, be prepared to get requests for the CS5 packages. They range from $2599.00 for the CS5 Master Collection ($899 to upgrade) to $1299.00 for the cheapest, Design Standard package ($499 to upgrade), which only includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, and Acrobat 9 Pro along with the usual Adobe Bridge and Device Central.
There are a lot of videos circulating the internet right now on new features for Photoshop. Most notably, masking is made much easier, color picking, and cloning are also improved. Besides the usual program advancements, Adobe has aquired some new patents and companies. They have introduced some very exciting web and mobile advancements setting it above CS4. The two most exciting advancements appear to be a connectivity and development feature which allows Flash developers to create apps for the iPhone and iPad. Also included is an online marketing suite which should improve workflow from website design, development, and finally web marketing. In addition, they are finally supporting 64 bit computing which should enhance and speed up workflow. We’ll put the new software through it’s paces then we’ll update you and let you know if it’s worth the hype and expense.