CS4: It's Here

Every once in a while, a company comes out with a product release that becomes iconic. You know, the one that everyone talks about; the one that you need to have. Other versions, then, become more like the filler in between—with a stability enhancement here, and a feature addition there; still deserving of a legitimate +1 to the version release, but nothing groundbreaking. It is those landmark versions in between that seem to mark time and innovation. Well, CS4 just might be one of those releases. In Adobe's own words, this is "the biggest launch in the company's history."
So, what do they bring to the table that's so compelling?

Well, starting with Dreamweaver, they have added features that any web designer would be ga-ga about. Writing a tutorial on html, I have termed Dreamweaver an "option," not a "necessity." This new release is really putting the screws to that comment. More and more it may have laid down it's street cred as "da bomb-digiddy."

The first feature, and most "visually" obvious one, is the split-window . . . going vertical. Yep, instead of viewing your code above while viewing the design below, you can now view them in left and right panels, back-to-back. I love it! I've never liked the horizontal, top-and-bottom, layout.

Second, is the "live" preview now available. Built on the most standards compliant browser, "webkit," (for the un-initiated, this is the same browser engine that Safari uses) it allows you to view the site, in all of its functional glory, "live" right in the design window. Even better, the code updates, as the mouse interacts with the preview. That means the effects of rollovers can be seen in realtime via the code. How neat is that?!

Finally, contextual information about any given element. Translation: click on an element and all of the CSS styling rules are given for that element. From there you can drill down to the specific attribute that you want to change, and there it is in code view for you to edit. Talk about making things super-fast and much more manageable. All that CSS inheritance? Not a problem.

Now to a program which has a soft spot in my heart: Illustrator. Feature #1 - Multiple artboards. Feature #2 - multiple documents open in tabs. I like :o) And feature #3 - the "Blob Brush". This is a tool that allows you to paint like you would with a paintbrush. It then translates the blob of painted shape into a path. But even more, it allows you to also "erase" like you normally would in photoshop, and it updates the path accordingly. Same behavior when you add to it by painting more on. Way too cool.

Flash also has its set of new, cool, features like the addition of armitures to manipulate images. This is simply adding "bones" to shapes and objects in such a way that you can bend them. The example used was the image of a person. Using the appropriate tool, they clicked and dragged, click and dragged, until they had a manniquin-like set of segments which they could then bend in kind to make the character wave, jump, and so on. Then, there are some after-effects like tweeking capabilities for 3d effects and animations. All good stuff. (See it in action, at Adobe TV; look for "Adobe CS4 Launch Broadcast")

And now, finally, to the main event: Photoshop. Did they bring anything to this well-established product worthy of writing home about? Oh, absolutely. Don't lose your lunch, because its gonna be a wild ride!

The first thing that I would like to highlight is the GPU accelerated performance. In layman's terms, this means that Photoshop will now utilize your graphics card, as well as your processor to increase performance. For those of you who are like me, and have recently purchased a macbook pro, it means that you will now be tossing that impressive NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card into the fray, to be measured alongside your core 2 duo chip, as part of Photoshop's performance horsepower.

Second, is something called "Content-Aware Scaling." What this little jim-dandy does is scales an image, when you are cropping, to maintain all of the important elements, or focal points. Think of it in terms of scaling down an image from a regular-view webpage where screen real estate isn't an issue, to one more suited for a mobile device display, while keeping all of the good stuff. An example is below:



Third, is a whole array of interesting features under the category of 3D. Many of them are under Photoshop Extended, so if you're in the market right now—something to consider. One of these 3D features allows you to stitch together photos, attatch them to a sphere object, and then have the ability to pan around a 3D space, as though you were in the center of the room. "Yes, intriguing." For sake of sanity, I won't go over all of these features, but you can check them out in the videos below, from Adobe:

There was also some talk of "non-destructive" cropping and editing thrown around, as well.

CS4 Suites will be available for purchase November 1st. If you have any more input regarding CS4, let me know, and I'll post it. Or feel free to comment. Now go out there, and be Creative!