Graphic + Web Design

New Features of the New CS4

September 29, 2008 September 29, 2008 Adobe has announced the release of the new version of the Creative Suite, CS4, with exciting updates to all of your favorite tools. So I’m sure you are dying to find out what’s new and whether or not it’s worth the upgrade. For the quickest overview, head over to Computer Arts magazine. They have summary pages on Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, and Illustrator. You can also find video information over at Adobe TV. There’s a few interesting things about this release. For example, the Web Premium package now includes Soundbooth, Adobe’s audio editing tool. Probably to give Flash users more sound editing capabilities. Flash will feature a new timeline that’s geared towards programmers and a new motion editor panel. Motion Tweens now get applied to objects rather than keyframes. Flash also has a new Inverse Kinematics features for character animation as well as new 3D transformation tools. Photoshop is all about non-destructive editing here, with a new Adjustments panel. Photoshop CS4 now takes full advantage of 64-bit processing and has some incredible new 3D capabilities. Deke McLelland has a great overview of Photoshop CS4. There are some cool upgrades to Illustrator. The program now (finally) supports multiple artboards for a single document. This is something Freehand has been doing for years. There is also a new Blob brush tool that makes filled vector shapes while you sketch. InDesign has new Flash capabilities to output SWF content from InDesign documents and a new Live Preflight tool to preflight documents on the fly. The entire Creative Suite has been re-engineered for overall tighter integration amongst the applications. You can pre-order CS4 now from the Adobe website, with an expected delivery of mid-October.