Adobe CS5 Overview
On Monday, Adobe announced the launch of its Creative Suite 5 (CS5) software globally with a 62-minute presentation on all the new and exciting features that users can look forward to. It will introduce a range of new features for web designers/developers, video editors, graphic designers and photographers.
As with all previous releases of Creative Suite, CS5 will include updated versions of Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects and Dreamweaver, but this time they will include a new tool called Omniture, which will track the relative success of websites or articles that are created.
Most of the new features in CS5 will be for Photoshop and for Macs there will be 64-bit compatibility to greatly improve the performance of all the applications when it comes to editing larger files.
In this article I will briefly explain some of the new features that will be included in CS5 along with some video demonstrations of these features.
Photoshop
Photoshop will get the majority of the updates, which include Content Aware fill, Refine Edge, Puppet Warp, 3D tools, Repousse, a new paint engine and many more to look forward to.
Content Aware Fill
The most anticipated new feature for Photoshop is the Content-Aware fill. This new tool will allow photographers to have a lot more control over photos. It is very similar to the Spot Healing brush but Content Aware will do it automatically, saving a lot more time when editing photos. It makes it much easier to remove objects that you don’t want in photos with better calculation of the image behind each object.
Refine Edge
This is another very important tool for photo editors and artists who work with raw images. The refine edge tool allows for better fine-tuning of selections to include a lot more detail, especially when it comes to hair.
Puppet Warp
This tool allows users to adjust pictures of people to different poses using a distortion skeleton. It can also be used to create characters made of random imagery or creating new positions for trees and flowers.
Flash
Even though Photoshop had the most new features, Flash received a few subtle upgrades including Threaded Text, which allows users to have text span across various containers and Flash Catalyst, which is a new framework for Flash designers.
The most interesting Flash update will be the Flash to iPhone conversion, which will allow developers to create iPhone applications using Flash and the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit)
A few days before Adobe announced this new feature globally, Apple decided to make changes to their SDK license, which will no longer allow iPhone apps to be created using third party applications. This will mean that the new Flash to iPhone feature will be left in limbo and Adobe aren’t happy about this so they are considering to sue Apple in the next few weeks, but we will have to wait and see what happens.
Illustrator
The new incarnation of Illustrator features a perspective grid tool that will allow users to draw in perspective automatically. The grid can be easily adjusted and items can be moved to either side, but best of all, imported items can fit on the grid with no problem.
Illustrator CS5 also includes the width tool, which allows users to specify the width of a stroke at particular points by adjusting a few values.
Another great feature is the Draw Inside mode, which lets users draw inside shapes and automatically masks it to fit inside the shape. This also works for editable text making tasks that were complex before very easy to achieve.
InDesign
InDesign includes some new features, which allow text to span across multiple frames to keep layouts simple and keep the structure and a Gap tool, which keeps the gaps in between frames intact when adjusting frame sizes.
After Effects
The main addition to After Effects CS5 is the Roto Brush, which will allow users to easily isolate elements. Basically it allows the user to highlight and fine-tune areas quickly in a video where a frame should be isolated.
Dreamweaver
The new version of Dreamweaver will allow users to develop sites using content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. Also developers will be able to preview their sites without having to leave Dreamweaver by using BrowserLab and view their site in different browsers.
If you want to see more examples of these great new features then visit the Adobe CS5 Launch Event site and watch the videos.
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Posted By: Oli
I’ve been interested in web design for a while and I went to university to study a degree in media and graphics. While at university I developed my design skills using Adobe Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver and Adobe After Effects.
