FourBux

Creative Suite Three

I recently purchased and installed the new Adobe Creative Suite, CS3. First off, I have to say, that this new collection is amazing. It seems like Adobe finally hit the nail on the head when it comes to the interaction between the applications. Being able to to do a real drag-and-drop from Illustrator to Photoshop to InDesign, etc, has made my work life at least seem faster. The fact that the suite is built for the Intel based Macs alone speeds everything up, but I’ve also begun to really appreciate the design of the applications themselves. It always struck me that for a set of applications used primarily by designers, the GUIs themselves were a bit kludgy. The new interface in each application is clean, crisp, and, dare I say, pleasant to look at.

Although I’m not a huge fan of the new tool panels in the suite, I think I could eventually get to the point where I will like them. They replace the palettes from the previous versions, which of course, have been around since the beginning, and are easier to see and use. For some reason, Photoshop still calls them palettes, I can’t decide if that’s a throwback to the previous versions, or if it was just overlooked during the recoding of the CS3 version.

Even Flash seems like it’s easier to use, although I’m not sure if thats because my attention span is greater now than when I last tried to learn it, or if they have made some advances in the way it works. For one thing, art dropped in from Illustrator actually looks like the art I created, not some watered-down impression of the illustration as it did before. That was always a major frustration in the earlier versions, and alone could change my perception of the functionality.

At any rate, aside from the fact that many of my print vendors are still back at the CS1 versions (due to some issues at the RIP stage – in CS2, which I heard have been fixed in CS3), I am whole-heartedly on board with the new applications. With new software, I always say that I can’t imagine how they could make these apps better, or do more things, or streamline the processes even more, and I’m saying it again.

At least, until CS4 comes out with a whole new set of bells and whistles I didn’t know I needed, and then I’ll start all over again.