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Provides: Depends upon which Suite you get, but may include: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, FireWorks, Acrobat, Soundbooth, Premier Pro, OnLocation, Contribute, After Effects, and/or Encore
Format: DVD
Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Varies by product/package (see Adobe's website for individual details)
Processor Compatibility: Universal
Price: Varies by product/package (see Adobe's website for all suite and individual software normal and upgrade prices)
As I predicted in my Acrobat 9 review, CS4 was soon to come. I was right; CS4 was formally announced on September 23, and it will be in our hands soon, very soon. I've been lucky enough to obtain a pre-release copy and have been pounding on it right and left to see what there is to see. Adobe has been maintaining their "about every eighteen months update," routine, but this time is breaking new ground by releasing 17 new programs all at one time. The problem with this type of approach is that there are a few features that seem rushed and not as developed as I think they should/could be, and will instead be "finished" with CS5, while other features that were presented with CS3 are now beautifully developed in CS4. While one can argue the pluses and minuses of this approach (and there are many arguments each way), one does have to sit back and continue to be amazed at how much Adobe does accomplish with each iteration of the Creative Suite suites and applications—that's both collectively and individually.
Note that the minimum OS for this release is Mac OS X v10.4.11 and that one needs a G4 Mac, but some of the movie related software titles do require an Intel processor minimum. In addition, the movie software also requires a minimum 1280 x 900 display, meaning that only a MacBook Pro (either 15 or 17 inch) can use the cinema products. Otherwise, even a G4 (with the proper OS) can run CS4.
One other dynamic is the reliance on OpenGL for many of the applications. OpenGL is an industry standard for high performance graphics. What this means is that rather than requiring your computer's processor to both crank out what you are doing to a document and also how to display it, now the software relies upon your computer's video card to do the display work. However, this will disappoint those with older computers: you will find the OpenGL features grayed out and not available. Thus, some of the new features in products such as Photoshop either may not work at all or may not perform as well as you'd want. If you have an older Mac Tower where you can easily (and relatively cheaply) replace the video card, you have options. If you have a Powerbook or iMac who's card is not up to snuff, you either live without the features or use this as an excuse to get a new Mac. I've never paid that much attention to the video card on my computers as I always associated them with games that I do not play. Ironically, it's those "game card" users that will have the easiest time with any program that has OpenGL options. One quick note: if you have an Intel Mac, you should be fine.
Suite/Program Breakdown
First off, all Suites provide the following programs:
Suite Default Applications |
| Bridge |
| Device Central |
| Adobe Media Player |
| Version Cue (but not with Production Premium) |
| Dynamic Link (Production Premium only) |
For those who do both print and web work:
CS4 Design Suite |
|
| Standard $1,399 new, $499 upgrade |
Premium
$1,799 new, $599 upgrade |
| InDesign | InDesign |
| Illustrator | Illustrator |
| Acrobat 9 Pro | Acrobat 9 Pro |
| Photoshop Standard | Photoshop Extended |
| Dreamweaver | |
| Flash | |
| Fireworks | |
For those who do mostly web work:
CS4 Web Suite |
|
| Standard $999 new, $399 upgrade |
Premium $1,699 new, $599 upgrade |
| Dreamweaver | Dreamweaver |
| Flash Professional | Flash Professional |
| Fireworks | Fireworks |
| Photoshop Extended | |
| Illustrator | |
| Soundbooth | |
| Acrobat 9 Pro | |
For those who do video work:
CS4 Production Premium |
| $1,699 new, $599 upgrade |
| After Effects |
| Premiere Pro |
| Photoshop CS4 Extended |
| Illustrator |
| Flash CS4 Professional |
| Soundbooth |
| OnLocation |
| Encore |
And, for those who either don't have a life (or want bragging rights)
CS4 Master Collection |
| $2,499 new, $899 upgrade |
| InDesign |
| Photoshop CS4 Extended |
| Fireworks |
| Acrobat 9 Pro |
| Dreamweaver |
| Contribute |
| After Effects |
| Premiere Pro |
| Photoshop CS4 Extended |
| Illustrator |
| Flash CS4 Professional |
| Soundbooth |
| OnLocation |
| Encore |
Needless to say, you can also purchase any of these applications separately. However, if you use any two of these products, chances are you would be wise to select a full suite. In the grand scheme of things, you'll be money ahead.
Now a bit of overview perspective:
One of the big, unifying experiences initiated with CS3 was the new OWL interface (OWL = Object Widget Library). Out were palettes, in were panels. When you add to the fact that not only was Adobe unifying the interface of all of their applications, they were also unifying the interface of all of the (newly acquired) Macromedia applications as well...trust me, this was no small task to do across the applications of two different companies across two different operating systems (or, four, if you want to think of Mac OS PowerPC, Mac Intel, Windows XP and Windows Vista), plus umpteen-gazillion languages. That was pretty good. But as mentioned in the first paragraph, parts of the UI were obviously first versions. For example, with OWL1, we couldn't open up two closed panels at one time—now, we can. Before, we couldn't pull out a collection of panels and keep them all together—now, we can. But things have expanded in new ways so that now we can have tabbed documents and n-up views of our documents. In short, OWL2 is upon us.
While we usually expect some new UI (User Interface) tweaks with new software, get ready for something very different with CS4. And, when we Mac users turn this new feature on, things will be very, very different. Probably the biggest change in OWL2 are "Application Frames." Surprisingly, when you first open CS4 applications, you will be wondering where they are. As it turns out, Adobe chose to turn them off and let Mac users chose to turn them on. Probably the biggest reason for this is there is a somewhat of a "PC ambiance" to Application Frames. Some will love Application Frames, some will hate them, and the rest will find them handy for some dynamics and workflows and a PIA in other dynamics and workflows. My guess is that if you often use the Full Screen mode (the "f" key) in programs like Photoshop, than you will probably find Application Frames spectacular. If you don't use the Full Screen mode all that much (or not at all), you might find the Application Frame okay for some uses, less so for others. The good news is that on the Mac, you can shut this off. The PC users cannot. Below is a screenshot of Photoshop CS4 with the Application Frame turned on. [To turn the Application Frame on or off, you need to look for the option in the Window menu. It's location in the Window menu varies from application to application.]
Click on the image above for a full size view.
First and foremost, the issue that will spring forward the most when you turn on the Application Frame is that the image, the tools, the panels, the Tool Options, and a new Application Bar are all one solid drag-aroundable unit. As opposed to the grow-corner on the bottom right of each window, there is now one on the bottom-right of the Application Frame so you can resize the whole thing if you want. However, it's probably better if you let it take over your entire screen. Also part of OWL2 are tabbed documents. If you want, you can drag an individual document off of the tabbed interface so that it is free-floating. The programs do not care, and you might find the ability to simply click around your documents to be very handy and convenient, and, for the most part, it is. Curious things can happen, however such as if you pull a document off a tabbed set then click on the Application Frame, the image will then be behind the Application Frame and is out of sight. Fortunately, you can easily access the image by simply selecting it at the bottom of the Window menu. A rather clumsy solution (albeit easy) to a problem that probably shouldn't exist. One of the other dynamics that OWL2 provides is seen just above the image where I've scrolled down to display the blank canvas. In previous versions of Photoshop, you could only scroll to the edge of the image. Now, depending on your zoom, you can go to the edge of the image and beyond.
However, the keenest eye will observe that each tabbed document above does
not display the Mac OS headlights; those red, yellow, green buttons that one
can close, minimize, or shrink the document or window. You will see them now
attached to the Application Frame itself. To close a document that is tabbed,
there is a small "x" on the right side of any tab. Click on that
and the image will either close or asked to be "saved or no" before
closing. One thing we lose with this approach is the ability to look at the
red dot and see if the document has been saved. A trick that's built
into the Mac OS is that when a document has been changed, there is a small
black dot in the middle of the red dot. 
When
the document is saved, the red dot is solid red. If you are using the Application
frame, that dot within a dot is now document linked. That is, if you click
on a document that is saved, the dot within a dot is gone but if you click
on a document that needs to be saved, the dot within a dot is there. This means
that you cannot look at a bunch of tabbed documents and see if any specific
one of them need to be saved.
Or can you…?
As part of the title displayed on the tab, you will find an asterisk
at the end of the name. 
The
catch is that location of that asterisk changes from one application
to another. For example, in Photoshop, it's at the end (as shown
in this example), but, in InDesign, it's at the beginning of the
document name. Besides the inconvenience of having to play "where's
the asterisk?" the bigger dynamic is that as the number of documents
increases, or the size of the Application Frame decreases, the names
are truncated in the tabs—and what's lost is the end of the
name, including the asterisk. Here, InDesign wins and Photoshop loses.
Before I leave tabs, let me also add that, as opposed to Safari or Firefox where the size of the tabs simply decrease and decrease as you add documents, at some point with OWL2, the tabs just disappear. When this happens, there is a double chevron on the far right part of the document region. Clicking on the chevron will show all of the documents you currently have open (and tabbed). Perhaps I'll get used to it, but I really do not like how the existence and/or location of the document tabs changes. Yes, it sometimes can be a challenge when you have twenty tabs showing up in a browser, but one does tend to remember the general location of a specific page. Here, there's no chance to remember the general location of a document because it will change as you cycle through the documents.
One last feature that is related to the Application Frame is the Application Bar. This is an extra strip of tools that can sit above the Application Frame, or, if you have the Application Frame turned off, this is an option to be shown or not. In addition, if the Application Frame is turned off, you can also move the Application Bar to any location you want. Although the specifics do vary from application to application, at a minimum, the Application Bar shows a nameplate of the application you are using, and often an icon for Bridge, so you can access the Bridge from every application in the Suite. Below is a sample of the toolbars from several applications.
Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
Dreamweaver
FireWorks
Amongst the common threads are things like zoom levels and sometimes a zoom tool, there may be a Hand icon to access the Hand tool. Before I continue, keep in mind that these do not replace the Zoom or Hand tool that the applications still have and still work. However, to make matters somewhat silly, if you double-click on the Hand tool in the Toolbar, your image will zoom to fill the available space. Likewise, if you double-click the Magnifying glass in the Toolbar you will zoom your image to 100%. However, if you double-click on the same tools in the Application Bar, nothing happens. In short, these are redundant tools that do not have the same level of functionality as what already exists on the Toolbar. I don't get it either: redundant tools that do not have the same level of features.
On the other hand, there are several things in the Application Bar that are handy. For one, you can access your Workspaces directly from the Application Bar. This is particularly handy if you tend to change them often. In addition, there's one tool that appears nowhere else, and that is the "n-up tool." It can be seen on some of the toolbars above, and looks like a table of one large cell on the left and two smaller cells (one above the other) on the right, and there is a downward pointing arrow. When you press on this, you see the following drop-down option. As stated, documents can now be placed on a tabbed interface. That works well when you want to manage a bunch of documents but do not need to see them all the time. But there are times when you do want to see more than one at a time, and here's how you do it. You click on the n-up view icon, and then click on which n-up view you want your documents to be distributed, and/or how. In fact, in some operations (particularly in Photoshop) you will find this to be a big time saver. Please stay tuned to the Photoshop review for how and in what way (and why). [Note, I had a strong desire to click and drag to my desired n-up view and that will not work. Nothing happens. What you need to do to make this work is to click to open the dropdown window, and click on the desired option. Just so you know.]
What the Application Bar also does is use up from 35 - 40 pixels of vertical space. The only thing it provides that cannot be accessed elsewhere is the n-up view. If you have a nice sized monitor, that's not too big a deal, but if you have a MacBook or something similar in size, you'll probably want to turn it off. Note that you can't turn it off if you are using the Application Frame, but if you turn the Frame off you can. That's where having a Mac is a big advantage because the PC users cannot turn it off. Hopefully, in future iterations, it can more useful and contain (for example) the icons of all of your Adobe Apps, so switching between the various programs is easier. Perhaps, as well, it could also store all the tools you use most often, I'd like to be able to chose which tools will be placed there, <i>and</i> I'd like for them to be fully functioning, at least as functional as the tools on the Tool Panel.
I have used and/or extensively used Photoshop, Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, InDesign, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver (to some degree). I expect to be doing full reviews on these after the final releases come out, as some of these have bugs that I'd just as soon not dwell upon (unless they still exist in the final product). However, to give you a taste of what's to come, let me tap the one feature from each of these that has particularly peaked my pleasure. In many cases, to pick just one feature is like in the movies when the bad guy tells the hero: "Tell me which of your two children I can kill...otherwise I kill both!" However, cruel person that I am, let me proceed:
Photoshop:
There is always big things in every Photoshop release and in this iteration 3D has taken a major quantum stride. Admittedly, I don't do much 3D, so as impressed as I am with what it can do, it doesn't effect me all that much. Photomerge has had some significant improvements as well as all of the improvements swirling around OpenGL. All that notwithstanding, as small as it may seem, I find the new Adjustment Panel a big efficiency issue. Originally, it was intended to help new users become more aware of using Adjustment layers, and, as such, at first I didn't think much of this tool. However, when you place it right above the Layers Panel, the two become a dynamic interactive adjustment interface.
I repeat, there are many fantastic wonderful new tools and features in PS, but I bring this one up now only because it's one I found myself ending up using and appreciating on a daily basis. The Masks Panel, located along with the new Adjustments Panel is also fantastic. I don't use that daily, so it will have to wait for the full review.
Bridge
Speed, speed, and more speed is the big dynamic that Bridge-CS4 brings. But for interface features, I have to say I like the Bread-crumb feature the most. Located along the top of the Bridge Window, all it simply does is present the hierarchy of where you are. As you dig deeper into into folders, your line of "crumbs" goes longer and longer. If you right-click (Control-click) on any of the right-facing arrow heads, you can see future folders-within-folder and/or select to see all of the items contained within Subfolders. Again, like Photoshop there are many wonderful new features in Bridge, but this is the one I find affects my efficiency and lets me get the jobs done fast. It's simple, small things like this that make it painful to use Bridge-CS3
Adobe Camera Raw 5
When you want to open a raw or DNG image, you need to go through Adobe Camera Raw to get the image to be in a state that Photoshop can work with the image. Since you can't change a raw (or DNG) image, any changes you make to a file in ACR doesn't change the pixels, only how the image is seen. When you look at a raw or DNG file, you are looking at an interpretation of that file. When you make a change in ACR to that interpretation, you are looking at a variation on the interpretation of that file. While it may sound complicated, using ACR isn't, and it's even more powerful and yet retains the main value that you don't change or alter your image's pixels.
Anyhow, following in Lightroom 2's pre-presentation of the same feature, the Adjustment Brush provides Photoshop levels of control on a raw image, yet no pixels are changed during the process. As seen below, the Brush clearly shows the full and feathered regions. After you drag across a given region, you have complete control on Exposure, Saturation, Contrast, etc. Each section of the image where you place a brush stroke is isolated from the next region. You can create new regions and edit old regions, and it's all done before you begin to enter Photoshop.
Click on the image above for a full size view.
InDesign
This one is simple because I've been asking for this feature ever since Adobe dropped FrameMaker for the Mac a looooooooooonnnng time ago: Cross-references. What is that? Let's say you've set up your auto-style numbering (brought to full power in CS3) to set up your Figures for a book so that you have "Figure 2-3, Figure 2-4," etc. with the "2 being an auto number for the chapter and the Figures are all numbered consecutively. Cross-references lets you refer in the text of Chapter 6 about Figure 2-4 and give it's page number (E.g., See Figure 2-4 on page 57). Now let's say you realize that Figure 2-4 should be moved to Chapter 3 and when you place there it automatically is renumbered to Figure 3-6 and the text you had in Chapter 6 now says "See Figure 3-6 on page 93." Cool, or what? Needless to say, there's lots more. As you see below, you have significant variations on what and how is sited when you place a cross reference.
Illustrator
This one surprised me because I know people have been asking for it for ages, but I didn't see the full benefit: multiple pages. While Freehand users are still laughing uncontrollably (they've had this feature for years), I didn't fully appreciate it until I saw how Adobe would deal with it. First off, it's not like all of the "pages" will be 8.5 x 11 inches or the like, but they can be—that's your choice. They can also be any combination of sizes or shapes. But here's where I found it better than I could have imagined; suppose you are drawing illustrations for a book. You can create "Artboards" for all of the images in each chapter on one document. "But," I hear you say, "how can you access any specific one of those images from InDesign?" Well, let me cheat here and give one more for ID: when you go to "Place" from ID and look up a given AI document (that has multiple Artboards), you can click through all of the artboards until you find the one you are looking for, or collect them all and "place" them one by one just as you can place a collection in ID-CS3.
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is probably the most difficult one for me to talk about because I know it the least of these selected programs. Let's face it, I'm a GoLive user, and I'm having a dynamic challenge learning Dreamweaver. It's not like I have much of a choice, no? [First FrameMaker, then GoLive; you never know about the future with the software market...]
Anyhow, one of the features of Dreamweaver that has always surpassed GoLive is the way Dreamweaver could create dynamic sites. That is, sites that could be run off of a database. GoLive had it for a short while, but then dropped it for reasons that never formally reached my ears. However, doing these kinds of sites in Dreamweaver was never a walk in the park as far as making it simple. It was a code warrior's dream in that there essentially was no WYSIWYG, it was all code. In fact you had to upload your site to see what you had done. In other words, what you did was code your page, upload to the server, look at what you had done, code to fix, upload to server, look at what you had done, etc. You had to love doing this, because otherwise it was painful.
Well I'm going to do something I've never done before, I'm going to rely upon the Reviewer's Guide for samples because I'm finding a really nifty thing that I do not completely know how to do yet. If there ever was a carrot for making me learn how to use Dreamweaver, this is it. For one thing, rather than relying upon a full database, I can place a database of data into a standard table [Note: if you export from any database, each data field will be a cell along a column and each record will be a new row, e.g., a comma or tab delineated data with a carriage return at the end of each record.]
To make this work in Dreamweaver, Adobe has added a new feature called Live View. What it does (when clicked) is make the web site code look like it does on the web. But, it's better than that because you can freeze the action (so to speak) so you can isolate javascript on the spot to easily find and make changes to the code while looking at the way the site will look once you upload the site. But without uploading anything. This is starting to make very powerful sites do-able. Below you see how one of these kind of sites has looked in Dreamweaver for a long time. Note how it's kind of hard to get a full handle on how this will be seen by the user.
Now take a look as to how this looks with Live View turned on. I've circled the Live View button.
My goal for the full review of Dreamweaver is to try to do this myself. The above samples are from Adobe. Yeah, in a fashion I've cheated here because normally I always do my own samples, but it's the best I can do for now because I do not know how to do this yet. But, I like this feature (at least in theory) so much that I want to let people know about it because, it if works as advertised, it makes creating a dynamic site realistic for someone who's not a full fledged code warrior (like me).
In short, CS4 has lots in it. There have been comments and charges that this is a maintenance release. Those who've said this haven't worked with it. I have, and have pounded it a lot. If anything, it does depend upon your needs and the type of work you do as to what will knock your socks off. For example, if you do any 3D work, Photoshop is beyond amazing. If you don't, it will be merely a great release. If you do long documents in InDesign, you will find this release beyond amazing. If all you do is flyers, than you won't find it spectacular—good, but not spectacular. But, aren't all updates like that?
Keep in mind that I will be doing full reviews on these products, and what I've done here is just a taste. So far, CS4 tastes good.
___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.
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