Adobe Creative Suite 4 - Anybody know the whenabouts?

[keith204]

I would like to purchase Adobe Illustrator, Fireworks, and Flash. CS3's been out for some time now, so I hope CS4 will be coming soon. Does anybody know anything?

 

[airgunr]

I personnally hope they aren't comming out with a new one yet. It really doesn't seem that long since I upgraded and I'd hate to spend the money for another upgrade so soon.

 

[MissMia]

I can't remember where, but I did see something about Adobe releasing CS4 Beta yesterday.

*checking yesterday's emails*

 

[JerryPH]

Keith, what the heck are you doing in CS3 that you are maxing out it's capabilities and need a CS4??

 

[Alpha]

CS3 was hardly even much of an improvement over CS2. They added some new dumbed down features. Great. Here's CS2 with a B&W conversion Wizard! Wouldn't you love to lose control over your conversions? How about a better Extract tool? God forbid you do a more precise extraction using masks or a third-party plugin!

CS4 will probably have a wizard for CS3's wizards.

 

[keith204]

Keith, what the heck are you doing in CS3 that you are maxing out it's capabilities and need a CS4??

hehe

I own Photoshop CS2 & Dreamweaver 8.
My work bought Photoshop CS3 for my work computer.
I would like Illustrator, Flash, Fireworks, and probably InDesign. I'm about to buy the CS3 versions, but really don't want to buy CS3 now, if CS4 comes out next week.

 

[Alpha]

I just don't see the point so long as the file formats are cross-compatible. If you're going to use the wizards and dumbed-down stuff in CS3/potential CS4, then you probably don't even need to be buying a piece of software that expensive. As far as I'm concerned, Adobe hasn't really added any advanced capabilities in newer versions, just simplified ways of using advanced functions in CS2. And if you're an advanced PS user, then chances are you're doing everything by hand anyway.

 

[bhop]

I doubt CS4 will be out any earlier than next spring.

The CS3 versions of Illustrator and Bridge are so much better than the older versions. If you use either of those, then you will be happy with CS3. Especially Bridge. It's not clunky anymore and is finally useable. All of the CS3 software i've used is much faster and more stable on Intel Macs than their CS2 counterparts. Photoshop didn't really add too much in this version, but the toolbar setup, while weird at first, is a huge improvement (takes up less screen space). I actually like the b/w conversion tool. And if you still want to do it the old way, with channel mixer or something, those are still there, you're not losing any control. It is worth the upgrade IMO.

CS3 was hardly even much of an improvement over CS2. They added some new dumbed down features. Great. Here's CS2 with a B&W conversion Wizard! ...etc..

The CS stands for Creative Suite, which is more than just Photoshop.

 

[astrostu]

Alpha, you're being pretty emotive today, in this post and in the one about interpolation that I just replied to. Calm down.

CS3 does not have "dumbed down" features. In fact, CS3's Photoshop provided two new features that I use all the time: "Smart Filters" and image stacking capability. Plus, it's finally native on Intel Macs, which gives a substantial speed boost. So all because you may not use the new features available doesn't mean they're "dumbed down" or worthless to other people.

As to the availability of CS4, I believe 3 of the applications (Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Soundbooth) were released yesterday in public betas, available for 48 hours or longer if you have a CS3 license.

I have heard they're aiming for CS4 to be released in November of this year. It will offer 64-bit compatibility on Windows machines, but NOT on Macs ... that has to wait for CS5, which is what I'm looking forward to because I deal with large images and need to access more than 2 GB of RAM. I also think one of the core features of CS4 is it ability to use the graphics card to off-load much of the processing, which should give you a fairly good speed boost.

And, AppleInsider released a "first look" at Acrobat 9 today.

 

[keith204]

it's like buying a new car. If you want a new chevy truck, and Chevy is introducing their brand new style Silverado next month, you'd wait, right?

I would.

 

[Alpha]

Alpha, you're being pretty emotive today, in this post and in the one about interpolation that I just replied to. Calm down.

Those who restrain their passions are those with passions weak enough to be restrained.

 

[reg]

Those who restrain their passions are those with passions weak enough to be restrained.

I hardly look at buying grossly overpriced software as a "passion".

 

[Alpha]

I was talking about expressing my own contempt for putting dumbed-down catch-all wizards in a program that is at its heart, built for people who have no use for them.

 

[Garbz]

CS3 was hardly even much of an improvement over CS2.

Try telling that to someone who is running on marginal hardware (me on my laptop), and they'll tell you something like I say now. CS3 is a HUGE difference. Loading time is less than half, and it's far faster and more responsive than CS2 or CS. We're talking back in the very fast Photoshop 8 days.

That said functionality wise it's not much different. Nothing essential in CS3 that can't be done with CS2.