Adobe
hoping to establish its latest software bundle as the suite hereafter
for publishers and designers
by Alan Zisman (c) 2004 First
published in
Business
in Vancouver March
2-8, 2004 Issue 749, The High Tech Office
If you were using computers a decade or so ago, you probably
remember life before suites. Back then, each piece of software was sold
on its own (and usually cost $495). Most business users learned to cope
with Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and more: each had its own user
interface and its own quirks.
Along with moving business PCs from DOS to Windows,
businesses
also migrated their users to Microsoft's then-new Office suite: Word,
Excel and Powerpoint all promising a reasonably standardized Windows
interface and all for a price that was cheaper than buying two of the
previous generation of stand-alone products. Microsoft Office has had a
lock on this market ever since. Other companies have tried to copy this
strategy with companies like Symantec and Network Associates bundling
utilities, or Macromedia collecting Web design products.
Graphics artists and designers however, have resisted the
pull of
one-stop software shopping. Whether working on Macs or PCs, most use
Adobe's Photoshop for working with photos and own at least one other
Adobe product but use Quark's Xpress for page layout. Adobe has found
this frustrating. Its would-be Quark-killer InDesign goes beyond Xpress
in a number of areas such as onscreen graphics display and ensuring
that the printed output matches what was intended. But only a minority
of Quark users have given InDesign much of a glance.
Adobe hopes its new Creative Suite will change that, offering
a
comprehensive bundle of graphics and publishing software at a price
that is a bargain for what's included. The standard version ($1,259)
bundles new 'CS' versions of Adobe's Photoshop, the Illustrator drawing
program, and InDesign. The premium version ($1,570) adds the Web page
design software GoLive. Adobe Acrobat (not updated along with the rest
of the set) and a new file manager, Version Cue. Owners of older copies
of Photoshop (but not the others) qualify for upgrade pricing. The new
applications can also be purchased separately.
It's a beefy package requiring fairly modern, high-end
hardware:
only Windows 2000 or XP or Mac OS X systems need apply. The box asks
for at least 128 MB of memory; don't believe it. Plan to give this
package 512 MB or more. All the CS-branded applications have been
updated to play better together, sharing common font and colour support
to ensure more consistent results throughout, and all can use Adobe's
PSD, AI and PDF file formats, simplifying sharing files between
programs. Adobe has been moving its applications towards a common
interface for several versions; even with this suite, it hasn't quite
gotten there yet. Still, this suite moves several steps forward giving
design professionals both improved functionality and affordability.
The new Photoshop CS beefs up the visual file browser
introduced
in the previous version, making it much easier to find the right
picture. It can now work with RAW photo images and with Acrobat PDF
files. Text, shadow and highlight handling and colour matching are
improved. Photoshop's step-sibling companion for handling Web images,
ImageReady, however, remains disconnected from the main program.
Adobe's Illustrator drawing program adds a new dimension,
literally gaining the ability to create 3D images. GoLive won't win
over many Web designers using Macromedia Dreamweaver, but it's a
worthwhile addition to this package that will appeal to Web designers
who are more graphics artists than software coders.
InDesign adds a Quark-like control panel and a Story Editor
to
allow for easier text changes. Adobe is hoping that bundling it
together with the newest Photoshop edition will get it onto current
Quark users' desktops and that its integration with the other Adobe
products will convince them to start to use it. We'll see whether this
is enough to convince page designers to abandon their time-tested
Quark-powered workflows.