Earlier this month, Adobe announced that they would be holding a streaming webcast to officially introduce Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) to the public. Adobe calls CS4 its "biggest software release to date," but then, they claim that with every version (I think CS3 was its "largest release ever" or something to that effect).

Having had the opportunity to play around with some of the CS4 betas, I will say that the jump in magnitude from CS3 to CS4 is much more substantial than what we saw with CS2 to CS3. Performance is snappier and it is easier to complete tasks, but really, what makes CS4 a worthy upgrade is that the product line is much more integrated. The Macromedia acquisition came mid-release cycle, and while product integration wasn't a complete hack job -- they did a really good job with Flash -- Dreamweaver, Fireworks and suite integration with Flash was far from perfect.

Individual applications have all received a bevy of new features and innovations. Searching throughout a project or document for meta-data has been greatly enhanced, for instance. Adobe AIR has also been integrated across applications, meaning plugin developers can potentially take advantage of the AIR platform for easy in-program access to outside data (a la Adobe's Kuler app and its integration with Photoshop and Illustrator).

CS4 will be available in 64-bit builds for Windows users (Mac users have to wait until CS5 to get 64-bit Photoshop love), but both platform take advantage of GPU acceleration.

Like its predecessors, the 13 CS4 point releases can be purchased individually, or in one of six bundled suites: Design Standard CS4, Design Premium CS4, Web Standard CS4, Web Premium CS4, Production Premium CS4 and the Master Collection, which at $2499 US, pretty much gets you everything Adobe offers.

Unfortunately, the insanely complicated upgrade structure is still around too. Pricing starts at $599 for the Premium suite upgrades, but price depends on components owned, time purchased, etc., so check with your Adobe dealer or retailer for exact information.

Adobe stuff doesn't come cheap, but for those of us who rely on its products to do our creative work, the updates and new features in CS4 look to worth the price. CS4 will ship in October for Windows and OS X.

Adobe, who only last week was denying Creative Suite 4 release date rumors (or that the next version of Photoshop will be called Photoshop CS4), has just released the first CS4 betas for three of their products. Early versions of the next-generation of Soundbooth, Dreamweaver and Fireworks are all available for download for both Mac and Windows (Soundbooth is only available for Intel Macs).

Dreamweaver and Fireworks were both part of Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, and to us, neither program felt fully integrated with the existing Adobe products in CS3. The CS4 betas promise to provide better Creative Suite integration (especially for Fireworks users) as well as providing some great new features.

Dreamweaver now boasts a Live View Mode so that users can see real-time previews without having to leave the program. Fireworks features a new user interface and compatibility with other Adobe technologies. The big news with Soundbooth is support for multi-track editing.

The beta applications will be active for only 48 hours, unless you are an existing CS3 customer. If you already have a CS3 license for the product your are trying, you can continue to use the CS4 betas until the final release.

Thanks Kent!

CS3 pricing is out, and it looks a bit high! Amazon might have let the cat out of the bag a little early when it comes to the not yet released Adobe CS3 applications. Officially CS3 is due out on March 27th, but Amazon accidentally flipped the switch to show the pricing of the newly designed creative suite a day earlier.

The pricing structure looks like this:

• Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Web Premium - $1599
• Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Master Collection - $2499
• Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Production Premium - $1199
• Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Design Premium - $1599

We know we weren't the only users grinding our teeth hoping that Adobe might bring the pricing down slightly, but that looks like that's out of the question for now.

DLS wants to know - If you are dishing out and buying into the new CS3, which version do you have your sights set on?

Check out a chart that displays what applications are bundled with which version in the new CS3 here.

[via Gizmodo]

I'm a day or two late with this one, but PC Magazine has an interesting article on the software and hardware behind professional fireworks displays. In it, Eric Tucker, the "lead creator" for Boston's Fourth of July fireworks show, describes how he gets the job done using a program called Visual Show Director--$3,750, in case you're curious--and $30-50,000 worth of digital firing equipment.  There's also FireOne, which bills itself as "The Photoshop of the Fireworks Industry!" and starts at $795 for the barest-bone package. The programs let firework choreographers set their displays to music with hundredth-of-a-second accuracy and precice placement in the sky. Cool stuff.

[Via Digg]