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Adobe Suite CS4 announced; reasons to upgrade?

LJL

New member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

Tim,
Have any folks started to really document just how many upgrades or new/useful things are appearing in CS4? I recall reading about how CS4 will not be able to use the 64-bit processing on the Macs, only on the PC for now. So, I am trying to decide if there really is enough "meat" to warrant the upgrade from CS3, mostly for PS. (I too have many of the component pieces, all of which are doing fine in CS3.)

LJ
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

LJ:

Here's a link to one of the early beta tester's reactions to the suite: http://www.creativepro.com/article/info-center-adobe-creative-suite-4

I'm sure there are others, and this reviewer is more design-oriented than photo oriented, but it is one set of reactions as well as a listing of some of the changes that can be found in the upgrade.

As for the 64-bit, I'm not an expert and while disappointed it won't be ready for the MAC, it won't prevent me from upgrading. I use the entire suite for my design business and will wait for the 64 bit advantages.

I did come across this little pearl though. It would appear that the 64-bit is only supported for Vista. The following is a direct lift from an Adobe Lightroom blog:

"Again, just to be clear, running Lightroom 2 as a 64-bit application on Windows XP x64 is not a supported configuration. The testing required to certify an additional operating system is a significant effort but there was not enough evidence to suggest that we should completely disable the configuration.

Why all the excitement about a 64-bit version of Lightroom? 64-bit capable operating systems and applications can take advantage of more memory than 32-bit systems. If you have a 64-bit environment with more than 4GB of RAM you're most likely to see improvement in the responsiveness of the Develop module where Lightroom is loading large amounts of information into memory. (A common misconception is that 64-bit systems will see an improvment in import or export performance. Those operations are largely disk-bound so they're dependent on the speed of your hard drive for performance improvements.)"
 

LJL

New member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

Thanks, Tim. I had seen that about LR and 64-bit. I was more interested in PS being able to address more RAM, which may be the biggest gain I see for 64-bit processing. Would start to eliminate some of the constant page-ins and page-outs to the scratch disk while several GB of RAM sit by doing nothing ;-)

The other reason to consider CS4, at least the PS part for many, may be any added improvements to ACR, as that is where the focus will go, just as it did when CS3 came out and Adobe stopped supporting updates for ACR in CS2. That could be the kicker for most folks to upgrade.

LJ
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I've not needed any of the upgrades features in PS since CS2, what has been incredibly important and will be again is the Bridge and ACR where the majority of my work is done (don't like lightroom). If the new Bridge is faster then I will finally be able to stop having to use Bridge CS2 for sorting (far faster preview rendering) and Bridge CS3 (horribly slow) only for the newer ACR.

I can't wait for the new ACR, localised corrections will be a huge boon to this wedding photographer, was very jelous watching a friend work with LR2 and this function but hate the whole LR thang too much.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

CS3 had several improvements in the image aligning and combining functions, and for my uses this was beneficial. If these even improve marginally in CS4, it will be worth the upgrade for me. True 64-bit would be awesome (and will be in CS5), but what we really need in the meantime is updated coding for existing surplus RAM usage and scratch disk I/O...
 

LJL

New member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

Jack,
That is primarily what 64-bit would be offering, rather than any significant speed in processing. That 64-bit addressing is the way to get the RAM expansion usage, where the present 32-bit tops out at 4GB, and PS imposes a bit of overhead onto that.

The other interesting thing with this latest version is 16-bit printer capability. That is essentially what a RIP does, and handles things for better output. This new version of PS will have that same 16-bit output capability, so good profiles for papers could see some even nicer results.

The other biggie is the localized adjustments in RAW, in my thinking. The more you can get done there, the better.

LJ
 

Don Libby

Well-known member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I just ordered my upgrade which is normally $199 however with the NAAP discount of 15% it brought the total with shipping and taxes to $185.42 sweet deal. I’ve been running 64bit on my studio machine (8BG RAM) for close to 2 years and just made the move to Vista Ultimate 64 late last year; I’m really looking forward to trying this out. I also just finished viewing a short preview of some of the bells and whistles CS4 has and it appears this baby is going to be very good indeed.

don
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

Just watched all the NAPP videos. I'll do the upgrade, though many of the improvements are marginal for my uses. However, three that stand out are the addition of LR type non-destructive adjustments to ACR, the overlay on the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush (allows perfect alignment of patches) and best of all, automated focus blending. This last one is timely for me and probably justifies the upgrade price by itself.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I'm desperate for the dodge/burn tools for ACR as you can imagine as a wedding photographer have wanted that forever, I've also wanted post crop vignettes for the longest time. Bridge looks more user friendly for fast and efficient sorting. I rarely use PS, processing and sorting proofs is done completely with Bridge/ACR, only use PS for the large print orders or album design, etc. The ability to do more in ACR quickly so that I can batch everything through PS ready for print is a huge plus. Can't wait.
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

Don: thanks for reminding me about the NAPP discount! I forget about that little perq. Since I ordered the whole design premium suite upgrade, I ended up saving over $80. Almost enough for one tank of diesel!

And by the way, if you're a photoshop user, I highly recommend a membership in NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). Some terrific tutorials and examples of great work. Well worth the fee.

Tim
 

robsteve

Subscriber
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I got all excited to order CS4 and when I went to the Adobe site, I see it is a month or two away from shipping :(
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

October 15th it should be available for download. If you pre-order now, it puts on the first train and you are not charged until they deliver.
 

woodyspedden

New member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I'm desperate for the dodge/burn tools for ACR as you can imagine as a wedding photographer have wanted that forever, I've also wanted post crop vignettes for the longest time. Bridge looks more user friendly for fast and efficient sorting. I rarely use PS, processing and sorting proofs is done completely with Bridge/ACR, only use PS for the large print orders or album design, etc. The ability to do more in ACR quickly so that I can batch everything through PS ready for print is a huge plus. Can't wait.
Ben

If it is implemented as well as the retouch tools in Lightroom 2.1 it will be great. I understand you don't care for Lightroom but the technology from Adobe, which of course will be parallel implemented in both Lightroom and ACR is just wonderful. Saves so much time by allowing selective edits without masking etc. I just love it.

CS4 will be a winner, as has been all the iterations of Photoshop

JMHO

Woody
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

Just noticed some improvements here
There are many other new features in Photoshop CS4. Here are a few of them:


Improved Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools help preserve tonal and color quality

Photomerge now has enhanced blending and stitching for better panoramas

Auto-blend can now combine images for better lighting and depth-of-field

The Rotate View tool can rotate the canvas onscreen for easier painting and drawing -- a great addition for tablet artists

Increased motion graphics support and compatibility with After Effects and Flash
 

LJL

New member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I'm desperate for the dodge/burn tools for ACR as you can imagine as a wedding photographer have wanted that forever, I've also wanted post crop vignettes for the longest time. Bridge looks more user friendly for fast and efficient sorting. I rarely use PS, processing and sorting proofs is done completely with Bridge/ACR, only use PS for the large print orders or album design, etc. The ability to do more in ACR quickly so that I can batch everything through PS ready for print is a huge plus. Can't wait.
Ben,
Realizing that you and many others would like to have all the tools done easily in one place for better workflow, these may help some. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at some of the Nik Software tools (Viveza and Color EFEX Pro for starters). They are plug-ins for PS and Aperture that give you amazing localized control, and whole bunch of other features that one just cannot get in ACR/LR or without a lot of layer and mask work (which the Nik tools do automatically). Not trying to push their software, as I have no affiliation, but I now use much of if quite a bit, and get results that just are not easy any other way. They are not cheap, and that is a bit of problem, but I recovered the costs on all their stuff from a single portrait session by creating more and different looks that the client loved.

I have yet to see any one tool be able to "do it all". So as long as one has to drop back into PS for something, might as well use some really great and fast tools there to help workflow and provide more easy options than most of us can ever learn to do in PS alone.

LJ
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I think with this new ACR I won't have to use PS period LJ, at least for preparing proofs, the clone tools are weak in ACR. Looking forward to it! Thanks though.
 

Jan Brittenson

Senior Subscriber Member
Re: Adobe Suite CS4 announced

I'll do the upgrade for sure.

Now that PS CS4 uses Core Image it'll be interesting to see benchmarks on some of the slower filters (like Smart Sharpen) - hopefully these are a bit faster now. It'll also be interesting to see if they can be sped up by adding another or a faster graphics card.
 
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