Adobe unveils Creative Suite 2

Adobe has unveiled the second version of its Creative Suite bundle, which contains major upgrades to its core Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive and Acrobat applications.

The new package, which is expected to begin shipping next month, will retail for an estimated £699 for the standard version and £889 for Premium.

Combining full new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive and Acrobat 7.0 Professional as well as adding new features with Adobe Bridge and Adobe Stock Photos, the collection promises to provide creative professionals with a truly unified package.

Speaking at a UK Creative Suite 2 briefing, Adobe’s senior director of creative professional products Mark Hilton promised the new suite would deliver “incredible innovation”.

“There are features here that will wow and excite you – needless to say we’ve raised the bar not only on the innovations within the applications but in innovation within the suite itself,” he said.

All of the products within Creative Suite 2 have been updated, with most of the additions and innovations designed to make the products more innovative and easier to use – working better as a seamless package.

New and Updated

Photoshop CS2
Adobe’s key image manipulation package Photoshop has been updated to offer users more “power, precision and control”, the company says. Major additions include Vanishing Point – a tool that allows designers to automatically adjust the visual perspective of a cloned area or composite – and Smart Objects, which allows for non-destructive editing of Illustrator artwork in Photoshop. Other additions include Image Warp, which lets a user warp objects, a spot healing brush offering one-click retouching and optical lens correction.

Estimated pricing: £439 Photoshop Full, £119 Photoshop Upgrade

Illustrator CS2
Described by Adobe as a “powerful and standalone upgrade”, Illustrator CS2 aims to be a critical design tool for creating graphically rich content. New in this latest version is a new tracing tool – Live Trace – that enables users to convert a scanned, hand-drawn sketch or photograph in seconds into a precise illustration made up of editable paths and anchor points. Adobe has also added Live Paint – a new painting tool that allows users to apply colour to strokes and fills with ease. Other additions include a Control Palette, custom stroke placement and expanded support for mobile content creation.

Estimated pricing: £435 Illustrator Full, £139 Illustrator Upgrade

InDesign CS2
The Adobe layout package enters its fifth year with a thorough re-tuning, which, the company says, changes the focus on “accelerating productivity”. Tying in with new features introduced with the Bridge, InDesign CS2 is also updated through new object styles designed to help productivity by allowing users to save commonly used object formatting for ongoing use. Other additions include the ability to hide or show Photoshop layers and enhanced support for importing Word and RTF documents.

Estimated pricing: £609 InDesign Full, £139 InDesign Upgrade

GoLive CS2
Now ten years old, Adobe’s web authoring and design tool has been upgraded through the introduction of new CSS layout tools, more functionality around mobile content development based on open-standards and, as with all of the other components, greater integration with the CS2 package as a whole. Adobe has also added Enhanced live rendering, improved site management tools and mobile blogging functionality.

Estimated pricing  £335 GoLive Full, £139 GoLive Upgrade

Adobe Bridge
New to Creative Suite 2 and central to Adobe’s view of the new suite as an integrated whole is the Bridge – a package the company describes as “the hub for productivity, imagery and inspiration”. Accessible from within Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive, the Bridge allows designers to organise, track, open and browse digital assets including photos and documents. The Bridge keeps PSD, AI, INDD and PDF files to hand and also provides access to one of the other package’s new additions – on-line access to five stock libraries.