The Suite Spot
Well, the long wait for Adobe Creative Suite to go fully Intel is over at last - and the question on many designer’s lips is ‘it’s how much!?’ ‘was it worth the wait?’
The answer from most of the Mac creative websites is a resounding yes (it was worth it). Like many creatives there was no compelling reason for me to upgrade my hardware to the new Intel Macs when CS2 did not run natively on that platform, but now that CS3 is fully Intel it’s time to make the jump. My copy of CS3 just arrived a few days ago and although I haven’t had the opportunity to really kick the tyres on it, from what I’ve seen it does indeed feel like a significant upgrade. I’m running CS3 on a Macbook Pro and it is noticeably faster and snappier than my G4 dual Ghz PPC main workstation running CS2. Speed aside the whole interface has been redesigned on all the applications, they now have an even more consistent look and feel across the suite.
Additionally the Bridge application now sports an interface very similar to Adobe Lightroom (the pro photography application). This is a good move as Lightroom has been in beta for a year before final release and has been the subject of a huge feedback loop from pro photographers for all that time. Asset management for pro photography has a lot in common with pro graphics designers.
I’m a recent Lightroom convert too, it has improved my digital photo workflow immensely, even in the short time I have been using it.
As you can tell I am an unashamed Adobe fanboy, I live in CS every day and it has served me well. In fact it is unusual for me to have to stray outside of CS when creating any core graphics work, a testimony to how well integrated the overall suite is and to the ‘real world’ value of the purchase price. So making the Intel/CS3 jump was inevitable for me, as it is likely to be for many other designers who know the value of keeping their work environment current.
I’m excited about getting my teeth into CS3, so far, so stunning.
Definitely more posts to follow on this one.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hi Davy,
I’m getting into reading your blog! Good article.
I’m purely an amateur photographer but I’m slowly getting little sideline assignments which are interesting. I’ve also been noticing the virtues of RAW format - especially for improving exposure issues and white balance problems. (I just use Elements - and only Version 3.0 from 2005!). This does however allow import of my Nikon RAW files one by one and allows very effective EV and WB compensation during loading.
I saw a nicely done video demo of Lightroom on the Adobe website. It seems good for batch work for a professional like yourself. Also for clever toning adjustments. But I’m wondering if it’s worth it all for me. Also does it need to work wth CS to be effective - given I just have Elements? Is it really much better at handling RAW files?
Do you use RAW all the time? I’ve recently had my feet in both camps by having the Nikon saving in both RAW and Jpeg for awhile until I make my mind up! Lucky I’ve a 2GB SD card!!
Cheers
John of Dublin
May 21st, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Hello John,
Welcome to my blog and thanks for the posts. I’ve been admiring your photos on Flickr too, looks like you’re getting good value from your Nikon.
I shoot RAW pretty much all the time, Lightroom makes it easy to work in RAW, in fact it is primarily designed to do just that. I understand why some photographers shoot JPEG and some RAW, horses for courses really, RAW suites me for the type of photos I take. I particularly like that fact that RAW lets me have about 4 stops ‘wriggle-room’ on some of my shots, if I’ve been a tad careless or the exposure is tricky.
Check out: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/
The ‘Understanding’ series of articles is very good.
I highly recommend downloading the free Lightroom demo version, lasts for a month, after which you may well want to buy it. You can still export your Lightroom images to Elements for ‘pixel-painting’ if you need to do that, but Lightroom will handle just about everything else.
Cheers.