Adobe Launch CS3

Includes integration of the Macromedia product range

[limbo]

[businessweek.com...]

Adobe Systems Inc. announced Tuesday that new versions of its popular Creative Suite software, which executives have billed as the most significant product launch in the company's 25-year history, will go on sale next month.

Cnet reviews [reviews.cnet.com]

If one Adobe design application, such as Photoshop, is equivalent to, say, a box of crayons, then Adobe CS3 Master Collection suite would be like a drawer packed with crayons, markers, paints, and pencils in hundreds of hues. This heavy-duty software suite contains 17 equally heavy-duty applications--every major professional package in the Adobe pantheon for digital design.

Adobe site preview [adobe.com]

Looks like they have all bases covered. This all makes for a pretty appetising reading. I'm going to road test Photoshop CS3 this week. Has anyone had a chance to take a peek a the other software in the range..?

The two most noticeable omissions (as expected) are Golive and Freehand.

[edited by: limbo at 11:54 am (utc) on Mar. 27, 2007]

[simonuk]

Hmmmm,

$649 (£330) for the USA buyer or £569 for those living in the UK.

/sigh

[klown]

Maybe I'm missing something but this just looks like a suite of products with no real upgrades.. I'm still using an old Adobe 7.0 copy <snip>. Does the new version give me enough incentives to actually purchase it? Is anything actually upgraded in this version or is it merely a pack of CS2 products?

[edited by: limbo at 2:22 pm (utc) on Mar. 27, 2007]
[edit reason] Part of post contravened TOS [/edit]

[zulu_dude]

This may sound like a daft question, but what's preventing us in the UK getting family in the USA to order a copy and post it over to us, thereby saving over £200?

Ditto for all software that doubles in price during it's journey over the Atlantic ocean.

[simonuk]

Been thinking of anyone I know in the States for the same reason.

[dillonstars]

but what's preventing us

The license agreement. <snip>

And, no, I'm not saying that the price difference is right...

[edited by: limbo at 2:22 pm (utc) on Mar. 27, 2007]
[edit reason] Part of post contravened TOS [/edit]

[limbo]

Let's try and keep this on topic please. The relative pricing of software depending on what country you live in is applicable to all, not just CS3 - so that discussion and advice there-in should probably sit in another thread.

What I'd like to know is what differences are there from CS2? Has Adobe really made significant changes? Or has most of the development gone into software integration.

e.g. Does Photoshop now work along side Dreamweaver the way Fireworks does..? Are there developments to the the core set of tools..? Will the user who has DW04 be able to upgrade at cost?

[simonlilly]

The Dreamweaver upgrade looks very minimal from the video clips available at the moment, the big improvement they are promoting is the CSS Advisor which is a part of the Adobe website?!? I really hope this isn't a set of upgrades, mainly targetted for Vista users.

I'm hoping the Video/Podcasts will reveal a lot more potential benefits.

[dfud]

Does CS3 work with Vista?

[bateman_ap]

Does CS3 work with Vista?

I am quite happily using CS2 with Vista at the moment, and the beta of CS3's Photoshop is running quite happily so I would assume yes

[atadams]

The Quick Select and Refine Edge features in Photoshop are reason enough for me to upgrade. The new Flash also uses the new ActionScript 3. And Dreamweaver has more XML and Ajax capabilities.

[CritterNYC]

Shouldn't that be "the most *expensive* product launch in the company's 25-year history"?

[mcavic]

The US price isn't too suprising, but the UK price is outrageous.

[LongFlatTail]

Photoshop CS3 on an IntelMac is way way faster than CS2... Other than that, the whole interface is different with floating pallets/tabs and a wholly more intergrated work area. As for other differences, well, I kind stopped using CS3 for alot of things and am now using LIGHTROOM for basic color corrections and white balancing.

Incidentally I am still using Dreamweaver MX, any reason to upgrade?

[mblair]

Where can it be found for $649 USD? Everything I've seen shows it listing at $2499. Am I missing something?

[rogerd]

I'm expecting to see spam for an $89 "OEM version" very soon.

Actually, if I read the site correctly they have a reasonably attractive offer for upgrading from Studio 8 ($499). I'm a bit leery, though, after upgrading from Studio MX - I ordered Studio 8, and the site prompted me to upgrade to CS2 for a few hundred more. I usually ignore upsells, but I accepted the additional upgrade offer. When I went to install, though, it choked because I didn't have the Adobe products installed. It turned out that you actually had to own the older versions, and that the site shouldn't have prompted me for the upgrade. Their customer service people helped sort everything out, but it took additional time to get the right product. By that time, I was also disappointed not to have the Adobe products, too.

Assuming this isn't another error, it looks a good way to get the whole suite. If I'm reading the site correctly (kind of diffcult, since in IE6 the table scrolls off the screen no matter how wide your screen is!), the full Web Premium Suite upgrade is only $100 more than the "Web Standard", which seems to be what they are calling the old "Studio". If so, it's a good strategy to get Macromedia diehards into the full Adobe family.

[dakuma]

Odd when I select Creative Suite 3 Web Premium I get the following error:
"Unfortunately, the product you are attempting to buy is not available in this store. Please contact a reseller to purchase the product. We apologize for your inconvience."

Even though I'm only looking for more product info and not selecting buy now, odd. This is from adobe.com with North America selected as the region. Anyone else getting this error?

[shigamoto]

I think they were somewhat slamming the release in Wired Magazine, basically saying that Web 2.0 applications were doing a better job and that most people didn't really need Photoshop CS 3. It kinda surprised me.

[WebDon]

Well, I watched the announcement this afternoon...including the unplanned 15 min break to fix the A/V equipment.

From the quick demos they did do it looks to me like the biggest overall advantage to CS3 is added integration between Photoshop & Illustrator with Dreamweaver and Flash.

There were some other nice features too but I don't know how much ooooh, aaaaahh factor there really is from CS2 to CS3.

I'm currently using CS with Studio 8 and I'm looking forward to the integration. Hopefully it will save some time in revisions!

[dillonstars]

still using Dreamweaver MX, any reason to upgrade?

I bought CS2 Studio and found that Dreamweaver 8 was significantly better than MX, especially in the area of working with XML feeds (although I know these changes were introduced in MX2004). I expect Dreamweaver CS3 to be a huge improvement over MX.

On another note, I bought the Education version of CS2 when I was a student and was wondering if I can upgrade to the full version from that now I am no longer one?

[rogerd]

>>still using Dreamweaver MX, any reason to upgrade?

DW8 seems to handle CSS WYSIWYG issues better. I was happy with MX long after upgrades were available until I found that all-CSS designs created by my coders wouldn't display even close to properly.

[auroinf0]

That is a good news.

I will go and share this with my developer.

CSS coding brought a revolution in SEOing an website code :)

less code and more design

[broniusm]

Along the lines of this new release, I'm curious if anyone has seen what I believe is a bug that I would really like to see fixed. I can't link out to my detailed report of it, but you can web search for "Avoiding Shape Tool Anti-Aliasing" and that should surface it ok..

This was reported for both CS2 and CS3 beta back in the Fall.

[John_Blake]

And the new features in CS3 can be seen in full action and power on the Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Workshop site. Includes wonderful videos showing how some of the new effects are to be used. Very useful stuff for those who haven't tried it yet.

Cheers, everyone,

John

P.S. Unfortunately, no live links allowed here, so you can just go and google it. It is worth seeing, definitely.

[travelin cat]

Anybody know if the full version of CS3 Web Edition is out yet?

Amazon is telling me they will not ship it until May 11.

[John_Blake]

I am not 100% sure about it but I think the full version has not come out yet so we'll have to wait till May.

[dragsterboy]

agree to that. They will probably release it at the end of this spring so that they can squeeze more money out of the user.

[travelin cat]

FYI, Amazon shipped my order yesterday