Firstly id like to say that I had been very skeptical about the newest release of the Creative Suite as it hasn’t been that long since I brought CS4, which for me was a brilliant upgrade from 3 and 3million times better than 2, all of which I have brought, I know, mental for a student right…
I have been following the updates of the software and I decided to follow the live event that introduces it; and within minutes I was very impressed by some of the new features that not only allow you to be quicker but allow you to do more, with ease. Now I haven’t actually tried it yet and thus can’t tell for sure that it will be a lot better but the trial will be downloaded as soon as and test run before the official launch.
-To Buy-
Photoshop with a very quick and easy to use 3D features that can be a great stepping stone if you don’t know 3D design, or cannot learn it.
Photoshop with intelligent background input, where you can take a normal image, crop out an element but have PS fill in the now empty space with actual background that wasnt present on the file.
Illustrator that allows you to align dashed strokes to corners.
Illustrator that allows you to control the weight of a specific point of a stroke.
InDesign that gives you multiple sized pages in the same file.
InDesign that gives you multiple media with in the program and with present animations that are straight from the code of Flash.
Flash Catalyst is a new program which I have trialed before, the ease of design with all the functionality of coders.
Native 64-bit architecture, which improves the overall performance of the software on most new-ish machines. (which run 64-bit and have sufficient hardware capabilities)
-Not to Buy-
A lot of the new features are really good and could come in handy overall; but with the price increase and the features being very minor for me are the pros better than these cons?…
The price increase is not by a little, but by a fairly big amount; CS2 cost me £180, CS3 cost me £235, CS4 cost me £225, CS5 is £336, so is it worth the increase of a cool one hundred?…possibly!
The features are, and will be very good, but I somewhat feel that they would be novelty rather than productive, I don’t use Photoshop that much to take advantage of the new features, I don’t even edit my photos in Photoshop, I use the impressive features of Aperture 3 for minor colour adjustments. Most of the new features with in the 2 main programs that I use are minor compared to the expense, different size pages in ID is a great, while the stroke options are fantastic, I have only needed this function on 2 occasions where I over come them by creating a new document with ease.
Also I do know Dreamweaver but since working in a Web Development agency I have begun to use the phenomenal power of the Visual Studio Collection from Microsoft, namely Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (as it was free.)
-Verdict-
If the features work well, and the speed is actually improved on my computers (as all current tests are only averages by a select amount of, slightly, biased companies) I can see a real incentive to upgrade once again. But I will not make my final verdict till I have installed the trials and tested them out for myself.