It's that time again, the roughly bi-annual release of a new version of Adobe's Creative Suite. The latest, Creative Suite 5 (CS5), builds on the interface changes introduced in CS4 to bring web, design and video tools closer together, with a tighter focus on the designer workflow, and the relationship between designer and developers. Design is no longer a solitary discipline; it affects all aspects of a business — and all parts of the software development lifecycle.
Illustrator
The old favourites are still here, with Illustrator CS5 starting the long road to 3D with a new perspective drawing feature that applies a perspective grid to Illustrator's artboard surface. The default is two-point perspective, but you can choose to have a single point, or three, or even design your own grids for more complex shapes. Once on the artboard, you can use control points to adjust the grid, and change the angle using the same familiar 3D control from Photoshop and Flash. Items can be dragged from a flat artboard onto a perspective, with Illustrator automatically handling the adjustments.
Illustrator's drawing tools get an upgrade too, with variable stroke width tools. These let you take any path and control the width of the path, adding width points as required. With variable stroke widths there's no need to use a pressure-sensitive controller to draw strokes. Adobe also fixes some perennial niggles, handling arrowhead scale by controlling where the arrowhead ends, at the end of the stroke or in the stroke. There are also tools for handling dashed lines, finally ensuring that they end on the points of a shape.
Designers will find Illustrator's new bristle brush very useful, as it replicates a Photoshop tool, using vectors rather than bitmaps. It will take strokes and paths, letting you draw inside them using natural media effects — including directional brushes.
Photoshop
One of the headline features in Photoshop CS5 — selecting objects more accurately — sounds minor, but it could dramatically speed up one of the commonest tasks in photo manipulation. The new smart radius option for the simple selection tool uses different edge detection for different types of edge; Refine Radius lets you tweak sections of the selected edge individually; and Automatic colour decontamination removes the fringe of colour that can persist around the edges of a selected object so that it doesn't look natural on a new background. Combine this with the new Content-aware Fill, which removes unwanted objects and generates remarkably accurate background fills where you've removed them, and Puppet Warp, which lets you place control points on areas within a photo so you can change their shape or position, and Photoshop CS5 takes image manipulation and compositing to new levels. If you want to raise the hand of a figure in a photograph you can select it accurately, move it and fill in the background, removing unwanted companions or passing cars at the same time.
Photoshop CS5's Smart Radius and Refine Edge tools make selecting complex edges like hair far easier. For more Creative Suite 5 images, see our screenshot gallery
The improved RAW processing isn't fully functional in the beta, but it adds useful tools for removing colour and greyscale noise (ideal for high-ISO images), or for adding grain to make multiple images match. A lens correction filter offers useful geometric rectification and colour aberration removal, but unless you have one of the handful of cameras covered (including the iPhone) you'll have to profile your lens manually. The new HDR Pro dialogue simplifies the workflow for merging multiple exposures, with new controls for removing 'ghosts' of objects that shift between shots and choosing the tone effect of the combined image. The HDR Toning filter claims to simulate the expanded tonal range of HDR (High Dynamic Range) for a single image; it isn't always successful, but adds another way to enhance images. Painting brushes are enhanced by realistic brushes with fine control on how much colour is picked up from the underlying images and how 'wet' the image is.
Numerous small improvements address workflow and UI issues; for instance, there's a handy 'rule of thirds' grid on the crop tool.
Photoshop CS5 Extended adds to the 3D tools in CS4. The new GPU-accelerated Repoussé tool extrudes any 2D object into 3D; this is much more sophisticated than the preset 3D shapes you can create in CS4 Extended (which simply wrap an image around the shape). You can choose the style of 3D extrusion, from a simple bevel to twisting the 2D shape along a complex 3D path, and then scale, bend, shear, inflate or twist the 3D object. The tools for applying textures to 3D objects are simpler and new options generate shadows for your 3D object, add depth of field and simulate the lighting effects from photos (including HDR images) to make it easier to place generated 3D objects in a real-world scene.
InDesign
Design is about more than images. Text is just as important, especially when you're working on business graphics. That's where InDesign CS5, Adobe's publishing and layout tool, comes in. You'll find better support for design workflows, with integration into Adobe's Bridge asset-management tool. You'll be able to click through document pages, as well as viewing any linked files — so you'll be able to see the source images and content. A Mini-Bridge (also part of Photoshop CS5) can work with linked files from inside your document, without leaving InDesign. You can drag images on to a page from inside the Mini-Bridge, using the new autofit, gap, and corner adjustment tools to manage layouts. More complex layouts are managed with a span control for handling multiple columns.
Inside InDesign there's now support for pages in multiple sizes and orientations, as well as tools for working with groups and groupings. There's also a more Illustrator-like way of working with layers, giving access to the objects in each document layer. The latest InDesign also aims to solve one of those perennial problems: getting fonts to a printer. Instead of worrying if a fulfilment house has the right fonts, you'll be able to package the fonts you're using, and deliver them along with the document — only for use with the document.
You'll find that InDesign has become part of the Flash Platform too, with tools for making layouts into interactive content. We found this surprisingly useful, as it let us create content once, before delivering it to print and to the web. A new animation panel adds Flash presets, as well as tools for adding motion paths to documents.
Dreamweaver
Although Flash may have a lot of Adobe's attention, it has not ignored HTML development, and Dreamweaver CS5 is Adobe's first HTML 5 development tool. Dreamweaver's HTML 5 support is embryonic (much like the standard) and you'll still need to hand-type the tags, but there's a lot more in CS5 for CSS designers. The 17 bundled CSS layouts have been simplified and updated to use current best practices. They're also self-documenting, with both comments and in the boilerplate text. Setting up a site is a lot easier, with no need to fill in all your server details. These can now be added later, with prompts for adding server information when required (and with support for multiple deployment and staging servers).
If you're working with dynamic, database-driven content, Dreamweaver CS5's Live Code view lets you drill into the HTML that's actually being rendered — as well as testing and editing CSS on the fly.
Dreamweaver's PHP support has also had a major upgrade, with code-hinting for custom functions and libraries, and with dynamic link following tools for complex CMS generated pages — including those from PHP-powered tools like WordPress and Drupal. You'll be able to edit individual script components, before viewing the complete page in Dreamweaver CS5's built-in WebKit browser — along with Firebug-like tools for working with CSS, using non-destructive techniques to help debug and test style rules.
CS5 includes several online services, including BrowserLab. This takes the current DOM state of a page from Dreamweaver and uses it to render the page in several different browsers, on several different operating systems. An onion-skinning tool lets you quickly pinpoint any differences in the way browsers render pages that need to be handled in your page code.
