Product Reviews

While Adobe still sells its editing programs as standalone products, it is putting more and more emphasis on its Creative Suite (CS) bundle. This suite consists of Photoshop, Illustrator and the InDesign page layout program. Rather than upgrading these programs individually, it has upgraded the entire suite at once. So with CS2, we have new versions of all the applications, plus some new tools to help integrate them.

When you install the software, you are greeted with an annoying activation procedure, which we object to on principle. Once you've paid for the software, it should be yours to use without any strings attached. However, once you get past this annoyance there's a lot to like in this upgrade.

For most users, the main element of CS is Photoshop and they won't be disappointed with this upgrade, as there are several impressive new features. One feature, the old Photoshop File Browser, has been turned into a complete application of its own, the Bridge. The original File Browser allowed you to preview photos before opening them in Photoshop, but the Bridge can preview any file created with a CS application. A minimised version of the Bridge can be opened within Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign, providing instant access to the files that you need.

VANISHING ACT

Photoshop itself has a few new features. Highlights include the new Vanishing Point tool, which allows you to paint or edit images using perspective effects. The tool lets you draw a perspective plane on part of an image, such as a road that vanishes into the distance. Any painting or editing tools that you use on the image will follow the perspective plane, rather than simply treating the image as a flat scene. This ingenious feature makes it much easier to edit images where perspective or depth of field play an important part.

Adobe has also produced a new version of the existing Healing brush. The old brush could eliminate minor blemishes, but the new Spot Healing Brush can eliminate complete objects and replace them with pixels drawn from the background of the image. You can use it to instantly remove a stranger from a scene by covering them with part of the background. And at long last, Photoshop has some basic animation tools, so you no longer have to use the separate ImageReady program to prepare web graphics.

Several existing features have also been enhanced.

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The warping tool and red-eye removal have been improved, and are now quicker. There are improved photographic filters for removing problems such as noise and distortion from your photos, though the Vanishing Point tool and Spot Healing Brush alone are worth the upgrade.

PLAYING LIVE

The new version of Illustrator has a couple of eye-catching new features. The first is Live Trace, a new option for converting bitmap images, such as photos or scanned artwork, into vector graphics. This replaces the clunky Streamline tracing software that Adobe has been using for several years. When you import a bitmap image into Illustrator, a Live Trace button appears in the toolbar running across the top of the screen. You can hit this button and immediately turn the image into a vector illustration, or select one of the tracing options from a pull-down menu. You can make the image look like a hand-drawn sketch or a technical illustration, or even try to preserve the appearance of the original photograph. The feature works well, and will be useful for those who want to use bitmap photos or artwork as the basis of an illustration.

A companion feature, Live Paint, makes it easier to colour complex illustrations such as scanned artwork. It can be difficult to colour illustrations that contain multiple overlapping objects. Live Paint simplifies this process by treating the illustration as though it were a simple bitmap image, allowing you to add colour quickly anywhere you want. This will be a huge timesaver for many designers and illustrators.

The final component in the Creative Suite is InDesign, the page layout program that seems to be making headway despite the longstanding dominance of QuarkXPress. InDesign allows you to create 'snippets', pieces of stored graphics and text that you can quickly re-use in multiple documents. The process of applying text styles has been speeded up, as you can just hit Ctrl-Enter on the keyboard and start to type the name of a style rather than having to select it from a list in a palette. You can also specify a Next style, so applying one style to an item such as a headline automatically applies additional styles to other text elements that follow the headline. You can now create and save object styles that record properties, such as a drop shadow or text-wrap, that are applied to graphics and other objects. InDesign's new features aren't as eye-catching as those of Photoshop or Illustrator, but they'll help designers save time and perform routine tasks more quickly.

The Standard version of the Creative Suite includes Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and costs £786 including VAT. The Premium version adds Acrobat Professional and GoLive web design for £1,040 including VAT. Of course, you may wish to buy the programs individually rather than paying for the full suite. Either way, each program has enough powerful new features to ensure that existing users are happy to pay for the upgrades.