Review: Adobe Creative Suite Professional Part 1: Print Design

Product Name: Adobe Creative Suite Premium
Company: Adobe
URL: http://www.adobe.com
Category: Graphic Design Application Suite
Price:
- $1229.00 Premium Edition
- $749 upgrade from Photoshop 7, or from the Adobe Web, Design, Publishing, Digital Video, or Video Professional Collections
Requirements:
- G3 or G4, 10.2.4 minimum and Java 1.4.1
- 192MB RAM for any one application, additional RAM for simultaneous applications
- 1.775 GB drive space
- 1024x768 Monitor resolution
Rating: 4 bounces - Pure Lust (just because we don't go to 5)

Adobe CS Box After spending some real quality time working with the Adobe Creative Suite, I decided to break the review into two parts - and not by application. Much like it's predecessor applications, the Creative Suite is not as much a group of related applications as it is a single collaborative studio. For the most part, all of the applications are perfect as stand-alone products, but much like giant robots in Japanese cartoons, when the applications are used in concert, that's when the real butt-kicking begins.

So, this week I'll take a look at the Adobe Creative Suite as a Print Design tool. I've now had a chance to really use the Suite to crank out a few projects, and I've spent long hours with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. I could also spend long hours writing a review that slowly builds to a climax trumpeting the benefits of the Creative Studio. However I'm far too tired for that, so without further ado:

Adobe Creative Suite Professional — The New Standard for Print Design Applications

As expected, Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS are not massive upgrades, but they do add some nice new features. The biggest feature across all the applications is the increased level of compatibility and collaboration that can be enjoyed by designers. I really should make that a little more clear - the refined workflow in the creative Suite that was first introduced to some degree in the last version of these products is stunning, and likely alone worth the cost of the upgrade.

Photoshop rings in with lots of quiet new features, and a couple big splashy new ones as well. A new photomerge feature is quite slick - stitching multiple images into one giant panorama. It worked reasonably well for a quickie panorama I shot at the EPCOT Center in Disney World, but I think most of the problems were due to my wobbliness after a sake lunch in pseudo-Japan. The Photomerge action really is quite nice, and will either create layers for manual blending of the photos or automatically create the panorama. RAW camera file support is also now built into Photoshop, a very welcome feature for folks that have cameras that use this format.

For print designers, the big Photoshop feature has got to be layer comps. Layer comps let you save various configurations of a layout during the design process. So when you are deciding where the shape layer of the logo should go in your project, whether or not a certain layer needs layer effects, or whether you really need to include that picture of Saddam Hussein masquerading as the Unabomber - you can create layer comps for all these different states with a quick click of the button.

I got the chance to use this when building a recent Poster design - I could pop from one state to another, and rip quick JPGs to IM to the client. "Well, how about with the navigation like this," followed by "or we could try it this way." I only needed to save one version of the document instead of three, which probably saved a great deal of hard drive space.

Photoshop also played well with Illustrator, letting me easily share some vectors back and forth between the programs. Since Adobe added vector shape layers into Photoshop a few versions back, life has been quite nice on the design ranch.

Illustrator also adds some nice new features, notably the 3D filters for creating quick, but quite convincing 3D effects to vector shapes. You can even map images to the 3D artwork and adjust the lighting to fit your composition. It's a fun feature to goof around with, and let's face it, 3D is cool. PDF creation is much better, with a dialog box that allows you to really tweak the PDF to your specifications. Illustrator can use layers and PDF 6 files to create comps for clients as well, assuming you are willing to walk the client through the comp sequence on their end.

There is also a new save command: Save for Microsoft Office. Save for Office essentially makes a portable network graphic (PNG) file for those poor souls limited to Office options on PC systems. I'm personally quite thankful for this addition - I've spent too much of my life on the phone talking clients off the ledge after they tried to toss an EPS file into any Office application. Microsoft Office applications simply do not understand CMYK colors, let alone Pantone Spot Colors. A nice little RGB PNG is just the ticket for these folks.

Solo Collaboration is not an Oxymoron

The real magic really starts to happen when you combine Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign together. In my review of InDesign 2, I discussed the Adobe workflow - the ability to use native Photoshop and Illustrator files in InDesign. I never had any twitches with Illustrator files, but Photoshop files with Spot colors had to be saved in EPS or DCS formats to place in InDesign. InDesign now supports native Photoshop files no matter what the color format, including spot channels.

A decent analogy is that Adobe Creative Suite Premium functions like a design production team inside your computer, thus the solo collaboration. Instead of getting an intern to save and flatten all your PSDs while converting them to TIFS, EPS and DCS files and then building all the clipping paths for transparency, you can just bring your multilayered spot-channeled PSD directly into InDesign. You get work done faster, and the intern gets to keep some dignity (until you send them for coffee).

Flowing from one program to another seamlessly is a very natural way of working on Print Design projects, and it feels really unnatural when you have to (eek) use Quark again and save all those extra damn files. InDesign CS feels like a version 5 or 6 - not the 3rd version of an application. The amount of maturation the application has seen since version 1.5 is stunning.

InDesign has some tight new features - and it definitely the most substantial upgrade in the Studio. While I could write several reviews extensively talking about new features, I'm going to highlight my favorites from the last several weeks of use.

1. Best Typography Engine Ever

Typography is the single most important spoke in the design wheel, and InDesign does it better than anyone. Massive and sweeping OpenType is really changing the way I use type, and create custom fonts. With InDesign supporting all the standard OpenType goodies, I can create bad-ass ligatures and discretionary ligatures in custom fonts to use in my work.

OpenType features abound in InDesign CS. I now have a ligature fetish.

Granted, I'm still trying to find the time to finish a font I started in August, but my Advanced Typography class all designed fonts this semester. A few students created discretionary ligatures (those outside the normal fi, fl, etc range) like "ll" and "el" in a script font. Using this font as a designer is sweet - just turn on the discretionary ligatures - and boom - the type clicks into place.

I should also mention that the type engines in both Illustrator and Photoshop are updated to include various goodies as well. Illustrator also has robust OpenType support - and both support "Optical" auto kerning. This means when a font designer spends a ton of time building all those lovely kerning tables for letter combinations, InDesign can actually use the kerning values instead of simply using the Metrics values, which are far less accurate.

2. Separations Preview

I can't express in mere words how cool this is, I need some manner of quanitfying how cool this is. Ah, yes, I can use money, since I'm saving a ton of cash on overpriced toner. The separations preview palette is just perfect. You can view all the color separations in a document singly, or in any combination. You can also choose to view single separations in color, as opposed to as black plates. As I suspected, this is not only a great design tool, but it's also excellent for teaching design.


The Separations Preview Palette: increase proofing without the printing!

Separations previewed with both the 280 and 877 plates visible...	...and just the 280 plate visible in this image.

3. Clean Interface

I have 17 palettes on my workspace at this moment, yet I can still view a two page spread at 97% on my PowerBook with no overlapping palettes. How? Because InDesign lets you move the palettes to line the edge of the screen and slide in and out like drawers. No muss, no fuss, and I've found that it is far easier to manage these cute little sliding palettes. It's a very easy adjustment to recleim a ton of workspace.

Sliding palettes make my workspace oh-so-pretty and clean...
(pic links to 282KB image)

...but a simple click gives me quick access to whatever I need.
(pic links to 295KB image)

I'll now take this moment to give a stern look to Illustrator and Photoshop. It would be nice to have these throughout the next version of the Creative Suite.

4. Speed, and Lots of It

So I'm right in the middle of a brochure project, and I'm bouncing between Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign pretty constantly - and I come to a sudden realization. Even with all three of these apps running, and iTunes kicking out the jams, these apps are really moving. InDesign is nice and snappy, even with the Display Performance set to high quality, Illustrator is really fast, and Photoshop is sailing along. What gives?

Honestly, I don't know. But all three of these programs are considerably faster than their predecessors. InDesign and Illustrator are sometimes shockingly faster. And I think I might have discovered a little secret.

InDesign 2 could get slow screen redraws when large graphics were placed on the page with the display set to high quality. Illustrator 10 could also get pokey with a lot of complex shapes. In CS, things are really fast in both programs, and if you watch - you see that when you make a big move across the screen, it looks like both Illustrator and InDesign lower the display quality to speed up the redraw.

5. Perfect PDFs

Finally, InDesign makes lovely PDFs. Effortlessly. I have saved about 5 different PDF styles that I use on regularly. InDesign exports in less time than it takes to say, "you don't have to print a postscript file and then run it through distiller and then hope to God you made the postscript file right, like some other programs I could mention, whose native PDF export seems to suck."

Ah, look at all the industry-standard PDF presets. In over a year of working with InDesign (since 2.0), I never met a PDF a printer didn't like. CS looks to get even better with PDF/X and Acrobat 6 layered PDF support.

But I digress. As far as I'm concerned, Quark is now officially dead. Mourning and flowers are unnecessary.

Get On With It

Overall, the Creative Suite doesn't feel like a bunch of upgraded programs, but one big application for design. The movement between applications is getting more seamless, and once again, there were big performance gains on my PowerBook 17. At a gigabyte of RAM, everything sails along quite nicely.

Honestly, I'm not sure what else I can write about InDesign, and the entire Creative Suite when it comes to print design. It's gotta be tried to be believed. I can recite all the features, and discuss the merits of each, but that's tedious for everyone. It's just simply without peer anymore. It's so far ahead of the competition, the competition can't see it with the naked eye anymore.

Everyone I talk to who has tried the Adobe workflow and made the switch to InDesign has stuck with it - and the Quark users all seem to say about the same thing: "Well, it gets awfully good reviews, maybe I should try it sometime."

Try it. There is an entire rebirth of print design happening, and a lot of good designers are missing out on the fun. And trust me, print design has become a ton of fun again. The best analogy I can make is it's like making the upgrade from old fashioned hand tools to brand new power tools. Sure, both can produce good work if you are a skilled craftsman, but it's going to be a lot easier with the power tools. The tools don't make you a better carpenter, but they do tend to speed up the work and allow you to do more with your time.

Get some new tools. Trust me.

- Joel Davies

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