5 posts tagged “adobe”

Ben Forta, Adobe Systems Inc's Senior Technical Evangelist, will be visiting Indy today to present a preview of the features and updates to the upcoming release of ColdFusion 8 (Scorpio).  Ben's role with Adobe is focused primarily on ColdFusion and Flex.  He is highly recognized as one of the most knowledgeable resources in the world on ColdFusion web development.  He is also author of the best ColdFusion book, IMHO, the Web Application Contruction Kit (WACK).

The event will be held at the former Walker Information building at Noon on Tuesday, May 8.  A copy of Flex 2 with Charting and a copy of ColdFusion 8 will be raffled off as well.  Pizza will be served for attendees.

For more information and details on the event, please visit the Hoosier Fusion site.  To learn more about Ben Forta, please visit his site Forta.com.

Thanks, Ben for not forgetting Indy in the pre-release tour!  ColdFusion rocks!!

The highly anticipated next release of Adobe Creative Suite CS3 will be launched today.  With the acquisition of Macromedia, the two innovative companies have completely integrated and converged their individual product lines into a powerhouse of applications and suites.  Additionally, the Mac audience will finally have an universal binary suite optimized for the Intel-based Macs.  Previous versions of Adobe CS on Intel Macs had nearly completely eroded the performance benefits of the Intel processor.

With this consolidation and unification of products, Adobe will expand its CS offerings in a variety of suite solutions that best fit an individual designer, developer or production artist.  Suites include:

• Design Standard
• Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, InDesign CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional
• Design Premium
• Design Standard applications + Dreamweaver CS3, Flash CS3 Professional

• Web Standard
• Dreamweaver CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Fireworks CS3, Contribute CS3
• Web Premium
• Web Standard applications + Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional
• Production Premium
• After Effects CS3 Professional, Premiere Pro CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Flash CS3 Professional, Illustrator CS3, Soundbooth CS3, Encore CS3
• Master Collection
• After Effects CS3 Professional, Premiere Pro CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Flash CS3 Professional, Illustrator CS3, Soundbooth CS3, Encore CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Fireworks CS3, Contribute CS3

I have been fortunate enough to see the earlier versions of many these applications while attending Adobe MAX 2006.  There are many compelling reasons to upgrade to these newest releases and amazing new capabilities.  I have been a beta tester for Photoshop CS3, Fireworks 9 (CS3), and Soundbooth for several months.  Each application has been tremendously improved.  In particular, Adobe has leveraged Macromedia's expertise in interface design to improve application workflow and usability.  The Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 is just one example.  Its a much cleaner and usable solution.  In line with these changes, Adobe modified its traditional pallettes to the more functional docks, but most importantly added a single bar rollover for each dock to increase workspace and lessen visual clutter.  It rocks.

I'm sure there will be much more to write here after I receive my official release.  Adobe is one of my favorite companies and one of the most respected innovators in software.  So get your creative juices flowing and check out these kick-butt applications!

Late yesterday, Adobe announced the upcoming release of an online version of their hugely popular Photoshop application.  The application will be an entry-level version of Photoshop, much like Photoshop Elements desktop application.  The online version will be offered free of charge with ad-based revenue supporting the offering.  The release is expected within the next six months.  Adobe used its Flex 2 technology to create the application and will likely port the online application into the upcoming Apollo run-time platform for offline/online capabilities.

Adobe explained this offering will be a major departure from their traditional product channels, but a necessary move in the ever more competitive online application environment.  It clearly makes sense for Adobe to make such a shift based on the likelihood another start-up or internet powerhouse, such as Google, might make a competitive offering that takes an early gain in marketshare.  There are several other online competitive offerings already available such as Picnik, Google's Picasa, and PXN8, and Fauxto.  These start-ups have largely developed as a supplemental to popular photo-sharing sites like Flickr and PhotoBucket.  Adobe hopes to bring their brand recognition and franchise domination in the area of photo editing to the masses.

But if you are a professional designer, Adobe will continue to offer Photoshop in a desktop application that will fully integrate with the line of Adobe products.  You can download Photoshop CS3 (beta) now for free from Adobe Labs.

Overall, I think this is good news for the industry and Adobe.  It seems Adobe has gained some web savvy know-how through talent acquired in the Macromedia acquisition.

Additional Resources:

• CNet News.com: Adobe to take Photoshop online
• TechCrunch: Adobe Photoshop: Online Edition
  

Adobe recently released a new web-hosted application, Kuler, in their Labs on November 21.  Kuler, pronounced "Color", is a Flash-based application (requires Flash Player 9 plug-in) that allows designers to develop harmonious color schemes and themes for creative works. 

The application is pretty awesome.  You can create different color schemes or browse the schemes of other users, a nice web 2.0 touch.  If you want to modify a scheme, you can double-click the scheme and a full-screen color managment system opens.  In the color management system, a designer has the options to adjust colors by CMYK, Lab, RGB, HSV and Hexadecimal.  The really huge advantage to using Kuler over other color scheming applications is the ability to download your completed scheme as an Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ASE) file for use in Creative Suite 2 components, as well as in individual versions of Adobe Illustrator® CS2, InDesign® CS2, Photoshop® CS2, and GoLive® CS2.  Currently, the application is free while in Labs.

I personally use ColorSchemer and would highly recommend it as another option for developing color schemes for creative.  There is an online version and a desktop application ($50 USD).  The online version is fairly basic (hey, it's free to use!) but the desktop application adds much more functionality and is worth the upgrade IMO, if you regularly design digital media.  The application is available for both Windows and Mac OS X.  The desktop apps provide functionality for finding a variety of harmonious color schemes (analogous, complementary, monochromatic, triadic, tetradic, etc.) for a base color.  ColorSchemer allows you to add colors to your scheme and there does not appear to be a limit.  This was a real drawback for me with Kuler as it only allows 5 colors in a scheme.  ColorSchemer also has color picking tools for the screen or from a photo.  Schemes can be exported and saved for future use and/or uploaded to the ColorSchemer site for sharing and community rating.  There is a large community of schemers sharing their schemes that can be downloaded to the desktop application's library of schemes. Schemes can be also added to "favorites" in your account.  I would give the application 5 out of 5 stars. 

I'm still going to check out Kuler and become familiar with its capabilities and interface.  Kuler will be a bigger value to my print/graphic-oriented colleagues.  Since I spend most of my time in Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash and Flex, the swatch downloads are not applicable feature for my work.  I suspect that this feature will be added into the next release of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash.  Although, I'm beta testing Fireworks 9 currently and don't believe it yet applies to the application in its current beta status.

So go check out Kuler and all the other great technologies that are free to use in Adobe Labs.  There is some great stuff there for the creative in you!

I received fantastic news today.  I will be attending the Adobe MAX 2006 Conference in Las Vegas in October.  I have long wanted to attend this developers conference (formerly held by Macromedia).

For the conference, I will be staying at the lavish and posh hotel, The Venetian.  I will be participating in many sessions primarily focused on web development and rich internet application development.  I'm especially looking forward to the sessions on Spry, Apollo, and Flex frameworks and acquiring skills in integration with ColdFusion and PHP.I know many of you won't understand all that, but the geeks will. 

I'll have some freetime in the evenings and on Monday, October 23.  This will be my first time in Las Vegas.  There's a lot to do but I'm not really sure where to start.  Have any suggestions to make my trip memorable?