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It seems like Creative Suite 3 was just released, but CS4 is now out. As always, Adobe's powerhouse suite shows impressive improvements in all areas, but this time there's a special emphasis on collaboration. Intranet professionals, it might be time to upgrade.

Editions

There are six versions of the new suite: Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Web Standard, Production Premium, and Master Collection. Visit Adobe.com to see what components are in each edition. Every part of the collection saw improvements, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and Dreamweaver.

Overall Improvements

The Creative Suite workflow has been improved to make it easier to move between applications. You're now able to complete common tasks and switch between mediums without leaving a project. Transferring content from one app to another is also simpler.

Online collaboration gets a major boost with a variety of online services. ConnectNow, a part of the Acrobat.com (www.acrobat.com) suite, lets people collaborate online in real-time with colleagues or clients. ConnectNow is accessible from InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Acrobat Pro. Designers will like the Kuler, an online tool for sharing color harmonies. Kuler is accessible from within InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, and Fireworks.

Other online tools include Adobe Community Help, Resource Central (for audio and video news and tutorials), and Adobe Bridge Home (for tips, tutorials, and news).

Design Premium Improvements

Print designers will want to check out the fast Web site prototyping available in Design Premium, now that Fireworks has been added to the suite. Collaboration features include the ability to e-mail a PDF with built-in synchronized viewing. You and your recipient can navigate the document together, scrolling around the page or zooming in at the same time. You can also show off your creations with the new PDF Portfolios feature, which makes it easy to create dynamic, interactive presentations that anyone with Reader or Acrobat can view.

Web Premium Improvements

The online design suite offers major improvements for Web builders including better integration between applications. You can create an image in Photoshop, for example, then open it as a Smart Object in Dreamweaver. If the original image is modified later with Photoshop, you'll see in Dreamweaver that the images are out of sync and you'll be able to update the Web version without opening Photoshop.

Production Premium Improvements

Audio and video professionals will find that here, as in the other versions, better integration is the key improvement. With Production Premium, that means the expanded Dynamic Link creates a tighter integration between assets in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, and Encore, letting you work faster by removing rendering stages after a change.

Master Collection Improvements

For the creative professional who needs it all, there's the Master Collection, and the improvements span the various editing areas. You can use the new Content-Aware Scaling in Photoshop which recomposes an image into a different shape while preserving key content, or discover new animation controls in Flash that let elements interact in a more natural way. You can work between apps with greater integration, or import video in even more formats, including AVCHD, P2, and XDCAM EX.

Photoshop's new Content-Aware Scaling lets you change the proportion of an image while preserving visually important areas, as these two photos show.

Pricing

Design Premium sells for $1,799, Web Premium for $1,699, Production Premium for $1,699, and Master Collection for $2,499. For a limited time, Adobe is rewarding customers for staying current by offering an especially low upgrade price for current CS3 owners. Check Adobe.com for full details.

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