Download of the Week: Adobe Creative Suite 5 trial versions

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Jos

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Love it or hate it, Adobe has become a household name synonymous with media design and creation. The company's extensive software portfolio is used every day by professionals and freelancers working in creative sectors from web and print design to video production and whatnot. Late last week the most recent iteration of their Creative Suite series began shipping, and with it 30-day trial versions for every component in CS5 were made available for download.


These are all fully functional so you can test-drive every single feature that's available in the retail version of the software. In terms of new features, Adobe claims more than 250 have been added throughout the Master Collection and several of its applications have been updated to take advantage of things like multi-core processors and GPUs. Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects are now 64-bit native, both on Mac OS X and Windows, and particularly improvements in Photoshop's OpenGL engine will make the new version faster and more responsive as well.

In total there are new versions of fourteen point products (all except Acrobat Pro), and a brand new software called Flash Catalyst which is included in every edition except Design Standard. Adobe has also included a set of five online services that complement CS5 products and are said to augment key aspects of the creative workflow.

At around $2600 the complete suite doesn't really make much sense, but Adobe's targeted editions -- Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium -- might be right up your alley if you rely heavily on these tools, or perhaps even getting them individually. CS5 is definitely not for everyone, but that shouldn't necessarily stop you from trying out the free versions (after registering on Adobe's site). The Illustrator trial weights about 1.3GB, Photoshop over 950MB, while Flash is closer to 850MB. The Design Premium and Master Collection are 2.8GB and 4.5GB, respectively.

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I used to be an expert with the early Photoshop and PageMaker (InDesign) products when I was the manager of a print shop for a major airline years ago. But I've seen these new CS5 versions and I wouldn't know what to do with them if someone held a gun to my head they've evolved so much.

You really need some pretty decent tutoring along with a thorough understanding of photo manipulation and media layouts to use these products effectively. They're depth is pretty remarkable.
 
I've been there with Photoshop a few years ago when I went to school. Needed to do some photo editing and my dad is a freelance photographer so he had Photoshop on his machine (plus the only photo editing software in the house) and I couldn't even resize a picture! After getting thoroughly frustrated with myself I let my dad give me s few lessons on how to use it, man that Software is sweat! Just a shame you have to take lessons to use the darn thing!
 
I've used photoshop almost daily for 10 years and there are STILL things I discover once a month or so it will do I didn't know it would do.
It's one of the most un-user friendly programs out there, but, sometimes the results are STUNNING.
The content aware feature sure is a time saver. Instead of "shopping" out poles, signs, other flaws in a photo, spending HOURS blending the edges to make it look clean, just use the lasso, or magnetic lasso to stitch around it, let the content aware to remove it, then clean up any left over flaws. Saves a TON of time.
 
Well there is a reason there are so many Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign magazines. And lets not forget about NAPP.
 
I need to get my hands on the trial. I use Photoshop CS4, my son uses Premiere. Photoshop is not the easiest software to learn, but that's the only one you really need if you are serious about photographic manipulation. All the rest is "nice to have."
 
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