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Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 software combines power and simplicity to help you do it all. Edit and enhance your photos by fixing common flaws instantly or using advanced options for more control. Keep every photo at your fingertips. And show off your creativity in entertaining slide shows, photo mail, Web galleries, and countless other ways.
The newest plugins pack for Photoshop
Full list:
Digital Film Tools 55mm v7 5 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools Digital Film Lab v2 5 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools EZ Mask v1 5 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools Light v3 5 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools Ozone v2 5 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools Power Mask v1 0 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools Power Stroke v1 0 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools Snap v2 5 for Adobe Photoshop
Digital Film Tools zMatte v2 5 for Adobe Photoshop
Imagenomic Portraiture v1 0 1 for Adobe Photoshop
Imagenomic RealGrain v1 0 1 for Adobe Photoshop
Nik Color Efex Pro v2 007 Complete Edition for Adobe Photoshop
Nik Sharpener Pro v2 003 Complete Edition for Adobe Photoshop
onOne Genuine Fractals PrintPro v 5 0 3 for Adobe Photoshop
onOne PhotoFrame Pro v3 1 1 for Adobe Photoshop
onOne software Mask Pro v4 1 1 for Adobe Photoshop
onOneSoftware Intellihance Pro v4 2 1 for Adobe Photoshop
Photomatix Tone Mapping v1 1 2 for Adobe Photoshop
PTLens Standalone And Photoshop Plugin v8 6 Multilingual
Contribute is not a stand-alone Web design editor that will work for most professional designers. This is a great tool if you’re maintaining a site that someone else built, or you are handing off a design to a non-technical content or website owner. If all you’re looking for is a very high-featured blog editor or website editor, then Contribute gets four stars. But for professional Web designers, this tool is too constraining. I use it only to provide my customers an easy way to edit their pages once I’m done building them.
uide Review – Adobe Contribute CS4
Contribute is a great tool for its audience. It is perfect for the content owner or small business owner who doesn’t want to spend a lot of time managing or maintaining a website. With Contribute you don’t need to know HTML or CSS, you just open your website, browse to the page that you want to edit and make your changes. Since it’s a WYSIWYG editor and Web browser in one, you know how your changes will look as you’re editing them.
The reason I gave Contribute three stars is because it’s not well suited to most Web designers as their primary Web editor. It doesn’t support CSS or HTML code directly, so you have to rely on the styles and classes already defined for the website.
Two of the best features of Contribute are the version controls and access controls built into the program. When you set up a site to be edited by Contribute users, you are setting up a whole system to manage that site as well. The site administrator can create roles and access levels for different people. And the version control system, with check-in and check-out as well as rollback capability means that you never have to worry about mistakes taking down entire pages.
Finally, Contribute acts as a full-featured blog editor. If you’re a Web designer who also writes a blog, you can use Dreamweaver to build your sites with Contribute access. Then you just provide your content owners with Contribute roles so that they can edit the pages. And you can use Contribute to administer the site and manage your blog.
I recently finished working with Adobe UK on a project for the next generation of the Adobe Creative Suite and while I can’t relate the details about anything I saw or worked on, I can discuss my experiences using the latest version of the suite—CS2. During my time at Adobe I worked almost exclusively with the entire suite, creating and testing interfaces, writing and laying out specifications, and designing icons.
First impressions . . . CS2 is big—really big. It uses over 3GB of storage on the hard drive of any machine you care to install it on. CS2 consists of seven core programs and a stock library: Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, GoLive CS2, and Acrobat 7.0 Professional software with new Version Cue CS2, Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Stock Photos. Don’t even think of running it on a machine with less than 512MB, in fact scratch that last one—make it 1GB for reasonable performance when using more than one program.
So what’s new? The biggest change and addition is Bridge. It’s the new solution from Adobe which allows you to browse and manage your assets (digital photos, graphics, etc., etc.) either as a standalone program or in partnership with Version Cue. Despite being a little on the slow side, Bridge ties in very nicely with Photoshop and the other programs, allowing you to manage and view all your creative assets. Using Bridge, you can perform various tasks including finding files, tracking shared resources, viewing metadata and even access stock photography online from the Adobe Stock Photography service. Bridge has also helped to resolve some color management issues by standardizing the settings for all programs in CS2. Bridge also offers capabilities such as an RSS reader, multiple file views and the collection of related assets into file groups. With the integration of Adobe Camera RAW into Bridge, basic enhancements and batch processing of RAW files to other formats can be done without ever having to launch Photoshop itself.
While we’re on the subject of files, Bridge facilitates a more intelligent way of handling files by intelligently linking file types with application specific element linking. Drag supported files from bridge to InDesign and it knows what to do with them. Do this with third-party application content, e.g., Microsoft Word files, and InDesign will use them correctly.
Photoshop CS2 has also been updated since the last release with improvements made to RAW image handling and the addition of new features like the Vanishing Point tool, 32-bit High Dynamic Range Image support, Smart Objects and Image Warping. Add the new Spot Healing Brush and the one-click red eye correction and you have some excellent additions to an already powerful tool.
Illustrator CS2 also benefits from some excellent new capabilities. The Live Trace tool is very well done with its ability to convert photos, scans and other bitmaps into vectors. I found the conversion process a little clumsy at times and needing a little refinement, but its a good starting point and a welcome addition to CS2. Adobe has also added Live Paint which is somewhat like an intelligent fill tool and a control palette which centralizes many of the features needed for key operations and support for Photoshop layer composites (which adds control over the visibility of layer comps).
InDesign CS2 has been enhanced in several areas, including Object Styles which allow you to apply and update attributes and styles to individual objects, Photoshop and PDF layer support for making element level changes to linked files, and the ability to save individual InDesign elements out as snippets for later use (kind of like using your hard drive as a paste-up board to store frequently used items—an especially useful feature for some of the specs I had to write). Add the creation of the InDesign Interchange format and you have a great facility for porting your files to an earlier version of InDesign if necessary.
One tool which many reviewers have been eager to slam has been the GoLive web design and publishing program, and here I am going against the grain. I like GoLive. Its integration into Creative Suite 2 is excellent. I especially like the Enhanced Live Rendering Engine which gives you real-time preview of what your web page will look like. Add the integration of tools for creating and managing your assets, sites and authoring for mobile devices and you have an excellent authoring environment. The inclusion of device emulation for Sony and Nokia Mobile devices is without a doubt one of the best features. I would like to see modules for other brands of mobiles though.
I used GoLive extensively when creating and modeling some of my interface concepts and their interactivity. In my other web design work I use this in combination with Dreamweaver for doing different parts of my web site and then hand tweak as much as I can. The improved Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) handling through the new CSS Editor is also very much appreciated.
The inclusion of Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional in the Premium suite is a welcome addition. The enhanced capabilities it offers when editing and creating PDF files is awesome. Added to that are its built-in preflighting and prepress capabilities. Using Adobe Acrobat Pro is easy and it offers many capabilities, some of which enhance file operations via the context menus in your file browser.
The improvements made to the suite are definitely worth the price of the upgrade. The biggest improvements have been made in the use of the very aptly named Bridge because it does indeed bring all of CS2’s component programs more closely together. The improved color management system, intelligent file handling and management capabilities are excellent. The bottom line is that CS is indeed worth every penny and a must buy, just for the integration alone.
There are a few things I’d like to see in future versions of CS. One thing for certain is more integration with the Macromedia products Adobe recently acquired (hopefully this is in the works). I’d like to see some kind of Power Curves feature in Photoshop. The Autotrace and Live Sketch features in Illustrator need improvement. Eliminate product activation or replace it with a more intelligent passport type system. I want a more dynamic implementation of the red eye removal tool that allows you to visually size the area of influence. I’d also like to see a more powerful transformation calculator in Illustrator which would allow me to have more control over individual illustration elements.
Cons: Bridge needs substantial improvements in speed. An enhanced curve editor is still required in Photoshop. The online activation still sucks. CS2 is not compatible with older operating systems. 3GB installation and heavy RAM requirements.
Pros: Excellent suite overall and very good utility component integration. Loads of power, flexibility, and good value for the money. Excellent global support of PDF. Intelligent drag & drop support between Bridge and CS2 programs is excellent. New Photoshop and Illustrator features are well implemented. All in all, using Creative Suite 2 has been a pleasure and I look forward to the new features and productivity gains promised by Adobe in the next generation of this already great suite of creative tools. If you are a designer or a creative professional, Adobe Creative Suite 2 should be the second investment you make for your business, (the first being a decent Windows or Mac workstation). Highly recommended.
Everyone just loves to let their creative juices flow. I like to take photographs of… stuff… and… people… but sometimes I’m not quite happy with the results. Like, for example, there’s a person I don’t like in the photo, I can just fire up Adobe Photoshop and airbrush them out. Or if I want to make some funky logo, I just need to open Adobe Illustrator, or if I want to become a media mogul and create my own gadget magazine, I can use Adobe InDesign, or even possibly creating a webpage with very strange blogs using Adobe GoLive, well, you’d think that sort of software would cost me over 5 grand. Well, lucky for us struggling “artistes”, Adobe has included all these programs in the one software bundle and the cost savings are enormous!
Adobe Creative Suite 2 for Mac allows me to create, manipulate, print, publish and distribute from within the one software suite. It lets me deal with all the aforementioned scenarios and then some. I am only limited by my imagination (or lack thereof). Actually, Adobe Creative Suite 2 for Mac is so invaluable, the photos that I put up on Mr.Gadget come courtesy of Photoshop. Thanks Mr. Adobe!
Anyway, to show the awesome results of Adobe Creative Suite 2 in the hands of a true professional, here’s a picture I prepared earlier:
Greater control over images in Adobe Photoshop CS2
Enjoy greater precision and control over images in Adobe Photoshop CS2 software with new features such as Vanishing Point and multiple layer selection.
New power for vectors in Adobe Illustrator CS2
Create editable and scalable vector artwork in Adobe Illustrator CS2 software, now with advanced painting, drawing, and type tools.
Rich, versatile layouts with Adobe InDesign CS2
Create pages in Adobe InDesign CS2 software using innovative features such as object styles and flexible production controls for high-quality, cross-media output.
Standards based Web and mobile authoring with Adobe GoLive CS2
Take your work as far as you want to go by creating Web sites or designing content for mobile devices in Adobe GoLive CS2 software.
Effective collaboration and printing with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional
Conduct efficient electronic reviews with clients and gain greater control over print output with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional software.
Unified design environment
Work efficiently in the common Adobe interface, enjoy flexible file exchange across Adobe Creative Suite 2, and take advantage of visual file management and tracking of all your assets.
Collaboration and file sharing
Share project files confidently while working on a team, knowing that you will be guided by Version Cue CS2 through possible edit conflicts.
Bring new power and efficiency to your film, video, DVD, and web workflows with Adobe Production Studio Premium software. Part of the Adobe Creative Suite family, this complete audio and video post-production solution combines Adobe After Effects 7.0 Professional, Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Audition 2.0, Adobe Encore DVD 2.0, and Adobe Illustrator CS2 software with the timesaving workflow features Adobe Dynamic Link and Adobe Bridge.
Deliver your best work with Adobe Production Studio Premium software, part of the Adobe Creative Suite family.
A complete, fully integrated post-production environment, Adobe Production Studio Premium combines Adobe�s world-class video and graphics software with the ground-breaking efficiency of Adobe Dynamic Link for unmatched integration and a highly efficient workflow.
Like Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Production Studio provides deep integration and a powerful, unified design environment. With the unique power of Adobe Dynamic Link, you can view and work with motion graphics, title sequences, and visual effects in both Adobe After Effects for editing and in your Adobe Premiere Pro timeline, with no need to render and import new video every
time you edit. Similarly, you can work with motion menus in both After Effects and Adobe Encore DVD with no intermediate rendering steps. This direct link means you spend more time perfecting your productions and less time rendering them, thus eliminating a frustrating and time-consuming production bottleneck. Working with Adobe Production Studio means you have access to a full range of superior and tightly integrated tools that bring the power and efficiency you demand to your post-production work.
In the tenth major version of any professional application, most of the basics are already taken care of. So it is with Dreamweaver CS4. This version successfully continues Dreamweaver’s movement toward building properly structured, standards-compliant Web sites. Whether you’re a designer or a Web programmer, Dreamweaver CS4 makes it easier to work with today’s sites, split up as they are between HTML, CSS, and script files. Add tighter integration with Photoshop for creating Web graphics, and this is an upgrade worth paying for.
To run Dreamweaver CS4, you’ll need Windows XP SP2 or Vista, or Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later. On the Mac, you’ll also require a PowerPC G5 or Intel-based Macintosh. I installed Dreamweaver CS4 as part of the CS4 Master Collection package on Macintosh and as a standalone program on Windows. Installation on the Mac took a long time (almost an hour), as is now familiar when installing an Adobe suite. Windows installation took much less time because there was so much less to install.
Dreamweaver has long had the ability to interface with a server-side database to create dynamic Web sites, but this requires serious database and programming knowledge.
Dreamweaver CS4’s new HTML data set feature allows you to store your data in a standard HTML table, a series of div tags, or an unordered list. Through a wizard, you integrate the data into a dynamic table that’s displayed using the Spry framework for Ajax. Spry is Adobe’s JavaScript and CSS library that lets you place user interface elements or effects on your Dreamweaver pages. The wizard gives you several options for displaying the data, and when users load your page, they can interact with the page to sort or display detailed information, drawn on the fly from the data document.
The cool thing about the HTML data set is that other people without layout skills can update the data document. Thanks to the dynamic page generated by Spry, the results will still look good.
One interesting development that appeared after Dreamweaver shipped was the availability of widgets from other JavaScript frameworks on the Adobe Exchange Web site, including widgets based on Yahoo Interface Library (YUI), jQuery, and MooTools. This indicates that Adobe wants to give Dreamweaver users access to the fruits of other developer’s labors. Previously, if you wanted to take advantage of any JavaScript framework other than Spry, you needed to integrate it in Dreamweaver’s Code View. Now, you can do it without needing to dig into the code; after you install third-party widgets with the included Extension Manager, they appear in Dreamweaver’s Insert panel.
With After Effects 7.0, Adobe rolls out an impressive list of new features for its highly successful visual effects and compositing software. There are so many new features that it’d be foolish to list them all here; we refer you to the company’s Web site for an exhaustive treatment of the subject. Some of our favorites, however, include the following: an elegantly functional new user interface; the Graph Editor; better integration with other Adobe products; enhanced OpenGL support; 32-bit HDR color support; and dozens of new Animation and Behavior presets. A few of the new features (such as the new Adobe Bridge interface) don’t seem quite worthy of the hype, but overall, After Effects 7.0 is one of those rare birds in software development: a fully fleshed out new version that was well worth the wait.
To test After Effects 7.0, we installed the software on a Pentium 4 computer running Windows XP Pro, with 1GB system RAM and a 128MB ATI OpenGL video display adapter.
Panel Pushing
The new After Effects 7.0 user interface (which is shared by other members of the Adobe Production Studio family, including Premiere Pro 2.0, Encore DVD 2.0, and Audition 2.0) successfully bridges the gap between space conservation and ease of use. (See Videomaker’s April 2006 for more on the bundle interface.) This new interface is very easy to use and intuitive; most users will find themselves setting up and saving new workspaces within minutes of installing the product.
One other UI-related item that’s found in After Effects 7.0 is the Graph Editor, which though not an Adobe innovation is nonetheless a welcome addition. The Graph Editor presents effects in a two-dimensional graph, with time represented horizontally and either effect values (such as opacity, rotation, position, etc.) or an effect’s rate of change represented vertically. Once you get the hang of it (and it may take a few tries before the light bulb goes on), you’ll find yourself wondering how you ever got along with those old-fashioned, one-dimensional timelines; the Graph Editor allows users to tweak effect parameters with a much higher degree of detail and finesse. (Note: earlier versions of After Effects included graphs for some effects, but they were very limited in comparison to the new Graph Editor.)
Crunching Bigger Numbers
Though our test computer did not have the recommended OpenGL 2.0 card for After Effects 7.0, we nonetheless were able to download an OpenGL 2.0 driver for our card and the hardware-assisted previews we achieved were very impressive. We do, however, recommend purchasing the best OpenGL 2.0 card you can afford, as this will assist you in creating realtime previews of multilayered compositions, complete with support for blending modes, motion blurs, track mattes, and many other effects.
For the time-strapped video effects technician, two of the most useful features in the After Effects 7.0 upgrade include the huge selection of Animation and Behavior presets and the workflow integration with other Production Studio products. Even if you do nothing else with After Effects 7.0, simply toying around with the different combinations of presets can yield a nearly infinite variety of cool combinations. As for the product integration piece: imagine there’s a way to export a frame of your composition to Photoshop CS2, or to export a sequence of effects to Premiere Pro 2.0 with a single menu command, and you’ll begin to get the idea, which can be a real time-saver for repetitive cross-product tasks.
Standard or Pro?
Most video editors will be more than satisfied with what the Standard version of the software has to offer. HD editors, however, might find the Professional edition’s ability to work with 32-bit, HDR (high dynamic range) footage worth the added price. Others might have need of the new, improved slow-motion effects, dubbed Timewarp by Adobe. Other Professional-edition perks include a wider range of effects, enhanced keying and matte tools, motion tracking and stabilization tools, the Wiggler for randomizing motion, and network rendering support.
One minor negative note: the Adobe Bridge, an ambitious attempt to provide advanced file-handling capabilities to a range of Adobe products, is hard to get used to, and of dubious usefulness, at least at this stage of the game.
Taken as a whole, the latest version of After Effects is a giant step forward for this already-impressive behemoth of the video effects industry. It’s everything it’s cracked up to be, and more.
TECH SPECS
Windows
Processor: Pentium 4 (multiprocessor recommended)
OS: Windows XP Professional or Home Edition with Service Pack 2
Minimum RAM: 512 MB (1GB recommended)
Minimum Hard Disk Space:
Install: 500MB
Disk caching space: 10GB
Functional content: 1GB
Drive: DVD-ROM
Recommended Video Display Card: After Effects supported OpenGL 2.0 card
Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC (multiprocessor G5 recommended)
OS: Mac OS X v10.3.9 (10.4 for best OpenGL performance)
Minimum RAM: 512MB (1GB recommended)
Minimum Hard Disk Space – Install: 500MB
Disk caching space: 10GB
Functional content: 1GB
Drive: DVD-ROM
Recommended Video Display Card: After Effects supported OpenGL 2.0 card
Strengths
* Impressive, ergonomic new UI
* Graph Editor
* Dozens of new Animation Presets
* Integration with other Production Studio titles
Weaknesses
* Adobe Bridge doesn’t add enough to the mix
* Steep hardware requirements
Before we get to the good stuff, a small moan. Photoshop Elements 5 joins the growing army of programs that insist on jumping in and doing things you’ve not asked them to do.
In this instance, your reviewer uses a flash drive to transfer documents between machines. When said flash drive is inserted into the test machine with Photoshop Elements 5 on it, a window jumps up calculating how many image files are contained upon it, offering to help you catalogue them. And while this is a feature that’s very useful to some, when added to the raft of other windows that seem to want to open when you plug a flash drive into a standard PC, it’s a right royal irritation.
Photoshop Elements 5 is, however, brilliant.
We may as well start with the Organizer function, being as we’ve been mean to it so far. It’s one of the most intuitive, helpful and friendly methods by which to organise images that we’ve seen to date. You can categorise and arrange your pictures by date, time and content, and these are represented by visual stacks. You can even – and we loved this – highlight on a map where you took the image, and then browse your image collection via a map of the globe.
The original search of your hard drive to find such images takes a little while (although it’s faster than it was when we first met such a feature), and you can specify specific folders you want the program to hunt through. But whichever you choose, at the end of the process you’ll have your images held together in one place. A neat feature is that the program can automatically correct red eye in the images it finds, although this is an optional tick box and it does take some time.
Once pictures are sorted, it’s onto the QuickFix functions. Again, this is a breeze, with a lot of tools on screen at once but arranged in a way so as not to be overbearing. A series of sliders allow you to manually adjust key features of each image, and there are auto fix tools at a single click of the mouse. The program keeps the original image intact until you are entirely happy with the changes you’ve made, which is in line with the respectful nature of it.
If you need more advanced tools, then a click on the Full Edit tab exposes you to the full bevy of options the program offers. Even these, though, are well implemented and not too troublesome to follow. Working with layers – a nightmare in some image editors – is really quite easy, and there are simple tools to help you to correct the distortion of a camera, for instance. Granted, it’s never going to put up a fight against the main Photoshop package, but it’s not supposed to, as reflected by its modest price tag, a fraction of what you’d pay for Photoshop CS2.
Finally, when it comes to sharing your work, in addition to the standard file output options you’ve come to expect, the Web choices are great. Web photo galleries are very easy to create and are a useful way to share your images.
Can a much-needed overhaul put Adobe’s Premiere back at the top of the mainstream DV editing market? We check out V7 – Premiere Pro
The DV hardware market is no longer dependent upon Adobe’s video editing software, Premiere, and many Premiere users are willing to jump ship to competitor products rather than upgrade. Pinnacle, once Adobe’s biggest OEM customer for Premiere, is now pitching its own program, Edition, as a direct rival, and Apple has driven Premiere out of the Mac video editor arena with its aggressive marketing of Final Cut Pro and recent introduction of the keenly-priced Final Cut Express. Now confined to Windows, Premiere is having to compete against the likes of Sonic Foundry’s Vegas and Ulead’s MediaStudio Pro, as well as Pinnacle Edition. Perhaps a little late in the day, Adobe has come out fighting with Premiere Pro.
The new version looks impressive on paper, with a lot of good features that seem to be deliberately intended to catch up with Edition and Vegas. There’s also an occasional nod to Final Cut, even though Adobe seems to have waved Mac-based DV editors farewell. Our first impression, though, was far from rosy, with the realisation that Premiere Pro can’t be run on AMD Athlon Thunderbird processors – they don’t support the SSE instruction sets that Premiere Pro needs. And, as we were also to discover, Pro really needs a 2GHz processor (ideally one that’s much faster) if it is to deliver fluid performance. That’s a limitation that may prevent many from upgrading to the new version.
Our first attempted test bed was a 1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird-based system. Premiere Pro did install but couldn’t be launched, so we tried a 2GHz Pentium 4 system that does have SSE support. This was able to run the program, but was rather unresponsive during playback. As a result, the bulk of our tests were carried out on the fastest PC available to us, a 3.06GHz Pentium 4-based laptop.
Conclusion
Premiere Pro has a lot to recommend it, and certainly appears to be taking a number of steps in the right direction to allow it to compete with the likes of Edition, Vegas and MediaStudio Pro. Media management tools are greatly improved and the program feels altogether more serious than previous versions.
But, to show its best form, Premiere Pro needs to run on an ultra-high-speed system, and that’s likely to stop many would-be purchasers, including upgraders, from taking the plunge until such time as they’re ready to splash out on new hardware. Some of the changes made in the work flow, especially the loss of A/B roll editing, are also likely to hold back sales – at least to existing Premiere users who may not want the bother, on top of a considerable outlay for hardware, of relearning the program, even though the advantages of such changes are considerable.
So, should you upgrade or move over to Premiere Pro? Well, not if you don’t have the very latest spec on your PC or use one of the few accelerated editing cards – notably Matrox’s RT.X100 and RT.X10, or Canopus’s DVStorm 2 and RTRaptor 2 – that are said to support Pro (and will likely be fitted to a very fast PC anyway). Even owners of such cards should hold off until compatible drivers have been launched and it’s clear how well they allow Pro to work on PCs of different specs. For anyone else, we suggest not making a decision without looking around at what else is on offer – the competition has never been stronger.