Adobe CS4
Thursday, 6 November 2008 @ 11:48I am REALLY impressed so far. There are a few nice things that I have noticed immediately.
Option palette now more usable, with an easier to click drop down. The previous one was impossible to select:
Tabbed windows in all application. Cmd + Tab now cycles through all windows, in every application.
I will post more later as I find them.
Correction: Cmd + ‘~’ cycles through tabbed windows.
Nice try, Adobe, but it’s still screwed up. Why is it so hard for them to get these stupid keystroke conventions right? It’s not like the standard is vague. It’s nice that they finally (after a decade) added the standard keystroke convention (command + ~) for cycling through windows on Mac (it has been the Windows way control + tab), but with the introduction of tabs, they messed that up to. Command + ~ is supposed to cycle windows (and only windows). Command + {/} is supposed to cycle tabs. It’s not just a keystroke problem either, look in the Window menu and you will notice that there is no distinction between windows and tabs. Only windows should be listed (not tabs within windows).
One of my favorite new features of CS4 is multi-touch gestures: pinch, zoom, rotate, and scroll. It’s really nice.
There is only ONE window now. And they are all tabbed within that window. Works perfectly fine for me and I am very happy about this update. Seems like an argument about semantics. :)
And there is additional evidence of how they incorrectly implemented tabs into the interface. You are confused because when you select New from the file menu (or command + n) it is not clear if you are creating a tab or a window. There should be two options: New Window and New Tab (see every other Mac app with a tabbed interface such as Coda or Safari. Currently, the only way (that I have discovered thus far) to create a new window, is to create a new tab and then drag it our of the current window into either an existing window or it’s own (which is automatically created if you don’t drop it into another). The ability to reorder and drag and drop tabs functions correctly, but cycling between tabs, cycling between windows, and creating new windows does not.
Well it works, just not the way you’d like. ;)
I do like tabbed windows at least, for print, they are great since you can: Cmd + C > Cmd + ~ > Cmd + V, which sums up most of what I do every day. I like the order that tabs create in my work space.
The real question is when is InDesign going to be able to work properly with gradient, such as a vector logo copied from Illustrator into InDesign?
How does copy & paste work between different applications? Like say dropping some vector artwork from Illustrator into Photoshop? I really liked the old drag & drop approach but I’m wondering if that’s even possible now?
Cut-n-paste and drag and drop doesn’t appear to be affected by any of these changes. Works as expected.
the only problem is that you can’t copy from InDesign backwards into either Illustrator or Photoshop. Shame.
Wouldn’t it be cool if all the Adobe apps supported SmartObjects like the way Photoshop does? Double-click to edit it in the creator application, can move it across applications, scale it without loosing the original resolution, etc.?
i was able to check out the cs4 briefly yesterday and as a general comment, and while there were a couple nice features (multiple pages for illustrator comes to mind) i don’t yet see anything that really justifies releasing a new version. i’m sure i’ll be contradicted on this, and that’d be fine– it’d be great to discover some truly new and useful features.
honestly, though, in a time of greater emphasis on efficiency and fiscal responsibility, i feel that all the production that goes into releasing a new version (engineering, marketing, packaging, shipping, etc.) every two years and charging a few hundred all for minor tweaks (look, we’ve changed the icon!), feels terribly wasteful to me.
…and man, my grammar was poor on that last comment. shame.
Overall a very valid upgrade. Tons of new features throughout the entire suite.
Kinda nice they decided to include a 3D engine inside of Photoshop. I like that you can take a simple 2D layer and convert it into a 3D element and get a better 3D representation of that layer. I am feeling a little of Wade’s frustration with the tabs too. I would like to be able to have my files open up in their own window like the previous versions. I like shift dragging objects between files so that they duplicate in place. More often than not I just pull down the tab into it’s own window. Slows the workflow and basically just makes me frustrated. So far haven’t been able to find a preference to shut that off but perhaps I’ll learn to just get used to it. The new pixel representation at close zoom is pretty sweet. It makes polygonal lasso selections faster but still precise.
Also intriguing is the new 3D engine inside of Flash and the new Flash Player 10. The new use of inverse kinematics will be awesome though I haven’t had a chance to mess with that yet. Should provide a cool way to make fluid organic animations. The new tween engine allows for precise animation which is kinda nifty. Flash is definitely feeling like a full-on 3D application.
The ability for Premiere to edit files in tapeless formats is SO NICE to hear. AVCHD particularly since the new Canon Vixia HD camcorders write to an on-board memory card in .mt2s files.
I haven’t even tapped into AfterEffects, Encore, Soundbooth, and Dreamweaver yet but excited to see.
Ctrl + Tab in Windows is standard for scrolling through windows within apps but in the past, for some estranged reason, Illustrator didn’t allow you to do it that way. You had to push Alt + w and then arrow up or down to the appropriate window. At least Ctrl + Tab seems to work across all CS4 apps now.
By the way, there’s nothing quite like a 100 Grand candy bar and Diet Coke.
Just looking through the suite some more and there’s this new sister app to AfterEffects called ‘Mocha’. Looks really slick and appears to be a spline editing tool. I didn’t read up on the manual too much but it has a nice looking interface although I couldn’t make it do much. Have to play with it some more. I liked their logo they came up with for the application too.
good to hear. looking forward to the new features.