Adobe announced a whole new suite of Creative Suite 4 software upgrades Tuesday for its flagship image, web and video editing applications, such as Photoshop, Premiere and Dreamweaver.
If you want them all, it’ll cost $2,500 when they go on sale in October. Or you can get stand-alone versions, (such as Photoshop) for $699, or $199 for an upgrade.
We spoke to Adobe senior product manager John Nack about the new Photoshop CS 4, which he says runs faster and more efficiently because Adobe took advantage of something new: video cards.
The graphics cards for desktop computers have gotten cheaper, and much more powerful. Adobe was able to tap into the power of the cards to make productivity much faster, he says.
“A good graphics card will now blow away other computers that don’t have them,” says Nack. He recommends any card that supports “Shader Model 3.”
Nack demonstrated a 442 megapixel image (a composite of many, many images) to show the speed of the new Photoshop. Nack was able to open it quickly, and more importantly, zoom around the image and make adjustments without waiting and waiting for rendering.
Photoshop was last upgraded in April, 2007. Since then, Adobe has also added a free, entry-level web version of Photoshop, Photoshop Express, an update to the consumer level $99 Photoshop Elements, and a new addition to the library, Photoshop Lightroom, for photographers to quickly zip through large collections and make minor edits.
So why spend more money with Adobe on yet another new Photoshop program?
“Some people will be perfectly happy with what they have,” he says. “But for anyone who wants the latest, best technology, this is it.”
By Jefferson GrahamPhoto: Adobe
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