Adobe Creative Suite ME 2

While Adobe still sells its editing programs as stand alone products, it is putting more and more emphasis on its Creative Suite (CS) bundle. This suite consists of Photoshop, Illustrator and the InDesign page layout program. Rather than upgrading these programs individually, Adobe has upgraded the entire suite at once. So with CS2, we have new versions of all the applications, plus some new tools to help integrate them.

As an overall package, Adobe Creative Suite 2 sees major advances on all fronts: a more powerful and consistent shared interface highlighted by Illustrator CS2’s new Control palette; a more integrated workflow highlighted by the new ability to select layer comps in placed PSD files; a tighter underlying architecture highlighted by the centralised PDF export and colour management; and, bringing everything together, an entirely new graphics file manager in Adobe Bridge, designed to partner each of the applications, but also to act as a front end for the suite as a whole.

To begin with, there are two suites to choose between: the Standard Edition, offering Photoshop/ImageReady, Illustrator and InDesign and the Premium Edition, which adds GoLive and Acrobat Professional. The applications are natural partners, with Photoshop handling bitmaps, Illustrator vectors and InDesign bringing them together to produce the end publication. More to the point, each of these applications is best of its kind, and each CS2 upgrade is a major boost to both productivity and creativity.

With the Premium Edition, it is a very different story. As each CS design application exports directly to PDF, having the latest Acrobat software is no longer essential and Acrobat 7 Professional is by no means a must-have upgrade for casual users.

Overall, there’s no doubt that both editions of the Creative Suite offer extraordinary power and value, but additional power is only valuable if you use it. As such, you will need to weigh both suites against your individual requirements: some users will benefit from the full power of the Premium Edition; others will be better off sticking to a single core application. For the majority, the Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard Edition offers the best mix of wide-ranging but integrated design power at an unbeatable price.