Filed under: Software, Graphic Design
Adobe CS4 offers overall improvements, higher upgrade pricing
As Robert reported earlier this month, Adobe officially announced Creative Suite 4 via a streaming webcast earlier this morning. Adobe CS4, which is scheduled to ship sometime in October, is being touted as "Adobe's biggest software release to date." While I was watching the webcast for our sister site, Download Squad, what struck me was the focus on performance improvements and cross-product integration. I've been dabbling with some of the CS4 betas since the beginning of the summer, and I agree that the Macromedia products are now much more tightly integrated (at least on the Fireworks and Dreamweaver side, I haven't used the Flash CS4 beta) with the rest of the Adobe suite.
On the performance side, the GPU acceleration rumors for Photoshop CS4 that Mat mentioned back in May are a reality. What was really striking, to me, was that despite the all the hub-bub about the lack of 64-bit support for the Mac version of Photoshop CS4, the demonstrations for the webcast were all performed on a Mac (I'm assuming it was a Mac Pro, it was attached to an external monitor on stage and also displayed on stage/screen). Showing off some of advantages of GPU acceleration, the representative from Adobe worked on a 2 GB 400 megapixel file, showing how easy it was to zoom in and out, and roate the image without any lag or slowdown.
So, 32-bit or not, Mac design shops that have powrful systems should benefit tremendously from the speed improvements to Photoshop.
The pricing for some of the Adobe CS4 bundle suites has increased nominally both for upgrades and new purchases. Web Premium CS3 was $1599 US, whereas Web Premium CS4 will be $1699 US. Design and Production Premium prices remain the same ($1799 US for Design Premium, $1699 for Production Premium), but the price of Design Standard is now $1399 US, up $200 from Design Standard CS3. Upgrade prices on suites appear to be about the same as CS3, although Web Premium is $100 more than it was 18 months ago.
For anyone who purchased Design Premium CS3 before May of 2008, you will be happy to know that Fireworks is now included in this suite (it was included in suites sold after May of 2008 or if you paid the $160 to upgrade to Acrobat 9). Fireworks never should have been omitted from Design Premium in the first place, so this is a nice addition.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 will be shipping sometime in October. One note for PPC Mac users -- Adobe After Effects CS4 will only support Intel systems. Premeire Pro CS4, like CS3, is also Intel-only.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Nathan said 1:14PM on 9-23-2008
And in early 2010--CS5!! It's faster! More expensive! Necessary! Photoshop still works with layers!
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Balls said 1:15PM on 9-23-2008
So much for the longevity of the Mac.
CS3 has GPU acceleration: http://img.skitch.com/20080923-d8akips561191ju16sxm31ggp4.jpg
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Jash Sayani said 1:26PM on 9-23-2008
Too expensive! I am happy with CS 3.
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Aaron said 1:33PM on 9-23-2008
It's worth noting that the CS4 Web Premium includes Soundbooth now whereas CS3 did not. Could be why there's an increase in the price.
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Christina Warren said 1:45PM on 9-23-2008
Ahh - good to know, I didn't have a comparison table in front of me. That explains the price increase, totally.
lanejasper69 said 1:23AM on 9-24-2008
The CS3 Master Collection DOES include Soundbooth, Premier etc. FYI.
matt said 1:34PM on 9-23-2008
$1400? *cough *cough bittorrent...
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Simon Arch said 2:32PM on 9-23-2008
If you're using the suite to earn a living, you buy it and then let your clients pay for it.
And if you're not using it to earn a living...well...yeah, bit torrent. Adobe claims the reason it's so expensive is to compensate for "losses" due to "piracy" but if they just brought the price out of the stratosphere they might earn a few more sales. I'd certainly be more inclined to buy Photoshop if it were $200 instead of $700.
Ragu said 1:39PM on 9-23-2008
Upgrade pricing is the same for CS3 to CS4, as it is from CS2 & earlier to CS4. I already bit the bullet and paid the price to go from CS2 to CS3. That should warrant some upgrade pricing concession.
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lanejasper69 said 1:23AM on 9-24-2008
Yes, it is eligible for a discount, but only for a limited time after the release...so time it right ;-)
SpinThis! said 1:54PM on 9-23-2008
> So, 32-bit or not, Mac design shops that have powrful [sic] systems
I think you meant "64-bit or not?"
One thing I also noticed in the system requirements is the minimum spec is a G5. (That might have more to do with the "default" graphics cards included in the G5s than anything else but higher clock rates don't hurt either.)
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geochick said 2:09PM on 9-23-2008
Adobe= SuperGreed... they find new ways of making you pay for minor updates... BTW I just bought DW CS3 less than 15 days ago wonder if I qualify for a free update...
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CaptSaltyJack said 2:37PM on 9-23-2008
Lots of cool updates in CS4, actually.
* Fireworks: slicing & exporting now exports to CSS layouts, not antiquated table layouts
* Dreamweaver: Subversion integration!
* Dreamweaver: code hinting for 3rd party Javascript frameworks (jQuery, Prototype)
* Photoshop: content aware scaling (amazing!)
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brian said 2:47PM on 9-23-2008
how does compatibility work with cs3? id like to have the latest photoshop, yet im pretty sure my schools computer labs will be a little behind. will i be able to open and edit on both versions?
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Scott said 10:10AM on 12-19-2008
I know this is coming in mega-late, but if you're in school you totally qualify for the student addition which can save you thousands of dollars. Look into it.
john said 2:58PM on 9-23-2008
to convert to euro pricing is easy.
just convert dollar to euro, than double that price.
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Mike said 3:30PM on 9-23-2008
It seems that Christina made some apparent link between 64-bit and performance.
I don't think that the ability to, or lack there-of, to address more than 4GB of memory has any significant impact on the performance of CS4 or its GPU acceleration. So maybe there should be some clarification of exactly how this impacts performance other tham memory allocation.
Again, performance of the CPU shouldn't be hampered by 32-bit vs. 64-bit binaries. Oh, let me clarify, x86_64.
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Christina Warren said 4:22PM on 9-23-2008
Right -- but the performance when working on large files, at least in current versions of Photoshop (and ostensibly in CS4, I don't have the Stonehenge beta and I don't use a Mac Pro to really be able to test) is impacted by the size of the file. That a 2 GB file was being used in the 32-bit copy of Photoshop CS4 was impressive, and interesting, to me.
The last demo that Adobe gave to show off GPU acceleration was not running OS X -- leaving some questions as to what performance would be like and if the benefits would be as stark. You might not be able to do an 8 GB file in CS4 on the Mac, but the fact that they were demoing a 2 GB file is reassuring for places that don't want to buy Vista just so they can run Photoshop CS4 in 64-bit mode to handle larger files without having the app crash because it has run out of memory.
Mike said 7:00PM on 9-23-2008
I understand. File size may impact performance when memory allocation is limited.
That said, database engines have been successfully managing seemingly random access to data stored in much larger than allocatable ram sizes for years. I don't use Adobe products so I can't speak specifically to their performance woes or even what one might use CS4 for that would need something fully staged in ram. But from an observer's point of view, I might change focus from the ability to allocate 4GB of ram to the need to allocate. They might be two different things if done in an efficient way.
frogbat said 4:17PM on 9-23-2008
mmm will prolly download the evaluations but i'm not seeing a compelling reason to upgrade my studio - CS3 was a must have as it actually ran on intel macs.
i'm thrilled with dreamweaver and fireworks' new features. hopefully indesign doesn't use a different save format. flash again seems to have more designer oriented rather than developer features. motion and inverse kinetics...
re pshop's gpu acceleration - lets hope it's as goof or better than the built in os quartz engine (as used by pixelmator et al)
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