Adobe has released version 9 of its Adobe Reader PDF display software. The newest version includes a number of changes including faster launching, "PDF Portfolios" (bundles of PDFs and other document types), native Flash support, and support for the online Acrobat.com beta (through Adobe AIR) with a variety of online PDF services.

Adobe Reader 9 is a free download from Adobe and is platform (Intel/PPC) specific.

[via Macworld]

Ah, Fireworks. I remember it as the app that introduced me to the PNG file format in 1999. I was disappointed when it was excluded from Adobe Creative Suite 3 (Design Premium Second Mortgage Edition), and kept my copy of Fireworks 8 in protest. I was elated when it married Jeannie, but then saddened when it left her for Diane.

Fireworks CS4, part of the group of beta apps that Adobe introduced on Tuesday, is the latest in the long line of Macrome -- I mean, Adobe's -- rapid website prototyping tools. Long-time users of Fireworks will be pleased that most of the app's functionality has been retained -- at least in the beta. Users looking for a more Photoshop- or Illustrator-like experience will probably be disappointed.

If my last review is any indication, there will be nothing but fireworks after the jump.

Adobe Dreamweaver, for better or for worse, is probably the most mature integrated development environment for website building for the Mac. Professionals might be supplied with Dreamweaver through their company's site-license; beginners might get Dreamweaver on the recommendation of a friend.

Hard-core coders have their favorite text editors and IDEs. This review is not for them. To be clear, I use Coda and TextMate almost exclusively for web development. This review is for people who use Dreamweaver primarily as a WYSIWYG HTML editor (as much as that makes me cringe). But that's what Dreamweaver does best.

The public beta of Dreamweaver CS4 dropped on Tuesday, and I'm going to show you what's new and different about Dreamweaver CS4, and if it's worth the upgrade.

Weavin' your dreams, after the jump.

Adobe Labs today released public betas for the next generation of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth apps, part of their Creative Suite product.

Once downloaded and launched, the betas will only be active for 48 hours -- unless you have a CS3 license. Creative Suite 3 customers will be able to extend the trial period (presumably until the final versions are released, though the deactivation date is not mentioned in the press release).

The Dreamweaver beta includes a much-anticipated (at least by me) change to the WebKit rendering engine for previewing and live editing.

Fireworks has been re-vamped to look and feel more like other Creative Suite apps, and now allows users to export design comps as interactive PDF documents.

The Soundbooth beta now includes multiple track support, and the new ability to match volume levels across multiple files. Plus, users can preview MP3 compression settings before saving them.

Soundbooth (719MB) requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, running on an Intel processor. Fireworks (634MB) and Dreamweaver (262MB) have the same OS requirement, but can run on a G5 processor or better.

Thanks, Kent!

One of the nicest features of the latest round of OS X image editors like Pixelmator and Acorn is their use of GPU acceleration. They use your Mac's graphics processor to radically speed up various image tools like filters and transformations, etc. Now it appears that the big boys are finally getting ready to play.

TG Daily is reporting that Adobe recently previewed the next version of Photoshop (CS Next / CS4) with GPU acceleration. And as expected it made for an enormous improvement in speed. They they observed "the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core [Intel] Skulltrail system."

There was no specific mention of the Mac version (the demo seems to have been done on a Windows machine) and also no discussion of if and how the 32-bit limitation of CS4 on the Mac might affect this GPU assisted performance boost. Nonetheless, the addition of GPU acceleration is a big deal, and perhaps will push Apple into getting more high performance graphics cards into its systems.

[via Gizmodo]

If you lost out on the chance to attend WWDC 2008 and your development focus is the iPhone, you're in luck. iPhoneDevCamp 2 is scheduled for August 1 - 3, 2008 at the Adobe offices in San Francisco. A follow-up to the first iPhoneDevCamp held in early July of 2007, iPhoneDevCamp 2 is a non-profit event dedicated solely to development of applications for iPhone and iPod Touch using the native SDK and web standards.

As an attendee, you'll work with other developers to create new iPhone/iPod Touch apps, learn how to migrate Mac apps to the Apple handheld platform, and find out how to test and optimize your apps. If you're a Cocoa Touch developer, web developer, UI designer, or tester, this is the place to be the first weekend of August. The registration links aren't yet up and running, but be sure to bookmark the iPhoneDevCamp 2 site for future reference.

A big TUAW thank you to Raven for the tip!

Danger, Will Robinson! Adobe is warning that "critical vulnerabilities" have been found in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.1.1 and earlier. They are recommending that Acrobat 8 and Adobe Reader users install the 8.1.2 update as soon as possible. Those who are using Acrobat 7 are advised to install the 7.1.0 update quickly as well.

A full summary of the security concerns and links to the update files can be yours by visiting the Adobe security update site. Note that while Acrobat & Reader 8.1.2 have been out for some time, the 7.1 update is fresh this week and the security issue is newly disclosed.

[via Macintouch]

Adobe has dropped updates for both Lightroom and Camera Raw. According to the Lightroom team's blog, the updates include all the changes of the previous releases, but also correct a few issues. Lightroom 1.4.1 will keep the EXIF time date field of images from being incorrectly modified, and has fixes for Olympus JPEG files and also DNG conversion. And the Camera Raw plugin update also fixes the EXIF problem as well as the Olympus JPEG features.

But that's more than you wanted to know, right? All you really need to know is that you can grab the update either on Adobe's site, or by hitting "Check for updates" under the Help menu for the Lightroom update and using the Adobe Update Manager for the Raw plugin update. Happy updating!

[Via Ars]

Users of any of Adobe's products (at least the current ones) will want to check out Adobe TV. With a smorgasbord of tutorials and informational videos on a broad range of topics, it has something for everyone.

The content ranges from Photoshop tutorials from Layers Magazine to tips on dynamic media creation in Visual Communicator. Beginners and long-time users – be they web developers, graphic designers, video professionals, photographers, you name it – should be able to find something right up their alley... from down-to-earth Lightroom tutorials to the ridiculous (but informative) antics of Dr. Brown. The site is well organized and easy to navigate, and thankfully provides Youtube-style embed code for deep linking within the Flash site.

It sounds like the content will be updated regularly, keeping the collection current with Adobe's ever-growing lineup. Even if I often choose alternatives to Adobe's products in my workflow (don't worry, InDesign, you're safe for now...), I'm already gleaming useful information from Adobe TV. I find it a testament to Adobe's growth (and the power of acquisition) that the entire site is built with Adobe products, from video capture to final delivery. So, here's a toast to all-encompassing media production empires, so entrenched in the industry that they can afford to miss 64-bit boats and shirk interface conformity. Cheers!

When Apple released Aperture 2.1 last week the big news was that the editing API will allow selection based editing in Apple's flagship image management application. But what good is an API without developers? So it's heartening to see how many are jumping on board. Rob Galbraith has a good post on what the editing API plugin means and also reveals that a number of well-known image plugin developers are hard at work on Aperture. Perhaps most exciting, to me at least, PictureCode is working on Noise Ninja, but Galbraith lists many more including Nik Software, dvGarage, Digital Film Tools and others.

One interesting thing about these developments is that most of these third-party developers offer these tools as Photoshop plugins. It's possible that getting some of these more advanced tools into Aperture will allow some users to get free of Photoshop. Given the recent developments with the next version of Photoshop CS4 being 32-bit only, this may mean that Apple will be more willing to step on Adobe's toes (or allow others to do so).

[via Daring Fireball]

Adobe's announcement that Photoshop CS4 will be 32-bit only on OS X has the Mac web buzzing today. Accusations of blame are being shot at both Adobe and Apple by various pundits (though notably not by the companies themselves). Fortunately, some of the better Mac pundits are also weighing in with interesting opinions on this development.

Over at Ars, John Siracusa has penned an interesting historical account of the relationship of Adobe and Apple, and the Carbon API which is at the center of the controversy. He somewhat grimly sees this Photoshop development as the furthering of bad blood between the two companies and suggests that "the real storm may be yet to come" as Adobe and Apple clash over Flash and Air, etc. (witness the Flash on iPhone kerfuffle).

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber takes up the question of CS5 -- i.e. the next version of Photoshop after the aforementioned CS4 -- which will be biggest Cocoa port ever attempted. He points out the interesting difference between Photoshop and Microsoft Office in that the former shares a codebase between Windows and OS X, while the latter represents two completely separate projects on the two platforms. The big question is whether Adobe will even be able to pull off the Cocoa port in time and maintain its cross-platform nature (though as both Johns have pointed out, Lightroom bodes well in this regard).

In any case, this drama is just beginning to play itself out and depending on how you look at it we're in for a good many years of entertainment or frustration as the Cocoa transition of Photoshop progresses (never mind the next version of Office).

Right after announcing the release of 64-bit support in the Lightroom 2 beta, Photoshop Senior Project Manager John Nack dropped a little bombshell on his blog, announcing that the next version of Photoshop (CS4) will be available in both 32- and 64-bit versions for Windows, but only a 32-bit version for OS X. The reason: Photoshop on OS X is written with the Carbon API. Last June Apple decided to kill 64-bit Carbon, forcing all future 64-bit application development on the Mac to Cocoa. Adobe had originally planned to ship a 64-bit CS4 as a Carbon app and port to Cocoa for CS5, but now the 64-bit version will have to wait for the CS5 Cocoa build.

The (relative) good news is that this will primarily affect users working on "very large files on a suitably equipped machine." The average speed bump "due to running in 64-bit mode is around 8-12%" when not "using a large data set." The bad news is that it is precisely those professional users who buy Mac Pros maxed out on RAM that will likely get penalized. It'll be a sad day when the Photoshop jockeys have to run in Boot Camp to get the most out of their Mac Pros.

[via Daring Fireball]

Over at the Adobe Labs Lightroom site, the beta for Lightroom 2 is now available. John Nack revealed that among other things (release notes PDF) version 2 will feature 64-bit support as well as a new Retouch tool. This marks a shift toward selective editing similar to the new editing plugin architecture that made its appearance with Aperture 2.1.

The Lightroom 2b1 is available for download to "all current Lightroom customers." New customers "can download the beta and try it for thirty days" or hit up a friend who already owns it. It's worth noting that the beta "does not read, upgrade or import catalogs from previous versions of Lightroom" and you should keep using 1.3.1 "for your primary workflow needs."

After a delay and then a pre-order period, Adobe has finally begun shipping Photoshop Elements 6 for the Mac.

This is good news for me, as my old copy of Elements 3 won't work on Leopard at all (I know, I'm a cheapskate). Some of the new goodies in version 6 include a new Quick Selection tool and tabs for quickly jumping between different functions. This version also makes it super easy to create photo books, greeting cards and more.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 runs on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (so PowerPC-users aren't left out in the cold). A single license will cost you $90US, though registered owners of older versions can upgrade for $70US with an in-box, mail-in rebate (or via adobe.com).

[Via MacNN

If you were one of those people who were excited that Adobe was going to apparently fight to get Flash on the iPhone, get ready to be unexcited: Adobe has decided that despite what they thought earlier, they're not actually going to be able to get Flash on there using only the SDK from Apple. Nope, Adobe has admitted that they need Apple's help to get it working (not a big surprise there), and since Apple isn't really keen to help at all, odds are it's just not going to happen.

Adobe then announced that they didn't need your iPhone anyway, Apple, and that they hate you, Apple, and that you never let them have any fun, and that they wish you'd just die! And that they'd never been born! Then they ran to pout in the corner for a good 20 minutes, only to be seen a little while later playing with their trains like nothing had happened.

[Via Engadget]