by A.J. Wood

Adobe Announces CS5

Today is the official Adobe CS5 launch event, and there are plenty of things to get the creative community excited. The web has been a buzz the past month as Adobe started releasing sneak peeks of features via social media sites. The most talked about feature has been Content Aware Fill inside of Photoshop CS5. The hype surrounding that feature has been GINORMOUS with speculation the feature was a stunt. Now we know it’s here, and let me tell you it’s going to be a game changer. In fact, the entire suite has much to offer aspiring creatives.

Here are some highlights from the launch event:

  • Native 64-bit processing Mac & PC
  • Introduction of Flash Catalyst bridging the gap between designers & developers
  • Omniture for business analytics
  • CS Review for online collaboration
  • New stroke options in Illustrator
  • Dreamweaver supports content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal & Joomla
  • Flash development port to the iPhone* (which looks to be blocked by Apple’s change to SDK)
  • Animation & interactive elements for InDesign
  • Automated roto-scoping with After Effects
  • HDR, Noise Reduction & Lens Correction for Photoshop (I already mentioned Content Aware Fill)
  • and too many features to list in a single blog post

CS5 will be offered in five different suite configurations:

Design Premium Web Premium Production Premium Master Collection Design Standard
$1,899 $1,799 $1,699 $2,599 $1,299

Upgrades start from $499.

To see all the new features coming with CS5 jump over to AdobeTV. To get your Photoshop fix in, visit the NAPP learning center. You can also join me and other Photoshop Nuts over at TipSquirrel where we’ll have our own take on CS5 the next two weeks.

in Adobe / News 0 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Website RSS Feed Update

Good afternoon dear readers!

This is just a quick update to let you know there will be some changes to the website in the next few weeks. The biggest change will be the use of Category Feeds. As longtime readers know this blog has covered a wide range of topics ranging from entertainment to games to politics, fitness & health and of course Adobe software.

Having individual category feeds will make the blog more useful to everyone. In the future you’ll be able to pick the category you want to follow, and you can ignore the rest of my ramblings. Given my schedule this is the best option versus starting another blog, or two, or three.

So there you have it. I’ll announce the updates when they’re online, and I appreciate your continued patronage of the blog.

in Adobe / Arts/Media / Editorial / Events / Faith / Fitness / News / Technology / Tutorials 0 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Honored as Spotlight Instructor for CCCCD

Afternoon all.

Just a quickie post today, as I bounce between my office & customer sites. I wanted to share the news I received yesterday from Collin College. I have been included in their Instructor Spotlight for astounding educators! You can read the article on the Collin College website.

There’s plenty of other stuff I need to get posted up, just trying to find an uninterrupted moment to do so.

in Adobe / News 1 comments
 by A.J. Wood

POW! BAM! ZING! Updated Website!

Between clients, the birth of my daughter Sydney, finding time for Michelle, school, frequent air travel, and well, that which we call having a life, it’s taken several weeks to get the website redesign flushed out. But here you have it. I chose to build the site using Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme set. Overall, it wasn’t too difficult to tweak the theme, and Brian has some decent Camtasia tutorials on the website. He has also built a pretty active community around his themes. If Brian cannot assist you with web development, he has several recommended WordPress enthusiasts who can.

I can now direct my attention to generating the content that we (the collective) have so readily talked about in recent months. I have my minions working in the background to transfer content from previous sites, and launching the podcast is the next big update for the blog.

For longtime readers, I appreciate your patience during this transition, and for all the new folks dropping in, expect great things here.

in Editorial / News 0 comments
 by A.J. Wood

4 Days Left on MacUpdate Promo Bundle

There are only four days left to purchase over $400 worth of software for only $64. The MacUpdate Promo Bundle has now unlocked all the software, which includes a copy of Parallels.

Here’s a list of what’s included in the bundle:

Hazel – organize and automate file management.

Art Text – turn text into graphics.

MenuCalendarClock for iCal – adds iCal info to Menu Bar.

Leap – File management utility to replace Finder. (Chris says this product alone makes the bundle worth buying)

StoryMill – digital story boarding.

Typinator – autocorrect for OSX.

DVDRemaster Pro – DVD utility for ripping to & from your hardware.

Sound Studio – Could it be better than Audacity?

BannerZest – Flash banner creator.

Parallels Desktop – You should know what this is… no really, you should.

Go see the deal for yourself.

in Technology 0 comments