Adobe has officially announced its Creative Suite 5 software and is offering a sneak peak of the new packages online today.
CS5 has over 250 new features and capabilities with Photoshop getting some radical updates and moving over to 64-bit on the Mac. Our sister site, PhotoRadar, has already taken a look at the beta versions of the software.
Photoshop CS5 makes it simpler to detect the borders of objects within an image, making it far easier to remove that object or apply effects.
The best feature has to be the Content-Aware Fill - when you cut objects out of the image, Photoshop can automatically fill the resulting space with scenery or patterns.
There are also new brush tools that are similar to those found in Corel Painter, with the ability to merge "wet paints" and different strokes created by the angle of a brush.
The other key apps such as Illustrator CS5, Dreamweaver CS5 and Flash CS5 have also been updated and are all incorporated in the Web Premium version of the suite.
There's also a brand new tool - Flash Catalyst – that's designed to help traditional print designers move into interactive design.
It also seems that Flash CS5 will enable developers to convert Flash animations into HTML5 Canvas code. That means that HTML5-supporting browsers won't need the Flash plug-in installed to display Flash-based content. Now that's cool.
Adobe hasn't had the best of weeks after the revelation that a clause in Apple's new iPhone OS 4 developer contract will forbid developers from using conversion tools to prepare non-native apps for sale in the App Store.
And that will have major repercussions for the much-touted Packager for iPhone app within Adobe Flash Professional CS5.
"We are aware of developer concern that has arisen around the language in Apple's new iPhone OS v4 SDK agreement which affects multiple developer ecosystems, of which the Flash developer community is one," said Roger Risdal, Partner Product Manager at Adobe on his blog.
"We are still in the process of trying to understand exactly what the new language means for both Adobe and Apple customers and other developer communities that could be affected by the update to the SDK."
CS5 also includes technology from web analytics firm Omniture, which Adobe bought last October for $1.8 billion.
The suite will be available within the next 30 days.
