iPhoto is OK, especially if you like lots of automation when managing your image files, but it’s not as likely to appeal to pros or serious amateurs. Some will use Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom, but there’s another photo management solution you may already have on your hard drive.

I’m talking about Adobe’s Bridge utility, a photo file browser bundled with CS3 and CS4, and in a slightly feature-reduced version, with Photoshop Elements 6 (PSE). I prefer Bridge’s more manual control and configuration options to iPhoto’s automation of how you browse, organize, delete, search, view, edit, and apply metadata to your image files.

Photoshop is too expensive for most, but its consumer version, Photoshop Elements, retains much of the power and functionality of the full version at a relatively low price. The Bridge version Mac PSE users get lacks only a few esoteric bits, like the “meetings” feature that supports project collaboration and the ability to apply camera RAW settings to groups of photos or to access the RAW converter directly.

When you access the Bridge from PSE (File Menu — “Browse With Bridge”), the Elements interface hides and the Bridge interface appears, allowing you to display folder icons or content thumbnails. Six interface layouts are available, with several panels — called Workspaces — that help you find and preview photos, review associated metadata, and so on. You can use the predefined panels, or create your own custom Workspace.

Another Bridge feature, “Stacks,” organizes your photos into stacks of images. It lets you keep each series of photos in a single spot in Bridge, making it easier and faster to find the ones you want. Bridge also lets you apply keywords to help organize photos in growing photo libraries. In the Keywords panel you can create and assign terms to photos, allowing you to instantly filter your library.

There’s also Collections, which allows you to save groups of photos for quick access, or to gather shots you want to use in a project. For example, if you have several cameras, you can segregate your library based on the camera used by organizing the photos from each into different collections.

Note that, unlike in iPhoto, when you move or delete a file in Bridge, you’re editing or disposing of the original copy. Bridge doesn’t keep backups, as it is purely a browser for finding and organizing files — one of the reasons I, being manual control-oriented, prefer it. Bridge is not a busybody app that second-guesses you.

Recently, a reader with a photography business asked my advice on a good Mac-based photo management system. His requirements included the ability to add the files’ EXIF to his contact info, details on where and why the picture was taken, copyright info, and keywords searchable by various image galleries he uses. He also wanted a tool that would leave his directory structure intact. Sounded like a job for Bridge.

The reader said he’d owned almost every version of Photoshop, from 5 to CS3, and checked out Bridge when it was first introduced, finding it slow and clunky, but would give it another try. He reported back that the current version is much better, adding that my suggestion might have just saved him hours of tedious organizing.

If you already have Photoshop CS3 or Elements 6, it’s worth taking a look at Bridge. If you don’t have one of those apps, Photoshop Elements at $89.95 has to be one of the greatest-ever software bargains, and inclusion of Bridge in version 6 is the icing on the cake.

The infamous color picker is present among many of the built-in OS X applications and is quite a powerful tool once you dig into it. With the ability to store your favorite colors in “wells” and use them between applications, the color picker can quickly become an indispensable tool in your daily workflow. Here’s some tips and plugins to supercharge the color picker.

Color Picker Basics

Not all applications support the OS X color picker, but to see if one does, look in Format, View, or Window menus for an entry called “Show Colors.” The color picker is not just limited to the Apple-developed applications, as third-party apps such as Coda, Billings, Daylite and others also include support.

The color picker features “tabs” across the top dividing it into the standard color wheel, color sliders (allowing to you fine tune a color by RGB, HSB, CMYK, or Grayscale sliders), color palettes, image palettes and crayons.

You can pick custom colors by tweaking them in the color picker, or by using the magnifying glass to “pluck” a color from anywhere in the system.

To apply a color, simply highlight text and click the color you want. Or drag the color onto an object.

As mentioned earlier, you can organize your favorite colors by dragging them into one of the wells at the bottom of the picker. If the default amount is not enough, simply click the dot and drag down to allow for a total of 250 places to store your color swatches.

Add Some Kuler

Users of Adobe’s Kuler service are quick to tote how great it is to be exposed to a wide array of beautiful color schemes shared among the Adobe community.

Using a free plugin called Mondrianum by Lithoglyph, users can now add Kuler integration to the standard OS X color picker. With quick access to search color schemes by keyword, browse them via Cover Flow, or quickly set them as your desktop background, Mondrianum is a great tool to add to your color picker.

Want a True Artist’s Approach?

With Painter’s Picker ($19.95, with a demo version here), you can add an artist’s color wheel to the color picker, giving you the ability to quickly choose complementary colors, analogous colors, and the like. More advanced options allow for precision modification of the brightness, saturation and more. As someone who moves between different types of media (web to print), I enjoy the ability to see the nearest CYMK colors and nearest web safe colors when working on projects.

What the Hex?

Developers out there will love the “Developer Color Picker,” a free plugin from Panic that quickly allows users to convert selected colors to NSColor, UIColor, CGColorRef, HTML or CSS declarations. The plugin itself is very barebones in style, but is priceless in terms of functionality.

Shades, Schemes and More

Shades ($18 from Chromatic Bytes) is another great plugin for the standard color picker, allowing users to quickly see related color shades. In the words of Chromatic Bytes, “you choose a center color, a step size and a color coordinate to hold constant. Shades then draws a grid of related colors.” This gives you something more akin to traditional paint chips and is useful for finding similar colors.

Another great application for creating and managing color schemes is Color Schemer Studio. While it does not run as a plugin to the OS X color picker, it is a very powerful standalone tool and a great compliment to some of these other plugins. A great feature of this application that really stands out is its ability to extract a simplified color palette from a photo. That’s just the tip of the iceberg and for more details, read our review of Color Schemer Studio here. This application is $49 and more information (including a demo version) is available from its website.

Color Pickers Everywhere

Most modern OS X applications support the color picker, but for those applications who are in the dark, you can use a little AppleScript trick to run the Color Picker as its own application.

Open up the AppleScript Editor (inside the Applications → Utilities folder) and type in the following code:

choose color

Then save this as an application. Now when you run it, your traditional OS X color picker will appear. Drag and drop colors around to your heart’s content!

If you have any other tips or tricks to share about the color picker, I’d love to hear them!

Over the next few days, I will be covering everything from font management apps to how to deal with font problems. By the end of the week you’ll hopefully have a solid handle on how to manage and troubleshoot fonts on your Mac. We’ll begin this series by taking a look at the history of fonts and the various formats that fonts exist in.

It might sound crazy today, but fonts were one of the first things that really got me interested in computers. Computer typography was a constantly evolving industry in the ’80s and ’90s. A certain part of my personal interest developed because I went to high school with a kid whose dad turned out to be a rock star of computer typography. You see, his dad invented a method to describe a font using a mathematical “language” rather than just a set of dots. John Warnock, along with partner Chuck Geschke, left Xerox PARC to start Adobe Systems to commercialize this breakthrough in computer science. The key to Adobe’s Postscript technology was the ability to describe a font as an outline rather than a set of dots. The bezier curves that made up the outline could be scaled to any resolution and then filled with the dots on the printer so that all the edges looked smooth. Totally tubular!

Steve Jobs got wind of Postscript and went to Warnock and Geshke to convince them to adapt their technology to make a printer language that would work with Apple’s forthcoming LaserWriter. The Mac was revolutionary, in part, because you could see fonts displayed on the screen that looked like the fonts you could output on a printer. What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) was a huge selling point for the Mac and the reason for its early dominance in desktop publishing and graphic design.

Fonts and the Mac

Because Apple was involved with fonts and typography from the very beginning, the Mac has support for a number of different font formats as they have evolved over the last 25 years. Here are the major formats that are found on the Mac that you can expect to see on your own machine.

Type 1 Fonts

If fonts were people, Postscript Type 1 Fonts would be the old men that sit around on the porch and gripe about how things used to be back in the day. The original outline fonts, Type 1 fonts are printer fonts (outlines) which must be kept together with their corresponding screen fonts (bitmaps) in order to render the text on screen. Even though they date back to the 80’s, Type 1 fonts have survived to this day and are still present in the font library of many designers.

Because of the problems caused by separate screen and printer font files, Adobe released Adobe Type Manager as a utility to render the outline fonts on screen. This was largely a response to TrueType and was successful in making all the designers who had invested lots of money in collections of Type 1 fonts very happy. If you have Postscript Type 1 fonts around today, you will want to make sure that you keep them with their bitmap fonts.

Type 1 Fonts have the file type LWFN. This type ID came from “LaserWriter font.”

Bitmap Fonts

Bitmap fonts are really out of use in the operating system, but remain as a legacy item. Bitmaps are basically fonts that are rendered at a specific size to be displayed on screen. They are not outline fonts, but rather a grouping of dots or pixels. You should only see these in conjunction with Postscript Type 1 fonts.

Part of the reason that Bitmap fonts stuck around is that font faces are typically adjusted by the font designer at small point sizes so that the proportions look correct. Bitmaps were carefully designed for each point size to look right at different sizes. Adobe came up with “hints” and in Postscript fonts to make these small adjustments on the fly and similar techniques have been employed in more modern font formats. Thus the need for hand-tweaked point sizes has diminished over the years and bitmaps aren’t really needed.

TrueType

If Type 1 fonts are the old men on the porch, TrueType fonts are having a mid-life crisis as they realize that they never really reached their potential and are being pushed aside by the new kids coming up. Invented by Apple and brought to market in 1991 along with System 7 to try and break the stranglehold that Adobe had on the desktop publishing and laser printer markets, TrueType fonts integrate the concept of screen and printer fonts so you only have to manage one file, called a font suitcase, which contained both. The format became widely popular for cheap or free fonts but, despite the sophisticated kerning and ligature features of Quickdraw GX and Apple Advanced Typography, never really took off among designers who continued to prefer the typefaces available in Postscript format.

Apple licensed the TrueType technology to Microsoft, so TrueType fonts are supported in both the Mac and Windows operating systems. Unfortunately, the fonts are implemented differently on each platform, so you will see Mac and Windows versions of the same font family in the TrueType format. Today, new TrueType fonts would only be released in the Windows format since the Mac also supports that format.

Because TrueType was envisioned as an alternative to Postscript, a number of TrueType fonts were created in character-width compatible sets for popular Type 1 fonts like Helvetica, Times Roman, and Courier. The familiar TrueType fonts that correspond to the venerable Postscript fonts are Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. One particularly frustrating aspect of font management is figuring out which fonts are simply replacements for the same typeface in a different format so that you can standardize your designers on the same font.

The Mac TrueType fonts have the type FFIL while Windows TrueType fonts appear as .ttf files. Leopard is moving towards the Windows format .ttf files as the standard (as is everyone else).

Dfont files are a special case of TrueType where the font data has been moved in the data fork to support some of OS X’s unix underpinnings. These are only used for system fonts and you should never need to mess around with them.

OpenType

OpenType was announced in 1996, but became available around 2000-2001. This technology was jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe to add additional capabilities to fonts and resolve the lingering conflicts of managing both screen and printer fonts. In particular, OpenType supports unicode character sets and non-Roman scripts like Arabic, though word processing or page layout software has to be written to expose those features to the user. At this time, Adobe’s entire library of fonts have been converted to OpenType and every other major font foundry releases their work in OpenType as well.

Although Tiger showed considerable support for OpenType fonts, Leopard goes much further and also includes support for Arabic script OpenType fonts.

OpenType fonts are .otf files in OS X.

Suitcase Files

In the old days of System 7, suitcase files held both screen and printer variants for TrueType fonts. The name still survives in OS X as a file type, but the implementation of font files in OS X has completely changed.

System Fonts

Mac OS X requires several fonts in order to display the menu bar and other UI elements. Because of this, OS X will often not boot at all if fonts are missing. Because fonts are loaded at a low-level in the operating system, problems with fonts can cause system crashes or performance problems. Leopard introduced the new concept of protected system fonts that will be replaced automatically if they are removed from the system font library to prevent such problems. If you remove some fonts and see them magically reappear, OS X may be helping you out by replacing the system fonts it needs.

Microsoft Word Fonts

Microsoft Office for Mac, partly because of Microsoft’s history of developing font technologies for Windows and partly to make Office documents more portable between Windows and Mac versions, includes a number of fonts in a standard install on the Mac. Some of these fonts are duplicates of fonts included with OS X and some are required by Office to render the toolbars and other interface elements of Office applications. These fonts were originally welcomed because they were better than the system fonts, but now the Leopard system fonts have surpassed the Microsoft fonts. Office 2004 and Office 2008 install fonts into different locations, so be aware of that as you try to clean up your fonts on your system.

Adobe Creative Suite Fonts

Adobe Creative Suite installs a large number of fonts in Mac OS X. CS3 and later put these fonts in the system library, but CS2 and the original CS placed them in an Adobe directory. If you are using Creative Suite, then you certainly want a large font collection, but you will end up with duplicates between Apple-provided system fonts and Adobe fonts. One of the most common font problems I see is a designer that has multiple versions of Helvetica installed that eventually conflict with each or simply cause confusion when choosing the right font for a project.

Get a Handle on Your Fonts

Tomorrow I will cover five software programs that help you manage your fonts: Font Book, FontExplorer X and FontExplorer Pro, FontAgent Pro, Suitcase Fusion X, and FontCase. In addition, if you really want an in-depth understanding of how fonts work in Leopard, I highly recommend that you check out two e-books from TidBITS Publishing: Take Control of Fonts in Leopard and Take Control of Font Problems in Leopard. Sharon Zardetto, who has been writing about the Mac for over 20 years, has created a really valuable resource for designers and support professionals alike. Tiger versions are also available if you are still supporting 10.4 in your shop. These books cover font technologies in far greater depth than I have here, and also explain how to fix a myriad of problems that may crop up.

The weekend brought renewed hope for those waiting with bated breath for the marriage of iPhone and Flash. I have to admit that it really aggravates me when I see a site I want to check out, type the address into Mobile Safari, and am greeted with nothing but a background color and that aggravating little question mark cube. Which is why I was momentarily heartened when I heard found out that Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said in a recent Bloomberg television interview that the company was “collaborating” with Apple on bringing Flash to the iPhone.

This is only the latest development in the long saga of the interactive web tech and Apple’s game-changing smartphone. So far, nothing seems to have come of efforts to get the tech working on the device because Apple has qualms with the high demands of the full version of Flash, and doesn’t feel the Lite version offers enough muscle to merit inclusion. Hence Narayen’s talk of “collaborating,” since his company basically has to meet Apple’s particular demands in order to get them to open the gates.

I suspect, along with Daring Fireball’s Jon Gruber, that Narayen’s use of the word “collaborating” might be a little misleading in this case. The rest of the CEO’s comments don’t really suggest that Apple has changed their position on the matter, but it does seem like Adobe realises the importance of getting their product on the platform, and have decided to put in the serious development time required to produce something that matches Apple’s specifications.

At this point, its hard to say how much Flash capability will affect things on Apple’s side of the equation. Yes, it would be nice to avoid those question-cubes, but I still wouldn’t trade my iPhone for anything, nor did I even consider the absence of Flash as a factor when I made my original decision to purchase. Really, Adobe has everything to gain from a relationship with the device, in order to stay relevant, which is presumably why the ball is in their court.

Depending on how closely you stick to the word of the law, you may or may not be aware of the potentially dangerous trojan called “OSX.Trojan.iServices.A” unleashed on some of the Mac community last week via a pirated copy of iWork ‘09. The trojan, discovered by Mac security software company Intego, allows the distributor of the malicious software to access and modify the affected system remotely, performing actions such as adding files. Such a vulnerability is potentially fatal to an operating system.

According to Intego’s numbers, more than 20,000 people have downloaded the affected file, a number which also says something about Apple’s ability (or desire?) to curb piracy of its proprietary software. Instructions on how to rid your computer of the virus in case you are among that unlucky 20,000 can be found here, but they can’t take away your shame.

This week, another round of infections has appeared, this time targeting a different, but similar group of pirates. The victims are users who downloaded a pirated copy of Adobe’s popular photo editing program, Photoshop CS4. Again, the people responsible for finding and broadcasting the existence of the trojan are Intego. This one is aptly dubbed “OSX.Trojan.iServices.B”, and actually comes from the serial generator that packages with the Photoshop installer, and not the installer itself. The CS4 trojan presents the same risks as the iWork ‘09 version. Intego reports 5,000 downloads to date.

With two such high-profile virus detections coming so closely on each other’s heels, the question inevitably arises: Is Mac’s status as a highly secure option to Windows in danger? Clearly, Mac users are beginning to present a more attractive target to hackers, because the platform itself is becoming more popular. Not only that, but Mac users may be even more susceptible than others, since they traditionally haven’t had to worry much about malicious attacks.

No doubt the conspiracy theories that security companies cause and cure viruses will also crop up, especially with two such similar detections from the same source in such a short period of time. The reaction might be especially strong, considering how secure most Mac users believe their computers to be.

Really, as it stands, the only people at risk are those trying to pirate software, so it’s not really a case of “Is the OS less secure?”, so much as it is one of “Are Mac users security savvy?”. Pirated software distributed via Torrents has always been a high-risk area, but those running a Mac OS have had the luxury of being less guarded about those types of threats because the malicious code they contained was generally written to attack Windows machines.

The time may have come to star learning more smart surfing practices, but I think the general Mac-using populace can hold off on putting their computers on lock-down. Unless, that is, they plan on pirating like crazy, in which case, shields up.

In the course of my daily wanderings, I came across this post by Turkish web developer Cagan Senturk. Cagan was working on his first foray into iPhone development when he ran into some difficulty. He describes the process at length, but it’s the third rejection of his app (an iPhone companion to Profesyo.net, a Turkish networking site) that is most interesting. Apple called foul on his use of an apparently trademarked image. Below is the screenshot of the offender.

Now, Cagan has clarified that the red circle was indeed placed by Apple, so it would seem that Apple is claiming to own a trademark on the wireframe globe. Commenters on Cagan’s own blog, speculating that he’d placed the circle himself, suggested that maybe the “Connect” logo was the actual culprit, since it so closely resembles the logo Apple uses for their new iTunes Genius service.

In either case, the graphics in question are not taken from any Apple source, hence Cagan’s confusion. In fact, if you’re a regular user of Adobe Photoshop, you may recognize them. Both are included by default as part of Adobe’s Custom Shapes set. In which case, it would mean that if Cagan were in violation of Apple’s trademark, then Adobe would be, as well, and to a far more serious degree, since they include the graphic in their industry leading, very successful photo editing program.

A quick search found out why Apple was arguing the icon’s use in the first place. They use a very similar (though not the same) graphic in the Clock app to represent “World Time.” Notice the differences in the screenshot below. Apple’s top and bottom horizontal lines inside the globe curl up at the ends while the one used in Kagan’s screen does not. Actually, that shouldn’t even matter, because upon closer inspection, both varieties are included in Adobe’s Custom Shapes.

Since his first priority is getting his App in the App Store, Cagan decided to just switch out the icon. But really, Apple should be challenged on things like this, lest we find ourselves unable to use any generic icons for fear of reprisals.

The ongoing back-and-forth between Apple and Adobe over Flash on the iPhone is well-documented. First it was, then wasn’t, then was, then probably wasn’t again a possibility. If we take Apple CEO Steve Jobs at his word, then the problem lies with Flash being too heavy and Flash Lite being too insubstantial. And as it stands, Flash appears to violate the existing terms of the SDK, an area where Apple seems unwilling to be flexible.

The latest move in this complicated chess game is by Adobe, and it’s not a direct retort. Instead, MacNN reports the multimedia powerhouse is announcing today that they will be rolling out an ARM-optimized version of Flash 10 in 2009, while not mentioning any specific phones by name. Of course, iPhone followers will know that the current processor for Apple’s cellular device is the Samsung ARM 1176, meaning that it would benefit from Adobe’s proposed optimization.

Flash Lite, which until now has largely stood in for Flash on handheld platforms, doesn’t pack anywhere near the punch of its full-fledged sibling, which is itself sluggish on the iPhone. The proposed new ARM-optimized Flash would use OpenGL ES 2.0-capable hardware and newer, faster processors to allow complex apps and advanced video to come to portable devices, without sacrificing speed and usability. The move could also see the introduction of Adobe AIR applications on smartphones, which would be a first.

While it is positioned as a move which encompasses a wide range of devices, the optimizations described fit the iPhone’s current hardware capabilities perfectly, and seem tailored to Jobs’ comments regarding Flash’s suitability for implementation on the device. Adobe seems not only willing to make concessions, but to eliminate any possible excuse Apple may have not to use the updated software. Combined with the decision to offer AIR and Flash to developers without royalty, which will definitely increase adoption, the optimized version will be hard for Cupertino to pass up. Or, if they do, they’ll have an even harder time explaining why to consumers.

According to John Nack, Principal Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop, the entire Creative Suite 4 is now shipping.

Announced in September, the release date itself was not initially specified.  Those looking to test out the new programs before deciding whether or not to upgrade will have to wait, as trials are not yet available for download on Adobe’s site.  You can however sign up here to be notified when the downloads do go live.

All products in the suite have received some nice feature additions, including the Application Frame for Mac versions, which allows users to opt for a a single window display if they prefer, rather than the floating pane configuration of CS3 and earlier products. The new mode addresses the complaints of some users regarding accidentally clicking through to background applications, and the visual distraction and clutter of the independent pane UI.

The products shipping today, available in profession-specific packages, all together, or individually, are:

• InDesign CS4
• Photoshop CS4
• Photoshop CS4 Extended
• Illustrator CS4
• Acrobat 9 (Previously available)
• Flash CS4 Professional
• Dreamweaver CS4
• Fireworks CS4
• Contribute CS4
• After Effects CS4
• Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
• Soundbooth CS4
• Adobe OnLocation CS4
• Encore CS4
• Adobe Bridge CS4
• Adobe Device Central CS4
• Version Cue CS4

We posted a thorough preview of the new featuresets available when the suite was officially announced.  Check it out here.

From a blog post that launched a thousand rumors, comes confirmation that Adobe is, in fact, creating a way to bring Flash content to the iPhone.

Here is an excerpt from their official statement during a recent “town hall”:

“Upon a direct question from the audience, Paul Betlem for the first time publicly confirmed that Adobe is actively developing a Flash Player for Apple’s popular phone. He said (not direct quote) ‘My team is working on Flash on the iPhone, but it’s a closed platform.’ He noted that Apple makes all the decisions, so in other words, the ball is in Apple’s yard at this time. If Apple says yes, Adobe will have the player available in a very short time.”

It will be interesting to see how this makes it way through the Cupertino application gates since this will be a direct competitior to the built-in audio and video players and will also provide an alternate way to develop applications for Apple’s devices. Given how Flash-centric their new creative suite appears to be, this move by Adobe may be seen as a real threat to Apple’s hold on the platform.

Apple may have little choice but to let Adobe into their camp since Microsoft has licensed Flash Lite for their mobile devices and it is expected that the Android phone platform will also eventually support it (but support is not expected out of the gate).

Do you want or need Flash support on your phone? If you are a developer of Flash content, are you eager to adapt your creations to run on Apple’s iPods & iPhones? Keep the converation going in the comments!

Adobe introduced their Creative Suite 4 (CS4) product family to the world today, almost sixteen months since the announcement of Creative Suite 3. With six editions to choose from, ranging in price from $999 to $2,499 (upgrades from $399 to $899), and thirteen standalone applications costing $199 to $999, it’s important that you have an understanding of your needs when reviewing the new features that make up each package. Adobe plans on releasing CS4 sometime in October.

Design Leads The Pack

Adobe has positioned InDesign as one of its flagship products and has added (or significantly enhanced) over ten major new features including:

• live prefight so you have instant feedback on potential problems prior to production
• easier ways to organize your workflow with a document links panel that provides a wealth of information on all your components
• the ability to tailor output via conditional text that auto-reflows based on conditions you set (without the use of layers) and even better control of how content reflows in general
• cross reference tools which allow you to dynamically update content across an entire document,
• full document export to XFL (Adobe Flash CS4) and interactive document design features with output to SWF, opening up many more uses for your creative work
• slick, new & customizable page transitions with options for PDF or SWF output
• dynamic guide placement and spread rotation tools which enable pinpoint placement and review of content

Not to be outdone, Photoshop has some significant enhancements of its own to tout, including:

• Two new panels enabling much better control over element adjustments and control over masks (pixel or vector-based)
• smoother panning and zooming when moving across an image
• distortion free (and fast!) canvas rotation
• content-aware scaling which effortlessly adjusts all image components
• improved depth-of-field control, color correction and image blending features
• better control over layers with the ability to auto-align and create panoramic views
• enhanced integration into Adobe Bridge
• improvements to workflow with tabbed or n-up multi-document views

Photoshop Extended includes significant 3D capabilities, including the ability to paint directly on 3D models or auto-wrap 2D content onto a 3D surface. Photoshop Extended also includes support for Flash-based panels that can customize virtually any portion of the image.

Illustrator catches some developer love with:

• multiple artboards (up to 100) in a single document with the ability to selectively save, export or print independently
• fine-tuned opacity control for gradients along with direct on-screen control of most gradient features with immediate feedback
• a new “blob brush” tool which generates a single clean vector shape
• full preview of print separations, helping create a “no surprises” situation when production time comes
• immediate feedback on all object customizations via the new Appearance panel

Heavy Lifters Bring Up The Middle

I use or publish PDF documents almost daily and Adobe delivers some interesting features in Acrobat 9 Pro:

• PDF Portfolio creation, which allow you to assemble all document components into a fully customizable single, dynamic PDF document
• the abiliy to embed Flash content directly into your PDF files
• compare documents (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, CAD and scans) and easily see differences in mutliple views
• significantly enhanced form building, management, deployment and analysis
• detailed preview of overprint characteristics and full preflight management (including the ability to correct problems right in Acrobat)
• seamless collaboration via features on acrobat.com
• faster launches and quicker minor edits

Flash receives a major feature uplift and finds itself easily incorporated into most CS4 products with little-to-no effort. It also gains some impressive new capabilities, including:

• object-based (vs. keyframe) animation with dirt-simple Bezier-control handles
• full 3D transformations of 2D objects
• a new “Bones” tool enabling quick creation of “inverse kinematic” (chain-like) animation and a full-featured motion editor for all components
• deco and spray brush tools which effortlessly turn symbols into design tools
• many pre-built animations to help jump-start your creative workflow
• full metadata, XFL & H.264
• the ability to publish to an AIR runtime

Untangling The Web

Adobe didn’t forget their web developer fans and has kicked up the feature sets of their three world-wide weavers. Dreamweaver starts off with a completely redesigned user interface and continues with:

• live preview mode
• AJAX & JavaScript code-hinting along with CSS best-practices context
• New code and file navigator with subversion support
• support for table-based HTML data sets
• Photoshop “Smart Object” support, allowing you to place PSD files that render source modifications automatically
• pre-release support for Adobe’s forthcoming InContext online editing service which allows end-users to modify your output without the need to purchase Dreamweaver
• the ability to publish to an AIR runtime

Fireworks fans see some sparks as well, including:

• Much improved user-interface
• Adobe AIR prototyping
• PDF export ability
• CSS-based layout export function
• Better asset management, styles manipulation, type-handling and color management
• significant performance improvements
• better team workflow management through integration with Adobe’s ConnectNow service

Contribute gains some impressive features of its own as well:

• Full support for dynamic workflows with approvals and in-context review panels
• In-browser editing (Firefox & IE only)
• Support for many blogging platforms, including MovableTyle, TypePad & WordPress
• Improved Dreamweaver integration, enhanced CSS support and a new auto-save feature to help secure your personal workflow

Keeping Things In Motion

If you have to keep things moving, then AfterEffects has some new tools to help, including support for the new 3D Photoshop layers as well as:

• fully searchable timelines and XFL composition export control
• powerful keyframe control enhancements
• integrated support for mobile-device content generation
• new cartoon effect
• integration of Mocha’s 2.5D planar tracking application
• tagged assets with XMP metadata and tight linking between Premier & Soundbooth

Premiere introduces full metadata tagging of all stages of your workflow production and:

• searchable audio via text-based, timecode-accurate metadata
• background batch encoding
• tapeless camera support without the need for transcoding or rewrapping
• over fifty editing tweaks requested by users
• better workflow and integration with other members of the CS4 suite and the ability to export projects to SWF
• Blu-ray Disc authoring (Encore
• includes OnLocation

You can’t improve the video without paying some attention to audio and Adobe has turned up the volume on Soundbooth with some new and improved features, including:

• Multitrack support (finally!)
• ASND support along with MP3 compression preview support
• speech search (shared feature with Premiere)
• automatic volume correction with volume keyframing tools
• significant enhancements to looping tools

Bringing It All Together

When you purchase the bundles, Adobe Bridge manages all of your media across all the packages while Device Central lets you tailor output to your desired audience with just a few clicks. The video-oriented toolsets can take advantage of Dynamic Link to speed up rendering and all your collaborative projects can integrate with Version Cue to greatly enhance workflow amongst your entire team.

Adobe plans on shipping all CS4 products in this October.

Are you excited about CS4? What feature are you most excited about? Let your voice be heard by dropping a note in the comments. (Beautiful icons by Adam Betts)

Yesterday it was announced that Adobe will be announcing (gotta love announcements announcing announcements) Creative Suite 4 on September 23rd.

Adobe will be holding a special little event online showing all of the upcoming features of CS4 (which is rumored to be released as early as this Fall).

For those hip to trying out beta products, you can already checkout CS4 versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth. Though, be warned, downloading and installing these could cause some conflicts should you need to re-install any CS3 software (I know it gave me some issues).

The current version of Creative Suite (CS3) was released on April 20, 2007.

When Mac OS X 10.5.3 was released at the end of last month it was a massive download, tipping the scales at 420 MB. Unfortunately with the Mac OS X 10.5.3 update we didn’t see the three known iCal bugs resolved but we saw numerous fixes which made many Leopard users happy; however, others faced major issues.

Adobe Creative Suite users quickly discovered that they could no longer correctly save files from inDesign, Photoshop, along with other CS3 programs to a location on a remote server. The files were becoming corrupted which made them useless. Reports of these issues flooded Apple and Adobe forums as frustrated users looked for a way to get these issue resolved.

On Tuesday Apple reported that the first beta release of Mac OS X 10.5.4 would be delivered to developers ahead of the WWDC. Keeping its promise Apple delivered Mac OS X 10.5.4 to developers on Wednesday evening. Mac OS X 10.5.4 isn’t as large as Mac OS X 10.5.3 it only weighs 55MB; however, Creative Suite users should be able to work properly with files that reside on a remote server.

What else should we see in the Mac OS X 10.5.4 update? We should receive additional bug fixes within this update and rumors have been flying that we should receive support for the soon to-be-announced Mobile Me service. That’s right it has been reported that .Mac will be changed to Me.com. The name MobileMe has been reported in many iPhone SDK files.

Also, in the Mac OS X 10.5.4 update it will supposedly include support for a new piece of Apple hardware. Although I would love to see a Mac Tablet I don’t think I will get my wish. Any guesses what it will be?

Adobe Systems released Flash Player 10 beta today with a modest set of enhancements, including:

• New 3D Effects that make it much easier to position, rotate and animate 2D objects while retaining full interactivity. Plus, new variable bitrate streaming for video between Adobe Flash Player 10 beta and future releases of Adobe Flash Media Server will automatically adjust video quality as bandwidth availability fluctuates to provide constant video playback without pausing to buffer.
• The ability to create your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe® Pixel Bender™, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.
• A new, highly flexible text layout engine that co-exists with TextField and gives creators some additional flexibility in creating new text controls including granular control over right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements such as ligatures.
• An enhanced drawing API that makes graphical operations at runtime easier and more functional with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.
• Many visual performance improvements, including increased ability to use hardware acceleration.

Full releases notes have also been posted. For all you procrastinators, Flash Player 10 no longer supports OS X 10.1, so it may be time to finally upgrade.

If you are a creator/developer, drop a note in the comments with your views on Flash Player 10 beta. For the rest of us mere mortals, definitely leave feedback in the comments if you download and give the new Player a try.

CNN Money is reporting that Adobe has announced that it has begun work on a Flash player for the iPhone.

Last month Jobs said Flash wouldn’t be added to the iPhone anytime soon due to performance issues. Shortly there after, Jobs also announced the released of the iPhone SDK for creating iPhone native applications.

Today, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced that they had begun development on an version of the Flash player thanks to the release of the iPhone SDK. As with all iPhone native applications, the Flash player will be distributed through the iTunes App store once that launches.

No word yet in regards to pricing, but I feel pretty confident Adobe will be releasing it for free just as they always have with all previous versions of Flash.

The Adobe/Apple relationship has been a bit strained in the past year, and I find it quite interesting that Apple has kept such strong control over this process to the point where they will actually be controlling the distribution of the most popular browser plugin of all time (at least as far as mobile Safari goes).

Tipped by Bruce.

Adobe’s Captivate, the demonstration and training simulation creation software, is moving into the final development stages of it’s third version. I had the privilege of being a beta tester, and I must say that it is really cool. It really is easy (and fun) to create interactive software simulations and demos.

But unfortunately the program is stuck on Windows, and there are currently no plans to bring it to the Mac. When I questioned the Adobe engineers about it they responded in a very polite, almost rehearsed way.

“Captivate is built from a program that ties deeply into the core Windows. To bring it to the Mac would require a total rewrite, something that we’re not sure we can justify at this point. If we had significant interest from Mac users, it’d be a different story”.

So what do you guys think? Is there interest in bringing Captivate to the Mac? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.