CS5...whose made the jump...and why?

[schenkadere]

Ok, We are currently running CS4. Being that this release came out when the economy was beginning to bottom out, it seems not as many folks made the jump. Most of our customers(high end packaging designers)are still using CS3.

I think that from a production standpoint, CS4 made a few improvements, the biggest being the separations preview in Illustrator IMO.

I've read about the changes in CS5 and don't really see the urgency. Since we do packaging, Illustrator and Photoshop are our main Adobe applications. Very rarely do we need InDesign...maybe once or twice a year.

Anyway, in order for us to upgrade to CS5, I would need to upgrade 4 of our 6 Mac workstations to Intel based units. Being part of a large corporation, this becomes a big project and it's possible that the expense may have to be absorbed on a plant level. I can't really justify it at the moment and am simply wondering if I'm missing something fantastic and tremendously useful?

Thanks for any input.

[Lukas Engqvist]

I'd say if you do strokes in Illustrator there are a few good enhancments, like the deciding on where the dash starts and how arrowheads behave. I have only uppgrade on my laptop. Desktop is a G5, and will stay with CS4.

[schenkadere]

I'd say if you do strokes in Illustrator there are a few good enhancments, like the deciding on where the dash starts and how arrowheads behave. I have only uppgrade on my laptop. Desktop is a G5, and will stay with CS4.

Um...wow...thrilling...I certainly hope there's more to it than THAT!

This can potentially be a big problem for me. The expense of 4 new Macs plus moving 2 more to the current OS...which means all our "minor" applications will have to be upgraded as well...that will get costly fast....all so someone can better define dashes and arrowheads?

[Lukas Engqvist]

Well, ok there are more things in Illustrator, but they are creative things – don't know if they intrest you.

There is paste into, (means illustrator behaves as frames
There is even more art board management, "paste on each"
There is what is called beautiful strokes, a way to vary stroke weight
You can decide what part of a brush or a symbol stretches
There is a new kind of brush.
new ways to build objects (similar to pathfinder but click and drag).
Mesh grids can support opacity.

Illustrator has alot of web features updated.
snapping to pixel grid
symbol reference points
smooth integration with flash catalyst

[schenkadere]

Well, ok there are more things in Illustrator, but they are creative things – don't know if they intrest you.

There is paste into, (means illustrator behaves as frames
There is even more art board management, "paste on each"
There is what is called beautiful strokes, a way to vary stroke weight
You can decide what part of a brush or a symbol stretches
There is a new kind of brush.
new ways to build objects (similar to pathfinder but click and drag).
Mesh grids can support opacity.

Illustrator has alot of web features updated.
snapping to pixel grid
symbol reference points
smooth integration with flash catalyst

Maybe it's time they market more usage specific packages. The programs get so bloated with tools that people in one field or another never use. Then they can also have more focused support.

[Shawn]

I'd check out the videos at tv.adobe.com and see if any of the new features appeal to you.
AdobeTV | Illustrator CS5 Feature Tour
AdobeTV | Photoshop CS5 Feature Tour

Personally we've found that the variable page sizes and "grid" features in InDesign are great, but since you don't use it much that won't help you.

In Illustrator the shape builder tool refinements are useful and in Photoshop the content aware fill looks cool and seems to actually work with a minimal amount of clean up.

Shawn

[wonderings]

We have upgraded to CS5 from CS4. The speed improvement I am finding to be a nice thing. Running on 2 computers, one iMac 2.6 Dual Core, the other my MacBook Pro i5 2.4

We have a few clients who jump on these right away, so I like to not have to ask them to down save and just be able to work with what they send. Photoshop is a nice improvement with the content aware... for simpler things, but still much better then CS4. Everything now works in CS5 that I had with CS4. I had issues with my scanner and photoshop (resolved) and an imposition plugin I used in indesign cs4 was not compatible with CS5 (resolved). Its not a huge upgrade in my opinion, just some nice little things.

[almaink]

LOL CS5. I've yet to see a CS4 file even tho I have it.

[stargate]

I switched to CS5. Why? Content Aware fills, Speed and I can use my 32GB of RAM for Photoshop on my Snow Leopard MacPro.

Derek

[frailer]

Basically having to, as a major client has already jumped. In a few weeks, after we move to Intel Macs, as we are on PPCs still. Thought we might delay it a bit by getting them to save down as IDML files (they're no longer INX files), but got VERY nasty text reflows. Having to ask them for PDFs currently, but we really need their native files, as they tend to proof-read their jobs on our Black Magic proofs. Files supplied 3 times is not unusual. Headbangers, really.