Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 is indeed here, and we think it offers something for every type of digital media professional to get excited about. Digital photographers, video editors, and graphic and Web designers will all find a new group of goodies under the hood to feed their creative appetites. And all of these new goodies come with the added benefit of even tighter integration among all of the Creative Suite applications.

Here, we’ll explore the new features in each program and how they can be practically applied via a workflow for a fictitious hotel called The Meadows Hotel. We’ll start with the Adobe Bridge—Adobe’s new file browsing application that works for all applications in the Suite, not just Photoshop. Then we’ll check out the new Illustrator as our imaginary design team starts their project with some sketches of a logo. We’ll also show you some new tracing features as well as some great interface and integration tweaks. From there, we’ll take a look at what Photoshop CS2 brings to the table—including great new tools for photographers and designers. Then the designers will move their work to InDesign so we can check out all its new features and enhancements, including creating contact sheets and new options for working with layered Photoshop files. Next up is GoLive. You’ll see some of the great new visual layout features as well as a few extras that make moving your designs to the Web much easier.

So without further ado, let’s meet Adobe’s Creative Suite 2.

THE ADOBE BRIDGE

Bridging the Gap Between the Apps
Need to find an Illustrator graphic, an InDesign document, or a PDF file? You’ll find them all—and more—in the Bridge.

The Adobe Bridge is perhaps the biggest example of the increased integration among the applications in the Creative Suite. The Bridge takes the functionality of the Photoshop File Browser and makes it available to all Creative Suite applications. In fact, the File Browser is gone, and the Bridge isn’t part of Photoshop but a stand-alone application.

In our workflow example, the Bridge will play an ongoing role, allowing designers, art directors, layout artists, and Web designers to view and organize images, easily open files, and find stock images, no matter which application they’re using.

It’s Not the File Browser
If you’ve used the File Browser, the look and feel of the Bridge will be very familiar. Adobe has taken the basic idea of the visual browser and added many new capabilities. For example, in the File Browser you had several built-in thumbnail sizes, whereas the Bridge provides a simple slider to quickly change thumbnail size. You may assign files a ranking of up to five stars or color-code them. This allows you to easily display the desired images by “filtering” only images with a certain ranking, say, greater than three stars, for example.

The Bridge has three built-in views that can be accessed with the click of a button: thumbnail view, filmstrip view, and details view. It’s also possible to change the configuration of the Bridge by removing panels you don’t want to use. For example, from the Bridge’s View menu, deselect the Keywords panel and it will no longer be visible.

Because the Bridge can be used in all of the Creative Suite applications, you can leave it running at all times. Due to its size, it might tend to get in the way; however, when you’re in Illustrator or Photoshop, you can take advantage of the compact view. Just press Command-Return (PC: Control-Enter) and the Bridge reduces down to the size of a floating palette.(Press the same shortcut to return to full size.) There’s even an ultra compact mode if you want to Bridge to take up very little space at all.

Engage
Here’s how our Meadows Hotel designers can take full advantage of the Bridge: In Photoshop, they click the Bridge button in the Options Bar to switch to the Bridge. They navigate to the Illustrator file they want to use and can either open the file in Illustrator by double-clicking on it or open the same file in Photoshop by Control-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) on the thumbnail and choosing Open with Photoshop CS2 from the pop-up menu. They can even double-click on an Excel file to launch the marketing spreadsheet, or open a QuickTime movie directly from the Bridge (or the movie could simply be played as a miniature preview without even opening it). In addition, finding stock photography on the Web can be as easy as searching five top providers by using Adobe Stock Photos directly from the Bridge: download free comps and then download and pay for the high-res images before heading off to print.

The designers can also use the Bridge to “look inside” a multi-page PDF file or InDesign template (and later on they could also combine several PDF files in Acrobat). Or they could use the Slide Show feature to view and rank images: they just select the images they want to view, press Command-L (PC: Control-L) and the slide show will launch. In addition to viewing images in this full screen view, images can also be ranked by pressing 0–5 for the number of stars, or 6–9 for colored labels.

The Bridge is also the main access point for images shown in RAW format: double-click on a RAW file and Camera Raw will launch. Several important new features have been added to Camera Raw, including tools for cropping and straightening images and the ability to work with multiple RAW files at once.

With all of its options, the Bridge is sure to become an integral part of any workflow that uses multiple products within the Creative Suite.

ILLUSTRATOR CS2

More Control
Longtime users of Illustrator will applaud the addition of two very important interface enhancements. First, a Control palette now appears at the top of the document window and provides instant access to the details of the selected object: fill, stroke, opacity, X and Y coordinates, width and height, and more. It’s similar to the Options Bar in Photoshop, but actually based on InDesign, where the information in the Control palette reflects the selected object rather than the tool options. The other major interface addition is the Workspace menu and its option to reset palettes to the default location as well as saving and managing your own workspaces.

Live Trace and Live Paint
In terms of new features, Live Trace and Live Paint will grab the most attention, and rightly so. Live Trace adds the ability to trace a scanned image with many options for the accuracy of the trace and the number of colors used to trace the scan. Plus, it’s “live,” so when a setting is changed in the Control palette (such as the number of colors), the traced object automatically updates.

In our example, the Meadows Hotel designers scan in a quick sketch of the new logo they’ve envisaged, use the Bridge to open it in Illustrator, and then use Live Trace to convert the scan to vector objects. To create a quick colored version before drawing the final version, they can convert the Live Trace to a Live Paint object. Live Paint “senses” the separation of objects and, via the Live Paint Bucket tool, color can be added to regions of the traced object very quickly and easily. There’s also the option to detect gaps in the traced object, meaning that regions of the object don’t have to be completely closed off to be seen as separate objects (in the past, Illustrator users would be faced with a lot of manual cutting and joining to turn a traced image into separate objects). Another useful option is to generate swatches when the traced object is converted to a Live Paint object.

Choose Your Layer Comp and More
Illustrator CS2 now works even more closely with Photoshop than before. Open or place a layered PSD file into Illustrator and choose from the layer comps in the PSD file. There are two methods to update the placed file to use a different layer comp: (1) Option–double-click (PC: Alt–double-click) on the file to launch the original in Photoshop, choose (or create) another layer comp and save the file, then return to Illustrator and the placed file will update; or (2) if you don’t need to create another layer comp, you could use the Links palette to re-link the file and choose a different layer comp as you choose the same file.

Using Illustrator graphics in Photoshop also got a whole lot easier with the introduction in Photoshop CS2 of Smart Objects. As you’ll see later in our workflow example, Illustrator files can be placed or pasted into Photoshop as “live” objects that can be easily edited in Illustrator, with the results updating in Photoshop (more on this later).

Along with overall speed enhancements, other key improvements to Illustrator CS2 include new stroke options to determine the stroke alignment on a path; the ability to colorize embedded grayscale images; the option to specify a drop shadow as a spot color; and improved support for creating a multi-page PDF from a tiled document.

PHOTOSHOP CS2

Where’s My Link Icon?
Photoshop CS2 introduces new levels of power, precision, and control with new features and powerful enhancements. Before we revisit our design team’s project, let’s take a look at one of the major changes in this new version sure to rock the Photoshop community—layers. In fact, the world of layers has changed quite a bit. First off, you can select multiple layers at once by Shift- or Command-clicking (PC: Control-clicking) on them. You’ll know they’re targeted because they’ll have a dark gray highlight over them. While this feature may take a little getting used to, it’s intended to speed the process of working with multiple layers. Also, we have some sad news for those of you who were fond of the small link column in the Layers palette: it’s gone. Yes, it’s served us well over the years, but with multiple layer selection there’s no longer a need for this link column. (Link column, it was nice working with you, though!)

Next, those of you who are familiar with organizing your layers into layer sets in previous versions may get alarmed at first to find there’s nothing called a layer set in Photoshop CS2. Fear not, though—Adobe has merely renamed this feature to Groups in an attempt to standardize functions across the entire Suite. Another nice layer feature is the addition of a small outline around a layer mask, which makes it much easier to see which object is active when looking at the Layers palette.

Smart Objects
The way we work with layers isn’t the only thing that’s changed in CS2. Photoshop now has a feature called Smart Objects, which is essentially a new type of layer that allows you to nondestructively edit Illustrator artwork in Photoshop. What’s really cool about them is that they keep a reference to the source Illustrator file so you can go back and modify the Smart Object source at any time. To see how this works with The Meadows Hotel project, imagine a PSD file for various marketing

material where they want to add the logo. They just choose File>Place or copy-and-paste the file (Illustrator or EPS format) that contains the logo from Illustrator. This adds a new layer to Photoshop with a small icon in the bottom-right corner indicating that it’s a Smart Object. They can work with this layer in many of the same ways they can an ordinary layer but they can’t paint on it. However, they can transform, rotate, and resize this layer to their heart’s content and it will always retain its crisp vector qualities (see “How Smart Are Smart Objects?”)

Let’s Do the Warp
Now, on to a new design feature called Warp. Back in the old days of Photoshop 6, Adobe added a feature that allowed you to warp text. Some of the options for warping were pretty cool but you were restricted to using them on type. Well, they’ve taken it a step further in CS2. Now, you can warp any object, layer, or selection just as you could type. Even better is the Custom Warp function, which doesn’t limit you to one of the built-in presets. (See “Get Warped” for a simple illustration of this feature.)

The Vanishing
The last new feature we’re going to visit in Photoshop CS2 is called Vanishing Point. People are going to lose a lot of sleep on this one. Vanishing Point is a new filter that lets you define perspective planes on images, then clone, paint, and transform images according to that perspective plane. If you’ve ever had to clone away areas of an image, you know what it’s like to tediously try to match perspective lines that may appear in that image. Simply cloning the target area won’t suffice, as it doesn’t take into account the distortion that results from changes in depth. Vanishing Point is a solid addition to Photoshop and can really come in handy when you need it. The Meadows Hotel designers used Vanishing Point in their project to simplify the process of adding the logo and identity graphics to various surfaces in the image shown here. It saves the hassle and guesswork of using Free Transform and is much more accurate. Just open your logo and copy its contents to the clipboard. Then open the image to which you’d like to add the logo and choose Filter>Vanishing Point. From there, just use the Create Plane tool to define a perspective plane for Photoshop to use and paste your logo onto the image. Vanishing Point will allow you to move, transform, rotate, and resize the logo to get the best fit.

But That’s Not All, Folks
Other additions to Photoshop include several new Blur filters (Box Blur, Shape Blur, and Surface Blur), an Exposure adjustment similar to what’s included in Camera Raw, a Spot Healing Brush for quick retouching tasks, and a new Animation palette similar to the one in ImageReady for Web developers. You can also customize menus to show, hide, or color-code any menu item. These customized menus can be saved into a workspace so you can reload them at any time or on any computer. Photoshop CS2 also includes the ability to edit HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. HDR images allow for greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital images do. The goal is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows.

INDESIGN CS2

Controlling InDesign from the Bridge
Of all the applications in the Creative Suite 2, InDesign CS2 probably has the most new features, from major enhancements to numerous small tweaks. First, like the other Suite applications, InDesign CS2 can take full advantage of the Adobe Bridge. Not only can files be renamed and organized, you can determine what fonts and swatches are present inside an InDesign document without opening it. Plus, you can “page through” an InDesign template, viewing the individual pages within the template.

One of the many ways that our hotel designers could take advantage of the Bridge in InDesign is to create a contact sheet—yes, a contact sheet built in InDesign rather than Photoshop—containing everything from TIFF and JPEG images to .ai files and PDFs. Simply select the files in the Bridge you want to include and from the Tools menu choose InDesign>Create InDesign Contact Sheet. All elements of the resulting InDesign page can be edited, from the images themselves to the automatically generated labels. Other automated functions that can be accessed from within the Bridge are Convert PageMaker to InDesign, Create PDF from Preset, Package for GoLive, and Preflight.

Viewing Photoshop Layer Comps
InDesign CS2 has taken a major step forward in its ability to work with layered Photoshop documents. Once a PSD file has been placed, you can use the Object Layer Options dialog to choose from built-in Layer Comps, or simply show and hide individual layers. This is worth repeating: you can show and hide individual Photoshop layers right within InDesign, eliminating the need to return to Photoshop! In this example from an ad for The Meadows Hotel, a multi-layered PSD file was placed into an InDesign layout. A quick trip to the Object Layer Options dialog to pick a different Layer Comp and the file updates instantly. In addition to this improved way of working with placed PSD files, InDesign CS2 also has an enhanced capability with PDF files, offering the option to place multi-page PDFs at once.

Object Styles, Snippets, and Style Mapping, Oh My!
Our hotel designers will also love the ability to create and apply Object Styles. Similar in concept to Paragraph styles, Object Styles can include fill and stroke, transparency, paragraph styles, text frame options, and more. After defining an Object Style, that style can easily be applied to other selected objects.

Working as part of a team became a little easier with the introduction of Snippets and Style Mapping. Snippets are created by selecting multiple objects and using the Export command to create a transportable file that can be sent to and placed by other InDesign users. Converting styles in a Word document into existing paragraph styles in InDesign is much simpler with Style Mapping. In the Import Options dialog, click the Custom Style Import option to map styles in a Word document with corresponding styles in InDesign.

Another very useful new feature is anchored objects—inline graphics that move with the paragraphs, including the ability to set spine properties so that text and anchored objects will flip when moved to a facing page.

Some of the many additional enhancements include auto-correct spelling and interactive spelling, WYSIWYG font menu, the ability to selectively load styles from other documents, adding footnotes, the option to fit content to frame proportionally, and access to the PDF Export dialog that’s common to all applications in the Suite.

GOLIVE CS2

Visual CSS
Adobe GoLive CS2 takes Web and mobile authoring to the next level with some great new tools for building websites and creating mobile content, as well as tighter integration with the other components of Adobe Creative Suite 2.

Most notably, GoLive CS2 now supports cascading style sheets in a visual layout. Adobe refers to this as Visual CSS. Designers can simply create CSS websites by using drag-and-drop CSS objects to lay out pages. This makes it easy to adhere to the Web standards and simplifies maintenance greatly while maintaining design flexibility.

From InDesign to GoLive
Earlier, we mentioned tighter integration with the other Creative Suite components. The new features in GoLive make it incredibly simple to repurpose the work our Meadows Hotel designers have already done in InDesign by taking advantage of InDesign’s Package for GoLive feature (located under File>Package for GoLive in InDesign). By importing a brochure they created in InDesign, they had an immediate starting point for the website. From there, they can tell GoLive how to handle various text objects from InDesign so they don’t have to rewrite or reposition all of their text from the brochure. They have three choices: Editable Text, Smart Component, or Snapshot Image.

How Small Can You Go?
GoLive CS2 has also expanded its support for mobile content and development. Using open standards such as XHTML and SVG-t (SVG-tiny), designers can now design, develop, and deploy mobile content that adapts smoothly to a wide variety of devices. Part of this delivery is GoLive CS2’s Small Screen Rendering option. Now you can quickly preview what your site will look like on a small screen (such as those in many mobile devices) by choosing File>Preview In>Small Screen Rendering.

It’s Suite Working Together
It’s clear that Adobe is continually pushing the integration of their products within one suite. With the second incarnation of the Creative Suite, you’ll find definite improvements in both the way the applications work together and the applications themselves. Whether you’re a graphic artist, Web designer, photographer, or video editor, you’ll undoubtedly discover benefits to your craft and your workflow within the new CS2 offerings.

Bios:
Dave Cross is Senior Developer, Education and Curriculum, for the NAPP. He is the co-author of two books: Photoshop 7 & Illustrator 10: Create Great Advanced Graphics and Photoshop 7 Trade Secrets, and is featured on various instructional DVDs. Dave is a contributing writer to Photoshop User magazine and a Lead Instructor for the Photoshop Seminar Tour.

Matt Kloskowski is an Education and Curriculum Developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He has authored or co-authored several books on Photoshop and Illustrator and teaches an advanced Photoshop course for www.sessions.edu.