Adobe CS4 Is Out -- Impressions/Reviews
- Thread starter reilo
- Start date
- Status
StopMakingSense
Member
srst said:
Full version. You're just not supposed to use it for "professional use"
StopMakingSense
Member
reilo said:
Right, thats what I meant by "supposed to."
Apparently you can even get upgrade pricing on new pro versions from older student versions.
Buckethead
Banned
reilo said:
I don't think you can upgrade with the Student Version.
StopMakingSense
Member
Buckethead said:
Yes, you can!
Dark Ninja
Member
Anybody try the 3d model texturing thing in photoshop? impressions?
well it's not abandoned yet. the only thing they dropped was 64 bit support. you could say that this was their first step in telling people to get going on cocoa.Phoenix said:
apple's own final cut is still mainly carbon. i'm sure those engineers are busting some nuts on a cocoa/64-bit final cut 3 which could really take advantage of >4GB.
eso76
Member
Phoenix said:
Except for premiere and flash CS3 which were complete rip offs.
I haven't seen anything about the new premiere, Flash CS4 on the other hand has tons of awesome tools i can't wait to use. About time they enhanced motion options, keyframing and ease in-out options.
BUT they NEED to fix a few issues;
Exporting a movie should give you the option to export an image sequence in interlaced format or 50/60fps progressive (i always make the animation half speed in flash, then speed it up to 200% in premiere to obtain smooth results, but that sometimes messes up transparencies a little and always results in motion blur which is not always the look i'm going for).
Also, when you have a movie clip symbol enclosed in the main scene, it will play in the swf movie being rendered in real time, but it won't in the exported video (why haven't they changed this yet is beyond me)
Exporting an image; i REALLY need to be able to export images larger than 4000 pixels.
That or at least make the 'export to vector formats' (.ai .eps whatever, i would REALLY like being able to export in .svg too) worth something; unless your image is very basic it will turn into a mess in illustrator. Which is a shame because i really like working in flash rather than illustrator.
Being able to export vector graphics to pdf format.
I would also like a few more tools (like being able to use different styles for text, borders, being able to use gradients for text without having to turn letters into vector shapes).
One thing that should NEVER change is the awesome brush tool.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
I was obviously speaking to his own situation where he was complaining of not having any money to buy Flash even though he's using it for professional output. I appreciate your pedantry, though! And I agree that you should get rid of the DSLR, since you're suggesting it.lunarworks said:
Cocoa in Snow Leopard, according to all of the news over the weekend.aaaaa0 said:
WordAssassin
Member
Well, I wouldn't call that missing your point, I'd call that you just hammering on me a bit more for being an amateur using a pro piece of software. If I'm not supposed to use Flash for my own entertainment or making animations that I could show to friends or submit to film festivals, I ask again, can you please recommend a program that is just like Flash, but isn't? I learned Flash in high school and college, it's what I know for animation software, so that's what I use to fuck around in. If I'm "doing it wrong" then please tell me what other programs I could use instead to do it right. I'm not trying to start shit I'm genuinely asking you if you know something that has key frames, time line, layers, movie clips, possibly even vector based, etc, but isn't Flash. Someone else said After Effects, but I've been told it's a pain in the ass to do traditional animation in as opposed to using it for, well, after effects.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
And yeah, I expected to get shit for having a Mercedes, but the entire reason I said that was to show I have a premium car that takes premium fuel and it still costs me less a month to pay for then Flash CS4 costs to buy. (It's a 2000, too, so I'm not exactly rollin' is something fresh and super luxury.) However with the student discount making it only $130, that's really not so bad.
Good lord yes. That's really annoying.eso76 said:
PS - I don't recall ever saying I was using Flash for professional use. I imagine that once you buy a program you can do whatever the hell you want to with it. For me it's demo reel / portfolio work in the shape of animations made for my own or friend's entertainment or things I could submit to Spike & Mike's or Studio101.com.
Shogmaster
Member
I don't know why everyone is surprised about the CS4 and OSX/Cocoa/Carbon situation. It's been known for a while. I think Adobe has been talking about this for at least the past two Photoshop Worlds. I've known about it for many months, if not over a year.
Irony is that only those who jumped into Vista despite all the FUD and the 64bit version of that despite even more FUD on that will enjoy the full features of Photoshop CS4 for the time being. My school, for instance, is SOL until next fall because like a bunch of fucking douchebags, they went ahead with XP to XP64 transition over the X-Mas break, even though I repeatedly told them that XP64 is a dead end in so many ways that it's a wasted of time, money, and effort and we should just go ahead with Vista 64. Now they are going to waste a whole year and I don't know how many fucking licenses on XP64 because some asshole down in the IT department didn't want to get off his lazy ass and tweak our network to work properly with Vista.
Wacky stuff.
Irony is that only those who jumped into Vista despite all the FUD and the 64bit version of that despite even more FUD on that will enjoy the full features of Photoshop CS4 for the time being. My school, for instance, is SOL until next fall because like a bunch of fucking douchebags, they went ahead with XP to XP64 transition over the X-Mas break, even though I repeatedly told them that XP64 is a dead end in so many ways that it's a wasted of time, money, and effort and we should just go ahead with Vista 64. Now they are going to waste a whole year and I don't know how many fucking licenses on XP64 because some asshole down in the IT department didn't want to get off his lazy ass and tweak our network to work properly with Vista.
Wacky stuff.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Just do one professional piece of work that will pay for Flash and any future updates to Flash in the next decade. Just one.WordAssassin said:
Shogmaster
Member
If someone already has that skill and time, they would already have Flash. Stop being so wacky. Buying $500+ software package isn't exactly on everyone's to do list, no matter how much it would make sense in the long run.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
WordAssassin
Member
So I take it there aren't any. Ok, well, at least now I know.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Edit: Just to get this out of the way: Looking at me and what I do from your view, I should not be using Flash, at all. It is an insanely powerful tool, but I only use, or know how to use, a fraction of it. I know how to draw 6 keyframes of a man running in place. If I make them into a movie clip, I can create a motion-tween over 20 frames and drag the movie clip across the stage, making it appear as if the man is running across the screen. I know how to do shape tweens. I can scrub audio for syncing dialogue. The only action scripting I remember is how to make a movie stop on a given keyframe, go to a given key frame, and how to make a button jump to a given keyframe. That's pretty much what I use it for, in a nut shell. There is not a company or person out there who is crazy enough to hire me, a student with no work experience with Flash, to do a single job and pay me anywhere close to $800, let alone more. All in all, you are right, and I shouldn't be using Flash, because I don't use it to its full potential, I use only a sliver for the very specific purpose of traditional, hand drawn, keyframe animation. That is exactly why I am asking you if there is something more like that available so I can use it instead of Flash.
deadhorse32
Bad Art
The same guys who did content aware scaling are working on video now
Take a look : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtE8afwJEg&eurl=http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~rubinst1/pub/vidret/
Take a look : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtE8afwJEg&eurl=http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~rubinst1/pub/vidret/
It's dead--at least the UI portions. Confirmed last wwdc 2007.aaaaa0 said:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/06/21/just-the-facts-maam-64-bit-carbon
Finder uses carbon in 10.5, but it's not a 64-bit. In Snow Leopard, as liu kang said, it will be rewritten in Cocoa.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Exactly. I'm speaking directly to WordAssassin's situation, not people in general.Shogmaster said:
Where are you getting this idea that you're arguing with me over whether or not there are viable Flash alternatives? This never came up from anyone but you. We've already established that you should either utilize Adobe's 30-day trials to get up to professional snuff and make money with it to pay for itself or just swallow the very reasonable student discount price.WordAssassin said:
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Wow, bad call. That's a lot of $$$ and labor down the toilet.Shogmaster said:
I admit, I was a Vista hater too, until I installed Vistax64 on a PC with more than 4GB RAM. 'Shopping has never been more awesome.
Now I need to get an SSD to complete the awesomeness. Maybe something like this: http://www.dvnation.com/Fusion-IO-IODrive-SSD-Solid-State-Disk-Drive-Review.html
Shogmaster
Member
WOW, WTF. If I didn't know any better, I'd say I was talking to my buddy. He's got a hamster obsession too (assuming from your avatar and handle), and he's now obsessed with the idea of replacing his raptors in his Vista 64 rig with 8GB of RAM with a SSD. He does work with VERY large Photoshop files on occasion, and he just loves his new workstation he built about 7 months ago for only $1000!Rentahamster said:
eso76 said:
This is how its supposed to work... change your movie clips to graphics and they will play on video export. Flash doesn't support all sorts of broadcast and film video standard because thats not what its for. It's to put those videos online.
Really you guys trying to make video in flash are using the wrong program. Flash is for real time web animation and applications. If you want to produce video you should use premiere+after effects. Or Vegas, or Final cut. If you want to save as PDF or .ai use illustrator. If you want to edit high res photos use photoshop.
Always-honest
Banned
just ordered the upgrade for adobe cs4 design premium... some nice features
WordAssassin
Member
I'm not trying to start an argument, seriously, I just wanted to know if there were other programs like Flash! :lolLiu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Also, I already said on page 1 and this page that the student price IS very reasonable and that I'm looking in to getting that.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Hamster obsession? Err... no, you don't know me in real life...*shifty eyes*Shogmaster said:
But yeah, merging and working with huge panoramas has never been easier. I'm looking forward to the hardware acceleration for zooming and panning large files with the CS4 upgrade.
RAM is so cheap nowadays. That's what I love about PCs. I priced a new workstation build at $2000, whereas a comparable (but still inferior, spec-wise) Mac Pro cost nearly $7000.
i hate bees
Member
Dark Ninja said:
It's ok for blocking out detail or colour but it's hard to be accurate, if you're just doing a quick paint to keep in Photoshop as part of a scene it's ok but if you're planning on taking it back in to the 3d app I'd say you're still much better off sticking with doing it the old fashioned way or using Zbrush/Mudbox which have more suitable interfaces.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Uh, Mac RAM is PC RAM. Show me this configuration, unless it's another one of those situations where you get all of the PC parts from Newegg but don't afford the Mac configuration the same chance to use Newegg's prices on compatible parts.Rentahamster said:
Shogmaster
Member
800MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory =/ none buffered, none registered DDR2 or DDR3. And before anyone starts, no, you don't fucking need registered or ECC FB none-sense in your Photoshop rig. You ain't gonna run that liquify filter for 2 months straight without reboot.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
Anybody know what the deal is when you zoom in really close and a grid shows up over the pixels? Kind of annoying.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Hey don't tell me, tell the guy that thinks the Mac Pro he configured has inferior specs for so much more money.Shogmaster said:
Shogmaster
Member
It's is inferior in that there's more latency and slower clock due to the error checking and being fully buffered. For those who don't run always on servers, this is a totally wrong application of the parts. We want faster clock/more bandwidth and lower latency, not uptime of weeks and months without error.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
But that's what you get when you have Jobs force feeding you either a ridiculously wrong for the job server or a laptop parts stuck in a giant screen case without batteries as your two serious desktop purchase choices. Mac desktop land desperately needs a sane choice in the middle.
Are you denying that Carbon isn't near its death? Look, of course there apps out there that still rely on Carbon--I already cited Finder and FCP.Slurpy said:
All I'm saying that Apple essentially told developers to get going on cocoa at wwdc 2007 once they retired carbon64. 64-bit is clearly the future and carbon isn't going to be a part of it.
Burger
Member
zoku88 said:
If you scale an image non proportionally, you get a stretched image. Photoshops new feature lets you do a non proportional scale, while retaining visually important parts (like people). It looks like a widescreen image at a casual glance, and does not look badly stretched.
It's very cool.
Check out:
ftp://ftp1.idc.ac.il/Arik_shamir/SCweb/imret/index.html
NovemberMike
Member
Shogmaster said:
The great thing is that for most work like photoshop where multiple cores help, the memory latency can be a bigger issue than the processing power. In tests for intel's skulltrail system (ie. dual socket), two quad cores was often slower than a single quad core because it overcomplicated the memory architecture and added extra latency in.
The Mac Pro is just a horrible design. Graphical hardware acceleration is taking off so a nice GPU is important (which it doesn't have), with RAM more is usually better than ECC (which the Mac Pro has), and a single CPU generally works better than 2 CPUs because multiple CPUs overcomplicate the memory architecture. Combined with no BR, bad HDD options and the cost, it just doesn't make sense.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Completely agreed, but Apple recognizes all of this and it's what Snow Leopard is all about: http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/NovemberMike said:
I don't get what you mean by bad HDD options though. Same with price. Of everything Apple sells, it's their most price competitive.
NovemberMike
Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
A $2700 mac pro comes with a 320 gig hard drive. My laptop has one. They should come with a tb drive minimum.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Agreed, but you're looking at $2700 without considering what's in the machine. They always skimp on RAM and HDD and expect you to buy their expensive upgrades. Hard drives are so cheap now, why make a big deal over them trying to gouge you on it? Buy one yourself.NovemberMike said:
The newest Mac Pro was put out in January, and it's about to get updated again this January. Look at what's in it other than the hard drive, and look at how cost competitive it was in January. (It's obviously dated now, like all Macs are over time as Apple doesn't drop prices.)
Shogmaster
Member
The point is really, that it SHOULDN'T take $2700 to get yourself a nice desktop with more than 2 DIMM slots and a PCIe 16x slot! Whatever Jobs pimps out to be the next Mac Pro will still be WAY too expensive and totally wrong for the job for 90% of it's customers.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
I mean for fuck sakes, the cheapest you can configure a Mac Pro without anything (monitor etc) is $2300, and that's with a 2.8GHz single quad core CPU, 2GB, 320GB HDD and a 2600XT! You can literally get yourself a MUCH more powerful PC from a OEM for about a grand less, and if you build it yourself, even lower!
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Yes, that is a ripoff.Shogmaster said:
But I'm looking at the base with two Xeons. I'm seeing about $1000 each on Newegg for the 3 GHz/1600 MHz FSB Xeons, so that's $2000 right there (there are no 2.8s for me to compare with... also, as soon as you upgrade to 3.0 GHz on Apple's site, it goes into serious price ripoff territory, so I'm only arguing in defense of the 2.8 GHz base model). I have no trouble believing the rest would get pretty close to the $2800 price tag, and this is nearly a year after this Pro model came out, so take into account how competitive the Pro was price-wise a year ago. A big factor in this that people ignore is the case design/quality and just how quiet they are. I sit next to a quad-core Dell box all day long, and it's louder than my desk fan at full blast.
I know you've done your research on this though. I remember that epic thread from months ago where you very clearly debated this.
Shogmaster
Member
YOU DON'T NEED TWO XEONS FOR PHOTOSHOP. Don't get sucked into marketing BS. If you run a render farm or do ridiculous amount of HD video editing, I can see why you might want to briefly consider having 8 cores chugging away, but Photo-fucking-shop? Is you crazy? You'll rarely see the 3rd core engaging, let alone 5th or 6th...Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
For Photoshop, it's far more crucial to have the more RAM than cores. I can guarantee you that my friend's 3GHz Core 2 Duo rig with 8GB of RAM and raptors will kick even that dual Xeon $2700 Mac Pro config. And it cost almost a third of the price!
As for noise, that's why real men build it themselves with quality picked parts.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
I know this. I'm responding to the guy saying Pros are overpriced for the hard drive size it offers. I'm not considering whether it's right for Adobe CS4. It's a thread tangent that's going on a bit too long now.Shogmaster said:
I agree completely that Pros are way too much for what an OS and apps can even use or deal with right now, but I'm looking forward to what Snow Leopard does for Mac Pro benchmarks. I think if they nail it the way a lot of us expect, there will finally be a serious argument for OSX over Windows in a production environment. (Unless Microsoft has the same tricks ready for Windows 7.)
Shogmaster
Member
This is why I think you Mac fans should get some momentum going on getting something made between an iMac and Mac Pro. Do enough bitching, even Jobs should comply.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Every time one of my Mac or die students has to consider their desktop purchase choice, I die a little bit inside when they choose the iMac because Mac Pro was too ridiculous in every way possible including price. Professionals and design students slumming it with a laptop disguised in a giant screen case and 4GB max RAM... I wish I could just laugh at them, but I have to help them...
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
I may not have been clear enough on the subject, but I was indeed saying that they are overpriced, and that they are overpriced for what I needed (an awesome workstation with more than 16GB RAM for glorious Photoshopping). Speaking for myself and my own research, the Mac option was the more expensive one.
Anyway, since you want some evidence, here ya go. My old wishlist from Newegg is too old and a lot of the items are discontinued, so I went ahead and made a new one.
If you go to apple.com and configure a base Mac Pro, it'll come out to $2,299.00.
Specs:
One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (quad-core)
2GB (2 x 1GB)
320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB (Two dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Mighty Mouse
Apple Keyboard (English) + User's Guide
Accessory kit
Okay, now according to
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
The base Mac Pro should be cheaper than a comparable build off of Newegg, right?
Well, let's see. Here's build from Newegg that comes out to $1609.90. http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=11026428
Specs:
Intel Xeon E5440 Harpertown 2.83GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80574E5440P - Retail (Same as Mac)
Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) ECC Fully Buffered Server Memory Model KVR800D2D8F5/2G - Retail
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD322HJ 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
POWERCOLOR HD2600XT 256MB GDDR4 Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223F - OEM (faster than Mac Pro default)
The following items have the same functionality, but are not proprietary Apple products.
Logitech MX518 2-Tone 8 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB + PS/2 Wired Optical Gaming-Grade Mouse - Retail
Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 Black USB Ergonomics Keyboard Mouse Included - OEM
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro RS-750-ACAA-A1 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
COOLER MASTER COSMOS 1000 RC-1000-KSN1-GP Black/ Silver Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail
Again, the cost is $1,609.90, or $689.10 less than the Mac Pro.
If you feel I skimped out on the parts or made any ommissions, feel free to double check. I tried not to find just the cheapest PC parts I could find. If I did, the cost of the PC would be even less.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
I already said the one Xeon Mac Pro was a ripoff. Add a second Xeon to that and you're at $2324, about $475 cheaper than a Mac Pro that came out last January. I keep making that point, because if you had bought this Mac Pro a year ago, it was price competitive as hell.
- Status