Reviewing Adobe Audition 2.0

You do not have to be an audio expert to seek an audio editing program. Most of us in the web, desktop or video field are seeking to add audio to content to enhance it and emprise your clients with wonderful sound tracks.

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Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended

Deliver the richest, most engaging PDF communications anytime, anywhere

Adobe® Acrobat® 9 Pro Extended software now includes Adobe Presenter, Adobe LiveCycle® Designer ES, and Adobe 3D Reviewer software.

Ideal for business and technical professionals. Use Acrobat 9 Pro Extended to:

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New Graphic Mania Forum

Graphic Mania Forum is a new graphic and animation forum, that cover all graphic web and animation topics and resources. Please visit it and tell me your suggestions and feedback. Frequently contributors will be promoted to be forums moderators. Here it is

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Adobe Illustrator CS3 review (by Rafiq Elmansy)

Adobe illustrator is an essential member in the CS3 family. It is also an essential point in the design workflow. The new Adobe Illustrator CS3 increases the integration between other CS3 family especially Adobe flash. The noticeable feature that you will see from the first time you run Illustrator that its UI interface unify with the other products in the CS3 packages, which allows much more flexibility, space saving and ability to customize the look of the interface according to your own needs (figure1).

Adobe Illustrator Interface

Figure1. New Adobe Illustrator CS3 interface

Next, we will see some of the features that remark this version of Adobe Illustrator CS3.

• Live Color:
With the Live Color new tool, you can easily explore and choose different color theme fro your artwork with an easy to use Live Color panel (figure2).

Adobe Illustrator CS3 Live Color

Figure2. How the Live Color works in Illustrator CS3

You can choose from current color combinations, edit or create you own from the color wheel. Also, you can save you selections or delete current combination. Each color combination is resampled with a color palette in the Color Group section in the Live Color panel (figure3)

Figure3. Live Color panel in Adobe Illustrator CS3
• Crop Area tool
The Crop Area tool enables you to crop your artwork. This feature can be used for cropping animated parts in your artwork and supports the safe-mode view for the cropped areas.

• Integration with Adobe Flash
Now, you can copy you artwork directly from Illustrator and paste it into Flash with preserving groups, symbols, mask, layers and object properties (figure4).

Adobe Illustrator CS3 integration

Figure4. Copy and Paste directly from Illustrator CS3 to Flash

Adobe Illustrator also shows deep integration with other Adobe products including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Golive and Adobe Flex 2.

• Device Central
With Adobe Device Central, it is easy to get your artwork to mobile device as well as setting the mobile device profile you desire for your output.

These are the key features in the new Adobe Illustrator CS3, and for more information about the rest of the features, you can visit Adobe Illustrator CS3 page on Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/

You can get you version of Illustrator CS3 for $ 599 and upgrade your current version for $ 199.

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Adobe After Effects CS3 Review

The first word that comes to my head when I think in Adobe After Effects CS3 is Integration. The new version of Adobe After Effects enters a new era of integration between it and the other CS3 family. You can integrate your work between Adobe After Effects and Photoshop easily, import styles to After Effects and create 3D compositions from the Vanishing Point feature in Photoshop…etc.
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Adobe Photoshop CS3 review

When I worked with the new Adobe Photoshop CS3, I realized that I am facing one of the key versions in the history of Photoshop, the new updates in Photoshop CS3 takes it to a new era of creativity. The new Adobe Photoshop CS3 is part of the CS3 family, which is remarked with the deep integration between its products, I myself see this feature of integration the key feature in all the CS3 products especially after merging Macromedia products such as Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver…etc. to the family.

It Has a Timeline Now!!

With the new integration feature you can easily move through products easily, you can copy an object from a program like Illustrator and paste it into Flash, you can open PSD layer in Flash instead of one merged layer and furthermore, you can create video content for board casting from inside Photoshop!! Yes, the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 supports creating video content. Many people I told them this feature surprised and say WOW, really!!
Actually, if you noticed that you will see that Adobe did not produce Image Ready in the CS3, and give to Photoshop its timeline after doing some enhancement in the timeline to be more video-friendly instead of the previous timeline in Image Ready, which was more suitable for creating web animated GIFs.

The new animation feature in Photoshop CS3 allows you to choose the video file template that suite your area from different types of presets. Also, it allows you to render your animation in different formats including 3G video content for mobile and FLV Flash video.


Figure1. Adobe Photoshop CS3 interface

A User-friendly Interface:

The new interface on Adobe Photoshop CS3 becomes more user-friendly and saves space for working area by the docking panels and the panels icons, which allows you to only see icon for each panel and save more space to your work. This new interface is unified for the entire CS3 package, so you can feel that you are in the same environment wile while working in different application within the CS3 packages (Figure1).

Also, the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 allows you to choose from different types of workspace view depending on your needs and most wanted panels. You can also create your custom workspace preset and save it to use while working with Photoshop CS3.

The 3D Layer:

The second remarked feature in Adobe Photoshop CS3 is its support for 3D layers. The 3D layer allows you to import 3D files into Photoshop. Further more, with simply click on the 3D layer you can edit you 3D object, change its position, pan on it, zoom to the suitable size, and choose the object light type and even the rending method. You can choose to show your object as wireframe, full render or shaded style.


Figure2. The 3D layer editing mode

The Integration:

As I said earlier, the integration is one of the key features that mark all the products inside the CS3 family. The integration between Photoshop and Flash allows you to open PSD files in Flash as layers in the new PSD Import feature in Flash and rename these layers, convert it to symbols…etc.

Also, you can open the PSD files into Fireworks and easily view the Photoshop slices in Fireworks.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 also includes an icon to connect you directly to the Adobe Bridge, which allows you to navigate your local machine for files and open it in Photoshop with simply drag and drop (Figure3).
On the other hand, the new Photoshop CS3 enables testing content and previews your work on your mobile or pocket device using the Adobe Device Central that comes along with the CS3 package to make sure that your work will display correctly over devices (Figure 4).


Figure3. Adobe Bridge CS3

Figure4. Adobe Device Central CS3

The new Adobe Photoshop CS3 comes in two versions, the limited version, which costs $ 649 and the extended one which costs $999 and includes more features than the limited version. You can know more about this new release by visiting the Adobe site on the following link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/

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