Adobe Systems shared key features of the new release -- Creative Suite 5 – of its imaging and graphics solution flagship, at a standing room-only demo session for nearly a thousand hard core users in Bangalore last week. Anand Parthasarathy  was there, to find out what the excitement was all about:

The new product line brings full version upgrades of all the existing component tools while integrating for the first time with online content and digital marketing measurement and optimization capabilities – a result of Adobe’s September 2009 acquisition of Omniture -- and its technologies, to capture, store and analyze information generated by Web sites and other sources.
Another new component, showcased to loud acclaim, was Adobe Flash Catalyst, which for the first time allows programming-challenged dummies to design interactive content without writing code.
The Adobe CS5 product family also offers new functionality that recognizes the huge demand for imaging and graphics solutions for small screens (such as smart phones, tablets, netbooks, smartbooks and other consumer electronics platforms) with new releases of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR. The Flash functions are now native to every mobile operating system except “ONE” – and no one needed to be reminded who that was.
The new lineup includes Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection, which includes Photoshop CS5 Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5), Flash Catalyst CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Dreamweaver CS5, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and After Effects CS5. These tools are also available separately or in one of the five Creative Suite editions. The complete Creative Suite 5 lineup includes Creative Suite 5 Master Collection, Creative Suite 5 Design Premium, Creative Suite 5 Web Premium, Creative Suite 5 Production Premium and Creative Suite 5 Design Standard, as well as 15 point products.

More than 250 new features have been integrated into the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection, said Prabhjeet Singh, Country Marketing Manager, Adobe India.

InDesign CS5 comes with new interactive documents and enhanced electronic reader device support transition to power the digital publishing surge. Image creation and editing gets a boost in Photoshop CS5 with Refine Edge, which offers better edge detecting technology and masking results in less time. Photoshop CS5 also includes the ability to remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels with Content-Aware Fill. A demo by Rajesh Patil,  Adobe India's Manager, Creative Solutions, where he cut away a human figure from a photo and had the edge refine and content aware feature, fill in the original background as if by magic, drew the biggest ‘taalis’ ( clap hands) in the day-long live demo.
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects are now native 64-bit applications on both Mac and Windows.. a case where Adobe has had to play catch up with user demands for some time now. The Roto Brush tool in After Effects helps users isolate moving foreground elements in a fraction of the normal time. In addition, Dreamweaver CS5 now supports popular content management systems Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, allowing designers to get accurate previews of dynamic Web content from within the product.
The CS5 roadshow also covered Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad.
June 7 2010