Adobe presented it’s new Creative Suite 5 in Kiev. I visited Adobe’s master classes for InDesign earlier, so I was eager to visit this one too. The presented material is fully covered by Creative Suites 5 descriptions on Adobe’s site so I’ll just say thanks to Markus Bledowski (Adobe evangelist) and Russell Viers and list youtube videos describing features I like most and post brief comments. Jokes and quotes are there at the bottom of the post!

Photoshop

Illustrator

InDesign

Post Production applications

I am not post production professional but thanks to Markus I was quite interested. First it was demonstrated to us how Adobe soft helped with Avatar. Then Markus has shown us how Adobe Premier Pro associates monologues from script with video using voice recognition (first useful use of technology, isn’t it?). After that he transcoded that video to DVD and Flash using Encore.

The final part was recreating a bit of famous Samsung 3D TV commercial using After Effects.

Markus made something rough but similar to the effects shown

All post production applications use the same cache on HDD so the data is updated automatically with every change if you work with the same file.

Interactive

Adobe goes on separating developers and coders in Flash more and more. Now there is Flash Catalyst so designers could design their interfaces without writing a line of code. And there is InDesign with new features for interactive medias that help to create interactive version of print magazine made in InDesign in just, dunno, and hour or two!

Now I see why Adobe was so angry with Apple’s deny to support flash and flash-generated applications on iPad. By the way, the generated swf is very intelligent — it stores all linked files in separate folder not in the swf file.

Wired uses Adobe Creative Suite to become more interactive. Though no way to use it on iPad

Dreamweaver was nothing interesting to me.

Interesting Facts

You can import 3d file to Photoshop, save it as psd and use it in other Adobe Applications as 3d model. It’s called Live Photoshop 3D.

Mini Bridge in all CS5 applications looks like enhanced open dialog. I think I’ll use it.

Adobe goes online more and more offering paid services. In InDesign CS5 you can publish your project right to acrobat.com and send link to it to everyone involved. They can leave comments viewing your work right there and you’ll get them right into InDesign GUI. Sounds like… fun?

Now you can name and change positions of art boards in Illustrator.

CS5 applications’ GUI and UX is more uniform now but there are flex-like GUI elements here or there especially in the “online” parts of interface.

Icons and splash screens have changed a lot and became more crazy (it’s not so hard to be more crazy then rectangle with a gradient, right?). Shawn Cheris told about the changes in two parts: one and two.

Jokes and Quotes

Russell Viers

— What’s your name?
— Volodymyr.
— Wha… Lah… Can I call you Bill?

I prompted adobe to place ad in dialogs with progress bars. That way they could earn money to make soft free for us.

Markus Bledowski

We don’t have problems — we have challenges!

Don’t ask if it’s possible. Ask how it’s possible.

Client comes and says he wants to recolor car in the video. Which color? He doesn’t know. Surprise me! Okay, that means pink. Then he asks the same color but different tone. That means green.

Roman Menyakin

While doing some complex task.
Roman: Adobe-kadabra!
Russel: Pow!

***

I’m quite sure my post doesn’t cover everything told on the master classes and presentation but Adobe doesn’t film or record in anyway its events and there no wifi so I could spam twitter with my emotions. Anyway, everything was quite interesting! And pen with notebook with Adobe’s logos are now living in my bag and magnet with I ♥ Adobe on it is laying sad — I don’t actually like them. So if anyone wants to have such stylish magnet on his or her fridge — just tell me.

I couldn’t make my IXUS picture it right, sorry. Here it is — the blurred magnet ;)

At last and not connected to the post topic I want to greet my friend Yura (akella). He’s 14 or 35 or something like that today!

I don’t get excited drinking coffee. One cup is enough for me to fall asleep. That’s why I wasn’t drinking coffee that night. But I answered the questions of Arsart who was writing the big article about web design in Russia for Smashing Magazine. I act as a bystander who’s somehow involved in the Russian web design scene. The article that includes my interview is fun and interesting: Showcase of Web Design in Russia.

I’d like to tell you more but I am veeerrryy sleepy and see no way to wake as long as coffee is not the answer. So I’ll stop right here. ;)

Long time ago you have to think of real-sounding story to explain your lies. Today in 21st century you can just make powerpoint presentation. One day it comes to every designer — he has to stare at icon that
looks like hebrew qoph letter jumping in his Dock. When this glorious event happened with me I decided to make professional good looking on every PC or Mac presentation and try not to kill all the people while doing it. The first statements were okay but I wanted to kill all and everyone when I finished making the presentation. So I made a list of advices that can help to save not whole Earth population, but at least it’s half.

Making PowerPoint presentations is fun… yeah… uhm…

1. All objects are better be drawn in Illustrator or other vector graphic editor that exports to PDF and supports RGB colour model. PowerPoint works with PDF, imagine that!
2. Proportions of the presentation must be 4:3, so everyone can see the whole slide on every weird laptop. Size by default (720×540) sound tiny nowadays so I made all bitmap object twice as big as they were supposed to and then changed their sizes in powerpoint.
3. Save as much objects as you can as PDF with fonts embedded. Place all the objects you cand on the slide background. Don’t forget, that powerpoint allows only one background image that would be stretched or tiled, so you better size your backgrounds equal to slide size.
4. PowerPoint understands non-system fonts if you install them on the computer with presentation. Sometimes it’s enough to place fonts in the same folder with presentation, but sometimes is isn’t.

   From now on you can create presentations with any fonts but be sure to check if it looks okay with system fonts. It usually does if texts are aligned with text tools, not with spaces ;)

5. Don’t apply all effects like transparency, reflections, vulgar shadows etc. in powerpoint if it is possible. Applying them in powerpoint doesn’t reduce filesize but fills RAM with trash and makes it work unstable. If powerpoint decides that there is not enough memory to show effect, it would hide not just the effect but also the object effect was applied to. Sometimes it makes computer reboot and trashes the presentation file.
6. Avoid templates, because texts in them act like they want but not like you expect. Create everything with your hands, even bulleted lists. As we all know if information can become unreadable — it will in the most reliable moment.
7. Don’t forget to uncheck Shrink text to fit in Alignment and Spacing panel. That shrinkage acts weird too.
8. The last but not least: save your presentation file after each change and store it on local hard drive. Always save using new name (Save as…). Some versions of powerpoint like PowerPoint 2008 for Mac OS X delete the file during autosave then try to write to it, have problem with permissions and write nothing leaving you with your 0 bytes file. I’m not sure if this problem is common for all version but better be prepared! ;)

***

I tried to create presentations using Keynote. It’s easy, comfy and faste, but it doesn’t export to PPT as good as I expected. So there are still situations when you need to use powerpoint.

And the conclusion of working with PowerPoint from Dilbert: