A few weeks ago I attended the Adobe’s Creative License Conference in New York that gave customers the opportunity to catch up on all of the new features that the new suite has to offer. Having a background in print, web and video production I was like a kid in the candy store when I arrived at the conference. The conference offered attendees the opportunity to choose from five tracks – web design, design, video, print service and pro photographer. I ended up arranging a personal schedule made up of classes from all 5 tracks. Afterwards I couldn’t help but wish that the conference had been longer than just 2 days, so that I didn’t have to pick and choose one session over the other. Part of my enthusiasm for this conference was due to my generally geeky fondness for software. But as a geek, and as a designer, CS3 brings a wealth of neat features to the an already incredibly powerful tool set. And if you’re like me, you probably find it difficult to make time to learn about the new features that are stuffed in to Photoshop, Dreamweaver and the like. Which is why I appreciated having the opportunity to attend the conference which forced me to make time to learn.
Truthfully you can make it by just fine with the old CS2, but so much of the new features in CS3 make your work flow easier and more efficient so that you can ultimately spend less time on headaches and more time on having fun being creative. For example, AJAX is something I have never really touched. But the new Spry feature set in Dreamweaver looks easy enough for me to start implementing AJAX into my sites – something which I probaly never would have considered doing otherwise. Then there is the new Brainstorm in After Effects CS3 that had me drooling – it lets you experiment and instantly create professional looking designs in a way that is so much easier than it’s ever been, it almost seems magical. While the sessions were very helpful and gave everyone a good introduction in to the cool new stuff CS3 has to offer, the average 50 minutes per session was not quite sufficient enough for me to get my head completely around everything. Luckily, each attendee was given a Video Workshop DVD courtesy of Lynda.com which offers 13 hours of video tutorials focusing on all of the new software in CS3.
Overall, I can’t remember the last time I was so psyched about a new suite from Adobe. Yes, I still can’t help but wish that Adobe would lower the prices a bit on some of its mainstream products, like Photoshop, but I digress. Anyway, my short time at the conference made me realize just how much I needed to have been there. I don’t think that there has ever before been a new Adobe suite that brought so many various new features a long with it. My recommendation is to get out there and learn about the new upgrades. Sure, as i said already – you can get by and still do great work with just CS2, but if you can afford the upgrade and you take time to learn about all the new capabilities in CS3- it will only make your work more enjoyable. Video tutorial sites like Lynda and TotalTraining.com already have an arsenal of tutorials available to help get you there. Of course, you could always read a book but I find the video approach to be the most affective for my brain. And for those of you involved in video production, or thinking about it – there is no better resource than Creative Cow which offers free tutorials, podcasts and a forum with members offerring a wealth of free information.