Posts Tagged ‘Illustrator’

What’s in store for Adobe’s CS5?

September 5, 2009

Who knows? There is a blog I found here that has a bit of info.

Being a veteran user of Adobe programs, here is what I’d like to see in the next version of Creative Suite, CS5.

Uniformity.

Back in September of 2003, a number of Adobe’s flagship programs were bundled together for the first time ever. Since then, Adobe has released three more versions of their Creative Suite. It’s time for some uniformity among programs. Why should items with the same name act differently in different programs? Why should items that function similarly be called different names? A lot of times, they probably shouldn’t.

  • Pen tool: One of the only things Illustrator has done right since day one. In Illustrator, after drawing a bezier curve, clicking on the anchor point will remove half the handle. In Photoshop, you must Alt/Option click. Single clicking on an anchor point in Photoshop does nothing. In Illustrator, the Alt key can convert an anchor point. Not always the case in Photoshop. Dragging a handle into the anchor point itself will remove that handle… only in Illustrator. Why?! And don’t even get me started about the pen tool in Flash. It’s basically useless.
  • Paste: Paste into, Paste in Place, Paste in Front/Back. None of Adobe’s programs handle pasting the same way. Adobe, pick your pony.
  • Break Apart/Convert Text to Outlines: There should be some uniformity here. There isn’t.
  • Brush tools: Adobe, please find a happy medium between Flash and Illustrator. Stop calling it a “blob” brush. Change the name of the other brush to the “stroke paintbrush” or something.
  • Text: Text tools should be more unified. I’d die to have the ability to extend truncated text from a text field into a new field the way InDesign works. Kerning, Leading, Indenting, and more. Come up with a standard.
  • Transform: Control+T in Photoshop is free transforming. It’d be great to free transform in Flash with this shortcut by default.
  • Shortcuts: It would be great to have some sort of global keyboard shortcut manager. Each program has different keyboard shortcuts, but these vary wildly from one program to another.

This post is running a little long, so I’ll stop here. I plan to write more posts with specific ideas I have for each program, so stay posted.