A new player in the 3D game...

[John Bigboote]

You guys been watching Adobe's CS6 announcements? Oh boy... CS6 is gonna be HUGE! I had somehow gotten the editors I work with to release their hypnotic icy grasp on Final Cut Pro and give Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 a whirl- and the results were WAY better than expected, Premiere Pro 5.5 is a HIT and CS6 is highly anticipated... so we have been watching Adobe very closely lately. This will be a MAJOR release, and since Apple and Adobe have been at war, and Apple kinda said- 'We're just going to concentrate on our i-phones and i-apps' , Adobe has taken-up the slack and aggressively wants to be THE key player in professional video editing- above Apple, Avid, Sony, Autodesk, Quantel and all the others.

 

There is LOTS to see on the new After Effects and it's 3D camera tracking and raytracing abilities here: http://tv.adobe.com/show/learn-after-effects-cs6/

 

ONE THING (I think!) That AE stays away from is complex modeling, so A:M could still be highly integral in an AE 3D pipeline. It would be fabulous if .obj's could import into AE with MDD animation.

 

ALSO- With their 'Adobe Cloud' purchase alternative, Adobe offers a unique 'subscription' model... where have heard this being used before? $50 per month.

[largento]

I pre-ordered my CS6 Production Premium, so have had the apps for a few days. A significant downside is that because Adobe is now updating on a schedule (rather than when the software is ready), Photoshop and AfterEffects no longer play together.

 

I haven't done any heavy lifting with this version of Premiere and AfterEffects, but plan on doing so this weekend when I start putting together the webseries.

 

I've been doing a lot of freelance work this week that has kept me in Illustrator and Photoshop and it's taken some getting used to having the dark interface, but I do think it's better for working.

 

There's a new color correcting app (Speedgrade) that I'm looking forward to playing with and they've replaced Soundbooth with an app called Audition. I looked around in it the day I got it and it doesn't seem that different from SB. I'll find out tomorrow when I record the dialogue.

[ernesttx]

Not to overshadow the post and while I'm sure that CS6 with be a huge update to those used to layer based compositing, I would offer to have a look at eyeon's Fusion if interested in import of 3D items and manipulation thereof. Plus, they are having a big sale right now on Fusion and Dimension for 1 price.

 

Fusion offers true 3d import (.obj, collada, FBX, objects and cameras), import of .obj sequences, and animation data such as mdd from this plugin (http://www.rpmanager.com/FuCacheLoader/wiki/doku.php?id=cacheloader) and various render passes (normal, depth, UV, etc)., World Postion Pass, etc. Plus, creating materials right in Fusion (phong, blinn, etc.) and creating lights and cameras in true 3D compositing environment and particles.

 

Dimension is a great plugin for stereo and optical flow type manipulations (ie, very slow motion from standard video frame rates , rolling shutter fixes, and one user is working on possible planar tracker type node.

 

Just mentioning this for anyone looking at buying a compositing program and wanting to compare current prices (both Fusion and Dimension for $995) and features. Note: yes, I have Fusion and loving it.

[largento]

I should have specified that when I say that AE CS6 & PS CS6 don't play together, I mean that you can't use the 3D stuff from Photoshop in AE anymore and AE CS6 can't work with PS video layers, either. The explanation I heard was that since there have been major changes in both apps, the two teams couldn't get together in time to work this out in time for this release.

 

I haven't tried out the ray trace renderer, but my understanding is that it would be extremely slow on my machine. It's designed to work with CUDA Nvidia cards only. It can use your CPU to do it, but at much slower rates. An upgrade to the fastest CUDA supported card for my Mac would be about $1K. I think I'll stick with doing my 3D type in A:M for the time being. :-)

 

It doesn't support importing models, either. It's basically for extruding shapes.

 

You can still use the old 2.5D renderer, though.

 

Premiere CS6 I'm more excited about. It's got some cool stuff, including layer adjustments (which I use a bunch in PS.)

 

I went from CS4 to CS6 on my production apps (I got the Design/Web Premium for 5.5), so I'm expecting there to be a huge speed improvement when I start working in it.

[pixelplucker]

Not a fan of Adobe here, they are too big and swallow up products and offer marginal upgrades at unreasonable prices. They don't usually spend the efforts in creating a smooth pipeline between programs. The software packages had become increasingly sluggish and bloated and unstable.

 

jmo

[Gerry]

I tried to download the trial version of After Effects CS6 at work and after spending HOURS with that stupid Adobe Download Assistant, went to install it and apparently it only comes in a 64 bit version? So I won't be upgrading at the office; Mac at home, maybe, but I'm happy with CS4 and their upgrade price is just too steep.

[largento]

I had no problem with the download, but I happened to be up late the night/morning when I got the email it became available, so I set it to download the whole suite while I was asleep. The upgrade price $375 for the entire suite wasn't too much. I just got in a freelance job that requires I use Photoshop and Illustrator and it will pay more than that.

[Gerry]

Seems like they were charging more than that for the CS5.5 Production suite upgrade, something around $500-600 maybe? Just too steep for a .5 upgrade imo. I'll have to look into the CS6 upgrade for the Mac.

 

EDIT: Just checked, they want almost a grand to upgrade the Production Suite from CS4. So, prolly not.

[largento]

I hate the .5 upgrades. I panicked and upgraded from CS4 to CS5.5 last fall because Adobe was saying they weren't going to offer upgrades for people more than one version back. They were offering a 30% discount and with what I made from selling my Cintiq, I just had to spend about $25 to get it.

 

I rotate my suites, and that was the first time I did the Design suite, so I got my first version of InDesign.

 

If you were interested in doing the Cloud version, Gerry, you'd qualify for the discount price. $29.99 a month for a year. So that would give you everything for a year for $360, but then at the end of the year, you got nothing and the price goes up to $49.99 a month (assuming they haven't raised it by then.) I believe it allows you to use two different computers (same as the regular license.)

[robcat2075]

I'm still on PS 6 and AE 5. With no CS in there.

[John Bigboote]

EDIT: Just checked, they want almost a grand to upgrade the Production Suite from CS4. So, prolly not.

 

I had heard that you could upgrade from CS3 under the current upgrade deal, no?

[Gerry]

Yes you can upgrade, but they price it on a sliding scale depending on what version you have. So to upgrade the Production Suite from CS4 to 6 is like $950. But their come-on is "Upgrade now from $395!"

[pixelplucker]

They are just gouging the consumer. IMO any product that comes out should be backed with free fixes for at least 6 months. Forcing .5 upgrade increments is robbery especially when they build in obsolescence. The "maintenance" programs are also a huge rip off to the consumer since they are now funding bug fixes. I dumped Adobe and Quark for those very reasons.

 

There are still better programs and better companies to deal with out there, you just have to look.

[Gerry]

I'm still on PS 6 and AE 5. With no CS in there.

As long as you can get your tasks done, it doesn't matter! I don't see any "gotta have it" features in CS6.

[robcat2075]

I'm surprised there's still an Adobe selling graphics programs, really. I don't know how they keep at it when the market has been overrun with open source software.

[largento]

They are industry apps. Trying to use other apps means struggling with support from the printers.

 

There's always been that conflict between the apps supporting the printers and what the designers want to do, usually with the printers winning, because even if they implemented features for the designers, the printers would be slow to support them.

 

Getting files created in non-standard apps, just opens up all kinds of problems. Many printers rips and processes are designed only to work with certain apps. Printers also don't want to have to purchase and support EVERY single possible app you can imagine.

 

The Adobe apps aren't really intended for casual users. If you're not a pro, and you don't have to deal with commercial printers, publishers and ad agencies, there's no reason to shell out the money, unless you just prefer them.

 

However, if you're in the industry, you need to work in them. I don't know that I'll ever return to full-time agency work, but even working freelance, I need these apps, so I try to stay current.

[John Bigboote]

I'm surprised there's still an Adobe selling graphics programs, really. I don't know how they keep at it when the market has been overrun with open source software.

 

You must also be surprised that A:M is still selling too, then.

I don't think Adobe is being driven out of business by Gimp. I am not even aware of a freeware After Effects. Adobe is going head-to-head with mega-giants like Apple, and winning. They have new Flash-like product(s) that will offer WYSIWYG no-coding html-5 publishers... they have some of the best audio production(Audition) DVD authoring(Encore) media tools(Media Encoder) photographic RAW tools(Lightroom) and new products like Prelude that could be the next 'big thing', in their respective fields. I'm surprised that your surprised!

[robcat2075]

Surprise! I'm surprised you're surprised I'm surprised.

 

What's their Flash-like HTML5 thing? Is that a new version of Dreamweaver? I have Dreamweaver 1.

[Fuchur]

I'm surprised there's still an Adobe selling graphics programs, really. I don't know how they keep at it when the market has been overrun with open source software.

 

You must also be surprised that A:M is still selling too, then.

I don't think Adobe is being driven out of business by Gimp. I am not even aware of a freeware After Effects. Adobe is going head-to-head with mega-giants like Apple, and winning. They have new Flash-like product(s) that will offer WYSIWYG no-coding html-5 publishers... they have some of the best audio production(Audition) DVD authoring(Encore) media tools(Media Encoder) photographic RAW tools(Lightroom) and new products like Prelude that could be the next 'big thing', in their respective fields. I'm surprised that your surprised!

 

Adobe is quite good. Especially InDesign, AfterEffects and Photoshop are programs that are very, very widely used and that are really quite powerful.

There are other tools for Audio (Audition is really not very good... there are other players which are much better, like Samplitude, ProTools, etc.), DVD-authoring and Encoding which are in fact as good as or better as the Adobe products but Adobe has one really big factor that will keep it up for a long time: Workflow.

 

In general (with a few exceptions) the programs work very well with each other and you just have to buy one bundle to get most things you will ever need for your media-studio.

This is the really huge thing about them. I am not always a fan of their products (especially for editing and audio there are better products out there) but you have to admit that it is a well done workflow.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

 

PS: "Adobe is going head-to-head with mega-giants like Apple, and winning." > Nope. That is one of the rare examples where they lost the game. They more or less had to drop Flash, their well established product and provide a solution which runs on IPads too... so they are really not winning this fight but had to give up and create something different that can do it. (HTML5 != Flash, HTML5 = JavaScript + extended HTML-tags + native browser-functions)

But yes, Adobe is a really big player.

[Gerry]

What's their Flash-like HTML5 thing? Is that a new version of Dreamweaver?

Something called "Muse". I only heard about it this morning. I steer clear of WYSIWYG web design apps; I just like writing code though I haven't been paying close attention to HTML5. I should I guess.

[robcat2075]

Well, here's a 20 year history of Adobe. They haven't paid a dividend in 5 years but they do seem to have consistent earnings now.

 

[John Bigboote]

Ah yes, I remember the day that the iPad was discovered! It would be interesting to see a stock performance chart for the open-source softwares for comparison. The new html-JQuery tool is called Adobe Edge, it can be had for free right now in beta.

 

http://success.adobe.com/en/na/sem/product...S|b|13880991546

 

It is not totally WYSIWYG, the code is always accessible.

[jason1025]

People like standards. ADOBE is a standard.

 

People like families of products.