First Glance at Adobe Creative Suite

I've just finished installing the Adobe Creative Suite Premium Edition and thought I would share with you some facts and trivia about the installation and what's in the box.

First, a little about what's in the box. Well, for one thing, the box itself is a lot easier to get into than previous Adobe software boxes--just remove the shrink wrap, pull the flap, and you're in. Inside you will find a large folder-style CD case, a shrink wrapped Design Guide, and a registration pamphlet.

After breaking the seal on the CD case, inside you'll find 5 discs:

• 2 installation CDs
• Resources and Extras CD which includes PDF documentation for the applications included in the Standard edition
• Resources and Extras Disk 1 with documentation for GoLive and Acrobat (only included in the Premium edition)
• a Video Workshop Training CD with 90 minutes of video training

There are no printed manuals for each of the applications, but of course, you get electronic help in HTML and PDF format. The Design Guide is just under 100 pages and includes a summary of the six applications in the Suite and six tutorials: Creating a Poster, Creating an Illustration, Creating a Brochure, Creating a Web Banner, Creating an Animation, and Assembling a Web Site.

Installation of the entire Premium Creative Suite requires just under 2 GB of disk space. The disk requirements for each application are:

• Version Cue 150 MB
• Photoshop CS 350 MB
• Illustrator CS 550 MB
• GoLive CS 275 MB
• InDesign CS 250 MB
• Acrobat 6.0 Professional 400 MB

Installation took a total of 10 minutes with 1 CD swap and then I was immediately prompted to activate Photoshop CS. That was a painless process only taking a few seconds to activate over the Internet. Next, I was prompted to register. As an incentive to register, you get to choose a free bonus for registering over the Internet. The choice of bonuses include an additional 60 minutes of video training, a new typeface family called Brioso, a one-month membership to liquid library, three free issues of "STEP inside design" magazine, or free stock imagery from iStockPhoto. I opted for the 60 minutes of video training, which just needs to be unlocked from the training CD already included with the Creative Suite. The instructions for unlocking were a little off, but I managed to figure it out.

Well, that about sums up the installation... I'll be digging into the applications over the next few weeks. I'll have reviews soon, and may be posting additional tidbits to the home page blog as I come across them. Meanwhile, if you've got questions about the Creative Suite or any of the individual applications, post them to the discussion forum and I'll try to answer them for you.

By the way, the familiar eye of the Photoshop icon is gone. Now we have to remember a feather for Photoshop CS and a flower for Illustrator CS. Here's a look at all the new icons in the Suite...

Related Resources:

• Adobe Photoshop CS with ImageReady CS - Review and Rating
• Top 10 Favorite New Features in Photoshop CS
• Adobe Creative Suite Discussion
• Adobe Graphics Software Resources
• Integrated Graphics Suites