adobe

Adobe Illustrator CS6 sizzles more than fizzles

There aren't a boatload of updates to this version of Illustrator, just a select few interesting ones. In addition to performance boosts, Adobe has updated its tracing engine, introduced a new pattern creator tool, added variable-width strokes and the capability to apply gradients to strokes, and tweaked the interface. Toolsets can tear off the toolbar instead of just fly out, which is nice for the frequently used sets.

It looks drastically different on startup because it defaults to the same dark gray as Photoshop, but here I switched it back to the lighter setup. I'm not sure why -- maybe because it's so print-centric -- but I just feel like Illustrator should be light. Adobe has also tweaked the content of some of the panels as well as the way the tools orient. Small changes, like the addition of hex values to the picker and the expandable color spectrum are really welcome.… Read more

With CS6, Photoshop delivers something for everyone. Again.

I'm not a big fan of Adobe's new business strategy, in which it begins to channel all its users toward subscription-based usage (although Stephen Shankland does a good job explaining why it's good for Adobe); to me it looks a lot like the way cable companies operate. But -- despite some gripes about incomplete implementations -- but with only a few reservations, I am a big fan of this release of Photoshop.

It's the first version of Photoshop to take video seriously and to make it into the Standard Edition of the product rather than the extra-pricey Extended version (which is moot if you buy via Creative Cloud). It's the first version to integrate the company's GPU-accelerating Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE). And for the first time in more than 20 years, Photoshop goes dark. … Read more

Five reasons Adobe's CS6 subscription is smart

Adobe Systems is about to begin a difficult -- but smart -- transition.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company will overhaul its core software business in May when it launches a subscription service called Creative Cloud, which bundles its new Creative Suite 6 products with a swath of other products and services. To make it a success, it'll have to convince customers that it's a better value than traditional software licensing.

Here's an indicator of how hard the change will be: A CNET survey in March showed a frosty reception, with 41 percent of respondents viewing Creative Cloud negatively, … Read more

Adobe makes the CS6 sales pitch

Adobe Systems first showed a few paws, then a tail, then a couple ears and some whiskers -- but now the company is letting the complete Creative Suite 6 cat out of the bag.

After a series of sneak previews and early announcements, Adobe now is detailing the full CS6 line, the meat and potatoes of Adobe's business. It's important to a large number of people involved with photography, videography, design, and publishing on the Web or on paper, and it's set to be arrive within 30 days, Adobe announced today.

But CS products aren't cheap, … Read more

How to determine if a Flash update notification is legitimate

Adobe Flash Player and Reader are some of the most popular Web plug-ins, and as a result malware developers commonly use them as a disguise for their programs. The recent Flashback malware is one example of this, where it originally was released as a fake update to Adobe Flash, and thereby confused a number of Mac users who installed it thinking it was a legitimate update they needed.

In order to notify Flash and Reader users of available updates, Adobe's software will display a notice regarding the availability of the new software; however, if you see such a notice … Read more

With CS6, Adobe tidies up Premiere Pro, speeds up After Effects

Quick access to software features is nice, but there can be too much of a good thing. That's what Adobe concluded when designing Premiere Pro CS6, the upcoming version of its video-editing software.

Adobe was pleased with the current CS5's Mercury Playback Engine, which on computers with higher-end Nvidia graphics cards provides a major hardware acceleration boost for some tasks. But the user interface was too cluttered, said Premiere Pro Product Manager Al Mooney.

"The car on top of the beautiful, powerful engine was not as nice to drive as modern editors wanted it to be," … Read more

Acrobat and Reader updates close security vulnerabilities

The default options for viewing PDF documents in OS X are Apple's built-in rendering technologies available in Safari and Preview; however, there are times when some documents will not display properly in these programs. In these instances, you can use Adobe Reader and its accompanying Web plug-in to usually view these documents with success.

For those who use Adobe's Reader and Acrobat programs, Adobe has issued an update that fixes a couple of security holes in the program that could cause the program to crash and allow arbitrary execution of code. While this reasoning has been regularly issued … Read more

Flashback the largest Mac malware threat yet, experts say

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week, you've probably heard about Flashback, a piece of malware targeting users of Apple's Mac OS X that's now estimated to be quietly running on more than 600,000 machines around the world.

That number, which came from Russian antivirus company Dr. Web earlier this week, was confirmed today by security firm Kaspersky. More than 98 percent of the affected computers were running Mac OS X, the firm said.

That's certainly a big number, but how does it stack up to past threats?

"It'… Read more

Adobe touts tools for Flash-to-HTML conversion

Many developers are ready to dump Flash in favor of Web standards -- and for those who aren't ready, Adobe Systems is throwing its weight behind a new project called CreateJS to ease the transition.

CreateJS is a collection of libraries -- prewritten code, essentially -- that lets people program with Web standards such as HTML5 and JavaScript the way they're accustomed to with Flash. And along with the libraries there's the Toolkit for CreateJS, an extension for Adobe's Flash Pro developer tools that lets programmers work with Flash Pro and then export an HTML/JavaScript … Read more

Get Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 10 for $72.99 shipped

In case you missed it last week, I wrote a little treatise on why I'm returning my new iPad and buying a Kindle Fire. Apparently the story had some legs; it got picked up on Yahoo, and last night CNBC invited me to appear on "Street Signs" today (which airs live at 2 p.m. ET). Fun!

There was, of course, plenty of cheapskate mentality fueling that, er, fire, so you might be wondering if I've flipped my lid with today's deal. I mean, seriously: pay...for software?!

I know, it's crazy talk. But … Read more