Review: Adobe CS6 Part I

How can one review an ocean? How would one start, by going drop by drop? By beginning by defining its boundaries, various civilizations living on its shores, its flora and fauna, or winds and currents? Reviewing the Master Collection of Adobe's Creative Suite is like reviewing an ocean.

Adobe’s Creative Suite is widely used and has been an industry standard for the last eight years. Many minute as well as massive changes occurred during those years, but the essence, the core elements and concepts remain the same, and many of its features predate the Suite. CS features many newer versions of software applications that were originally developed by other companies eventually acquired by Adobe (Macromedia's Flash, DreamWeaver, Fireworks, Freehand and the now discontinued ColdFusion) as well as Adobe's own products.

Maybe Adobe Suite is not large enough to be called an ocean, but it is certainly a sea. To explore this vast Sea of Creativity, as we refer to it, we would ideally need a crew of 11: a graphics designer, an illustrator, a colorist, an animator, a web programmer, a web front-end developer, a sound technician, a video editor, a video technician, a 3D modeler, and someone to make tea. Unfortunately, we are limited to one professional having to fill these roles and we will do our best to chart this sea, though mistakes or oversights can occur.


Tools of the trade - a powerful GPU will unlock your creativity. We selected the Fermi-based NVIDIA Quadro 5000 for the purpose of this review and will follow up with the Kepler-based K5000, when it becomes available.

Luckily, NVIDIA was kind enough to provide us with the perfect vessel for this expedition, the model 5000 of the Quadro series of professional graphics cards. Not only will the carb enable us to maximize the performance of all Creative Suite applications, but it will also unlock some of the new, cool features that would be otherwise difficult to demonstrate without it. Prior to this article, the author used consumer-based GeForce GTX 480, and there was more than tangible performance difference between the two.

1. The Map Of Creative Suite

We begin our voyage by defining what makes the Creative Suite. To the east are the lands of graphic design; the home of Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat. This mighty group is locked in a permanent war with printing presses, always fighting about colors and crop marks. To the south is the archipelago of web development; the home of Flash, DreamWeaver, Fireworks, and Contribute. This loose confederacy suffers from an internal conflict about standards and other technicalities, but is otherwise a fine group of products. To the west is the wealthy nation of filmmakers, the home of Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Encore. This powerful group has sadly been plagued by pirates in recent times. Centrally located is the coral (not to be mistaken with Corel) paradise of Photoshop and its recent offshore platform, Extended, connected to all other lands by Bridge.

Creative Suite features no tools for creating music, though one might think that it would when considering its name.

2. What Creative Suite Is Not

On its own, the Adobe Creative Suite is not very creative. The creativity is provided exclusively by the user. There are no stock photos, videos, or clipart in the bundle. There are a limited set of templates, fonts, gradients, etc. but majority of these are just samples. The Creative Suite also is not very intuitive. There are hundreds, if not thousands of tools in each application, and more added with each new version. It takes time, money, and practice to master each individual application. Luckily, all applications in the bundle reward experimentation and, perhaps more than anything, learning how to use one application helps with learning the others. Once you understand Photoshop and/or Illustrator, Fireworks will make more sense, and the vice versa.