Adobe Flex Builder 3.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased Flex Builder 3.0 in my ongoing quest to make my websites more high-tech, and yet more user-friendly. I often wish to develop applications that can run both on the web AND on a computer desktop, attached to a database. Flex supports this, running with various web servers, and supporting desktop accessibility with Adobe Air. As a ColdFusion developer, this is an attractive feature.
Flex, supported by the Eclipse platform, is still in its early stages in some ways. To be sure, Flex greatly soups up your webpages, and makes coding easier and faster. It automatically generates code that would have required programming in Actionscript before. To be super productive, you would want to learn Actionscript, anyway. Now, most of the work is done for you by Flex, so the Actionscript is mostly reserved for enhancements.
My experience with Adobe/Macromedia products is that they will pile on the toys over time. So, now is a good time to learn this platform while Flex is simple to learn. I believe it is here to stay. With my other Adobe products, Adobe offered free DVD's with selected [...] training segments. These clips enticed me to buy a year's subscription of the [...] trainings. In those tutorials, I found Flex trainings that have helped me quite a bit to attack Flex, and interface it with my existing ColdFusion setup.
Really, the only difficult part of this is the Eclipse development platform. Eclipse is open source, and for that reason, it is constantly changing. I don't always find open source tools to be user-friendly. There are lots of techy methods to get updates, snap-ons, etc. The problem? Since Eclipse is a moving target, its layout and set of tools are rearranged constantly. So, books and web tutorials concerning Flex 3 and Eclipse may be referring to a different version of Eclipse... and those tools may not be in the same place on YOUR Flex Builder platform because you have version X.3.5.2.3.11 instead of X.3.5.2.3.09. Since it is the launching pad for developing your Flex applications, you may find this frustrating.
So, Flex is a rapid application development tool, but like a sleek race car, rapid doesn't mean simple. It is not for the faint-of-heart.

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Item #: Q41377. Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems. While Flex applications can be built using only the free Flex SDK, developers can use Adobe Flex Builder 3 software to dramatically accelerate development. Product Description: Adobe Flex Builder Standard - ( v. 3 ) - complete packageCategory: Development toolsSubcategory: Development tools - web applicationsVersion: 3License Type: Complete packageLicense Qty: 1 userLicense Pricing: StandardLanguage(s): Universal EnglishPlatform: Windows, MacOSDistribution Media: DVD-ROMPackage Type: RetailOS Required: Microsoft Windows XP SP2, Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, Apple MacOS X 10.5, Apple MacOS X 10.4.7 - 10.4.10 Customers also search for: Technology\Software\Developer Software Discount Adobe Flex Builder Standard - ( V. 3 ) - Complete Package, Buy Adobe Flex Builder Standard - ( V. 3 ) - Complete Package, Wholesale Adobe Flex Builder Standard - ( V. 3 ) - Complete Package, 0883919144627, 38044406, Developer Software

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Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)Video editing on the PC is more voodoo than artisty - almost every "consumer level" editing program on the market has compatibility problems, the software that comes with the hardware tends to be next to useless (if you can get it to work at all), and customer support is TERRIBLE. Most of what is to be found is geared towards either 1) encoding low-quality video either from TV or cell phones or 2) "dummy-editing" for those that want to get poorly-edited YouTube video on the air. Consumers that want to do high-quality video editing but aren't professionals (read: can't spend thousands on one piece of software) are, for the most part, ignored.
Having messed with numerous products including Pinnacle Studio (very buggy and contains huge compatibility issues), WinTV's Win2000 (comes with their card - lacks usefulness), VirtualDub (free and having huge potential with numerous features, but unless you're willing to spend a tremendous amount of time working with it, have the exact hardware the fan-community is using, and have superior knowledge of the technology, you won't find it useful), etc... in the end, Premiere is the best. It is professionally done, VERY compatible compared to other software packages, powerful, easy to use, and easy to understand. If you want to do video editing on the PC, this is where you should start - everything else just creates too many headaches.
So, what can you do with Premiere Elements 3.0? You can combine multiple video clips into a movie; you can narrate a video; you can create video for your blog (if you have a camera); you can burn professional-looking DVDs with full menus that will blow people away. Whether you are making home movies of your kids, compiling a highlight reel of your best sporting moments, or making a movie on an extremely tight budget, this is the best software out there in the price range.
As to what 3.0 improves from 2.0: To the casual user not a lot. There are a few more minor options, but the big advantage comes when burning DVDs - in 2.0, my sports DVDs looked terrible with a great deal of "jumping" (I'm assuming this was caused by the software not using enough compression keyframes, but don't quote me on that) - in 3.0, everything is extremely clear and smooth. There are also more exporting options and more useable codecs, though the software still lacks the ability to switch to any installed codecs (a major flaw, IMO, but one most other programs at this level share).
Note: In order to make DVD templates (DVD Menus) for 3.0, you need Photoshop Elements 5.0 - earlier versions do not seem to work (or, at least, I can't get them to work properly). While you can make very good DVD menus within Premiere, you can't save them from Premiere for use in other projects. If that is something you might want to do (and, quite honestly, it may not be for many users), pick up the "bundled" version of Premiere and Photoshop and save yourself some money.
Now, a few things that Premiere Elements can't do/doesn't do very well:
- Capture video from "legacy" devices like VCRs. Premiere can capture video from some devices, but it doesn't work particularly well with many capture cards (nor is it really designed to). Either send your VCR feed through a digital camcorder or use another recording method ("Tivo" or a capture card with useful capture software).
- "Mega" special effects. Premiere Elements has numerous effects like dissolve, fade, time-stretching (slow motion), and distortion - it does not, however, do major CGI-effects. You might be able to pull of a Star Trek "beam in" effect, but you'll need another program for most others.
- Post-capture video improvement. Premiere Elements can do some video enhancement, but it is more of a timeline editing tool - if you want to significantly improve the quality of your captured video (removing major noise, massive high-quality zooming, etc..) you'll need another program.
To address a few other negative reviews...
"Just a quick warning: trying to deal with Adobe is a nightmare. I spent 45 minutes on their customer service line today, waiting for someone to answer. Twice, I was disconnected and had to call back."
I've never had to deal with Adobe's customer support, so I don't know whether or not this is true - I do know, however, that CS in other retail companies in this market is terrible."I imported some video from a DVD that I made myself, and the program shut down. It said I had to go to a website and type in a 20-digit "encoder activation" and the site would give me another number that I could use to activate the MPEG2 part of the product. But the site won't take the number. I keep getting an invalid code message when I type it in."
This situation is true - you will need an internet connection AND you'll have to register a code to enable certain compressors. However, all you need to do is copy and paste the code from the software window and into your web browser (there's even a button that will copy the code - you just have to paste it in). No one I know has ever had the problem described above - though it could occur.
"No web support or patches on Adobe site to date. "
There are numerous plugins available on the Adobe website and a patch - just go to the updates section of their webpage.
In conclusion: Premiere Elements is the best software out there for most users. Other reviewers should feel free to post if there is a better software package available.

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Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 software makes creating and sharing impressive home videos a snap. Burn your footage to DVD in two simple steps, complete with a DVD menu and scene index, or quickly assemble your movie in the new Sceneline, where you can drag and drop to arrange clips and add effects and enhancements. You can even edit and preview your movie in one convenient window. When your movie is ready, share it on the web, on mobile phones, and virtually anywhere else.

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Adobe Premiere Elements 7 Review

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(More customer reviews)I am NOT a newbie to video editing, in fact I have been an avid user of Adobe Premier Elements for some time now...with ver. 4 being the most recent before the version 7 purchase. Let me get this out in the open, I was disgusted with Adobe PE7 at first because I was trying to edit and burn footage from my same old camcorders....footage that Adobe PE3 and 4 handled just fine. I have tried MULTIPLE projects now and have yet to be able to render or burn a DVD using the MP4 (avc H.264) footage from my Sanyo Xacti or my Samsung NV24HD. Even worse I cannot keep a project of any size open long enough to do any editing before the program gives me a "low on memory" warning and then crashes! Version 4 was crazy enough, as I was always sure to hit the "save" button many times while editing, but this version 7 is a joke for these formats. I can't even add the MP4 files to the time-line without it crashing. Now for the good part and why I give this release a 4 star. I was asked by a buddy to edit and burn some youth football footage from his newly acquired Canon HF10 with SDHC card. I was excited. Although I had no clue what an .mts file was Adonbe PE 7 not only recognized it and imported it quickly...but I proceeded to edit both video and audio (together and separately)as well as burn to a regular DVD (not BluRay). It was a great experience. The only reason I won't give this a 5 star is that Adobe still shows this PE7 program as being compatible with MP4 and I beg to differ as a user...but if you are going the direction I want to go, AVCHD and BluRay, etc...Adobe did something right in this category. I will add that while i am not a big fan of the GUI of Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 it has handled ALL of my format types without a problem. I am running Vista Basic on a Celeron 1.60Ghz processor (Dell Inspiron 530 desktop) with 4GB of ram.
UPDATE: Now that I have purchased my OWN Canon HF10 AVCHD camcorder (1080 high-def) Adobe PE7 is my go-to program for this type of footage. Again, it handles the AVCHD / .mts file format flawlessly. Check out my other reviews for some other programs I have tried like Corel VideoStudio X2 and Magix - Movie Edit pro 14. If you are going to be working with AVCHD, certainly any of the Canon HF series camcorders that put .mts on sdhc flash cards...then I believe Adobe Premier Elements 7 is the best option.

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PREMIERE ELEMENTS 7 WIN

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Adobe After Effects CS5 Review

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(More customer reviews)Ignore the star rating. Just a warning that because this is a native 64-bit application it needs to be installed on a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Vista. While the product description says Windows XP, the box itself does not list 64-bit Windows XP as supported (and you probably don't want to mess with WXP 64-bit in the firs place). Unless you already have a 64-bit OS installed you will need to reinstall your OS and all its other applications as well to install Adobe After Effects CS5.

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Adobe After Effects CS5 delivers the visual richness required to get noticed in today's media culture. Use open-ended creative tools. Work efficiently on high-resolution projects thanks to native 64-bit support. And benefit from tight integration with Adobe's other leading software. Whether you're working in film, broadcast, online, or mobile media, Adobe After Effects enables you to create groundbreaking motion graphics and blockbuster visual effects.

Create motion graphics and visual effects with the industry standard
Innovative compositing and animation tools Create high-impact communications by combining moving imagery, still images and graphics, text, and sound in 2D or 3D space, and then animating virtually any aspect of each element.
Responsive 64-bit performance Work more easily with complex high-resolution projects and see longer RAM previews thanks to native 64-bit operating system support. Enhanced disk caching allows you to spend less time waiting and more time creating.
Unmatched integration with industry standard Adobe applications--Enjoy a streamlined workflow with support for importing Adobe Photoshop images and layer types. Move easily between After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 software. Export projects for enhancement in Adobe Flash Professional CS5 software.
Unlimited creative options Manipulate moving and still images using hundreds of effects that stylize, distort, shatter, and more. Combine effects to create Hollywood-caliber visual effects. Create grids, radio waves, particles, and more.
Text and vector graphics creation and animation Create text and vector graphics in After Effects using familiar Adobe tools, and then animate these elements to create visually innovative motion graphics.
Comprehensive masking and keying tools, including new Roto Brush Control which portions of a layer are visible by drawing and animating masks. The revolutionary new Roto Brush tool handles rotoscoping in a fraction of the time. Remove bluescreen and greenscreen backgrounds with the award-winning Keylight.
Timesaving presets and learning tools Get a jump start animating text and creating synthetic backgrounds with more animation presets. Use Brainstorm to experiment and refine designs. Learn fast with help, tool tips, and training resources on the web.
Powerful motion controls Apply realistic motion blur. Use Timewarp to slow down and speed up footage. Remove unwanted movement with the Motion Stabilizer, or precisely match the motion of source footage with mocha for After Effects.
Professional results for every media type Deliver your work anywhere. Compatibility with an extensive list of output formats lets you produce animated content for virtually any media, from film and broadcast to the web and mobile devices.
High-fidelity color Get precise, predictable color in After Effects with support for high dynamic range (32-bit-per-channel floating point) color, including Pro EXR files, ICC-based color management tools, and new color lookup tables (LUTs).
Top new features of Adobe After Effects CS5
Native 64-bit application One of the most significant advances in After Effects is that it is now a fully native 64-bit application. This yields numerous advantages, including the ability to fully use your computer's memory for dramatic improvements when working on high-resolution projects.
Just a few years ago, it was normal to work on standard-definition video at a color depth of 8 bits per channel (bpc). Today, it is common to work on high-definition video at a depth of 16 bpc. And while some artists have used After Effects on film projects since the earliest versions, digital cinema cameras such as the RED One are now commonly in use--making 4K images in 32-bit floating-point color increasingly common. And the memory demands don't stop there.
For example, RED has announced cameras that sport 5K, 6K, 9K, and even 28K frame sizes. Native 64-bit OS support in After Effects CS5 means you can work on ever-higher-resolution projects with confidence.
On 32-bit operating systems, the 2GB to 4GB memory restriction for each application sharply limit how many image frames can be held in RAM at the same time--which in turn constrains the length of full-motion previews and the complexity of projects overall. Even with disk caching and virtual memory, working with HD content using older versions of After Effects on 32-bit systems means you may be forced to wait while images are swapped in and out of RAM or re-rendered the next time they are needed. Resourceful artists have developed strategies to work around these limitations--such as working at lower resolutions or frame rates or using "proxies" of lower-quality sources--but these come with the trade-off of not seeing your composition in its final form while you work.
With After Effects CS5, these limitations no longer apply. Support for 64-bit operating systems means After Effects CS5 can access all of your computer's available RAM. This has a dramatic, positive effect on the type, size, and complexity of projects you can take on--as well as how fluidly you can work. With After Effects CS5 running on a 64-bit operating system with 32GB of RAM, you can preview a 30-second HD comp at full resolution and at 32 bpc. This enables you to preview your entire composition at maximum fidelity without interruption.
Beyond being able to preview longer continuous stretches of your project, rendered image frames are more likely to be kept in memory, allowing you to move around a project's timeline or between compositions without losing already-rendered frames. Additionally, memory buffer errors due to RAM constraints are virtually eliminated. These improvements increase productivity, which in turn facilitates creativity.
Integrated memory management In Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium, you can coordinate RAM allocation for After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro , Adobe Encore, and Adobe Media Encoder thanks to cross-component memory management. This allows you to make the most of your system resources without learning complex memory-management settings.
Roto Brush Many shots require separating a foreground object--such as an actor--from its current live action background so that the object may be placed in a completely new environment. The revolutionary new Roto Brush provides a fast, efficient solution for isolating these foreground elements in complex scenes. In the past, this kind of work was time-consuming and expensive, and as a result, the technique was often reserved for big-budget projects. The new Roto Brush is so fast that After Effects artists can now perform rotoscoping on virtually any project--from previsualization to final composites--with greatly reduced concern about project budgets or deadlines.
To use the new Roto Brush, just draw simple paint strokes inside the foreground object, and let After Effects calculate where the rest of the foreground object is. If the foreground and background are similar, you can draw additional paint strokes to teach After Effects which elements are in the background. After Effects determines where the foreground and background are on subsequent frames; you can refine results with additional strokes. The process is fast and intuitive--and because After Effects does the hard work of finding the edges, Roto Brush eliminates the tedium traditionally associated with the task.
Once you've defined the foreground and background areas, you can control the quality of the edges between the two using options for smoothing, feathering, or choking (spreading inside or outside of the original edge). After Effects can calculate motion blur for fast-moving portions of the edge to deliver photo-realistic, professional results with minimal effort. "Edge chatter" from frame to frame is automatically reduced, and in addition you can remove background color from semitransparent edges of the foreground object. And if the resulting alpha channel still requires additional refinement, you can use the paint tools already built into After Effects to further tweak your results.
The Roto Brush expands your creative options by enabling you to offer results that require sophisticated rotoscoping--on virtually any project. Professional-quality results can be realized dramatically faster and with far less tedium: artists are already reporting that the process of rotoscoping is taking a fraction of the time it required in the past. This means you can accomplish creative treatments that previously were feasible exclusively on big-budget projects--from isolating elements for targeted color enhancement to placing design elements such as text or logos between actors and their backgrounds.
mocha for After Effects CS5 Real-world projects typically require motion tracking, and many shots present tracking challenges such as elements that go partially out of frame or include motion blur. mocha for After Effects CS5--an updated version of the software included with After Effects CS5--has a unique planar tracker that makes it easy to handle even the most difficult tracking and stabilization tasks. Also included in this release is the mocha shape plug-in, which enables you to use tracking data in new ways. stabilization tasks. (mocha for After Effects CS5 and mocha shape have user interfaces that are English only.)
This updated release of mocha includes the ability to apply motion tracking to hand-drawn masks, which is a significant time-saver. In addition, motion-blurred or semitransparent areas are easily handled with new support for varible-width mask feathers. And like After Effects CS5, mocha for After Effects CS5 is a native 64-bit application.
Included for the first time in After Effects CS5, the mocha shape plug-in enables you to copy and paste multiple motion-tracked masks from mocha to any After Effects layer, fully preserving all their qualities, including any variable-width mask feather settings. This is particularly useful for shots that contain camera movements or moving objects that require masking.
One of the other new features you will find useful is that Bezier or X-spline animated roto shapes created in mocha may be converted into mask shapes in After Effects, where they can be further refined and manipulated without requiring a trip back into mocha. Also with mocha for After Effects CS5, motion blur data is now included in the exported tracking data. This enables you to re-create the motion blur that occurred in the original footage.
AVC-Intra support and expanded RED camera support After Effects CS5 includes native support for the new AVC-Intra 50 and AVC-Intra 100 codecs, as well as expanded native support for footage from RED cameras.
AVC-Intra is used by high-quality Panasonic cameras like the AJ-HPX300, AJ-HPX3700 VariCam, and AJ-HPX2700 VariCam, as well as recorders like the AJ-HPM110. According to Panasonic documents, AVC-Intra 100 is the highest recording quality available in a one-piece camcorder--comparable to mastering video quality--and is explicitly designed and optimized for broadcast and production. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 also supports AVC-Intra, so there's no barrier to integrating After Effects with Adobe Premiere Pro projects if you want to use AVC-Intra.
After Effects CS5, like Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, provides full native support for RED R3D files, allowing you to import them directly without transcoding, rewrapping, or installing additional software. Because the files you import contain raw sensor data, you edit footage that is as close to what the camera captured as possible, enabling you to work nondestructively on the color and look of your projects. This includes the ability to edit enhanced parameters such as Debayer Detail, Chroma Denoise, White Balance, ISO settings, and more.
With After Effects CS5, you can work with content in all common RED R3D file permutations, including 2K, 3K, 4K, 4K HD, 16x9, and 2x1, using a number of different frame rates.
Auto-keyframe mode After Effects has long featured powerful, flexible keyframing. However, artists new to After Effects have expressed a wish for an automatic way to begin keyframing their animations.
To assist these artists, After Effects CS5 offers an Auto-keyframe mode. When Auto-keyframe mode is on, modifying a property automatically turns its stopwatch on and adds a keyframe at the current time. This prevents you from working with a layer's properties only to realize later that After Effects did not capture any of your changes. Parameters that can be automatically keyframed include position, rotation, shape properties, mask properties, effect point controls, and camera manipulation.
New Refine Matte effect and dozens of other enhancements In every release, After Effects introduces dozens of refinements to popular features. Experienced professionals know that while individually these changes may seem subtle, collectively they make the day-in and day-out experience of working with After Effects smoother and more intuitive. Among many such features added in After Effects CS5 are:
The new Refine Matte effect that allows you to take advantage of the intelligent edge tracking, dechattering, and motion blurring capabilities found in Roto Brush and apply them to any layer with a problematic alpha channel, such as keyed footage
New options that allow you to align layers to a composition's boundaries, making it easier to precisely center objects and clean up the layout of your image frame overall
Enhanced support for Photoshop adjustment layer types, including Selective Color, Black & White, and Vibrance; you can also apply these color correction effects to any layer
A new option for per-character 3D text animation that allows each character to orient toward the camera around its own anchor point, further enhancing the illusion of 3D
A new Type option in the Camera Settings dialog box that allows you to easily specify if the camera is a one-node or two-node camera, adapting to your preferred approach for aiming and animating 3D cameras
The ability to import layered PSD files which include extruded 3D layers created with the new Adobe Repoussé feature inPhotoshop CS5 Extended.
A new keyboard shortcut to point the camera to either selected layers or all layers, along with many other improvements to camera tools and settings
New options to color-code panel tabs with the composition, footage item, or layer's label color, making it easier to identify elements at a glance in a complex project
Rendered Output Modules can now be dragged to a folder in the Project panel, resulting in the import of the output files into that folder for quick inclusion of rendered elements
New keyboard shortcuts and mouse functionality to quickly move between viewing the entire timeline and returning to your previous zoom level
An enhanced Levels effect Histogram display showing individual color channel strengths
New options for specifying the size of Bezier direction handles and vertices for masks and shapes as well as direction handles for motion paths, making them easier to see on today's larger monitors
Tooltips added for each vertex in the Graph Editor, which display the layer name, property name, time, and value of the keyframe, making it easier to precisely check values at a glance
Numerous enhancements to scripting, including the ability to access parameters for adaptive motion blur, text tracking, label attributes, and per-character auto-orientation

Color Look-Up Table support After Effects CS5 adds support for custom color look-up tables (LUTs) in the popular 3DL and CUBE file formats, which may be loaded into the new Apply Color LUT effect. This makes it possible, for example, to receive from a film output facility a custom LUT that reflects the specific color correction they are performing on a project, and simulate within After Effects what the result would look like on a specific piece of footage or final composite. You can also use this new feature to predict how your images will look through an unusual output chain such as displaying through a certain projector at a trade show or site-specific installation. In short, Color LUT support gives you confidence that the creative and technical decisions you make will translate properly to final output in an even wider variety of situations than before, and help ensure color consistency across multiple devices.
Color Finesse 3 LE After Effects CS5 includes an updated version of one of the most powerful desktop color correction tools available: Synthetic Aperture's Color Finesse 3 LE. (Color Finesse has a user interface that is English only.) The latest release of this versatile tool introduces numerous refinements, providing you with new ways to perfect your images. New features in Color Finesse 3 LE include:
Hue and saturation curve controls, yielding finer control over your color corrections
A new vibrance control that works in a way similar to the one in Adobe Lightroom software, providing a more subtle alternative to altering saturation
Auto Color and Auto Exposure buttons for instant corrections
New highlight-recovery feature, meaning you lose less image detail when you have to conform high dynamic range footage to the limitations of video
Improved handling of non-square pixels
A simplified plug-in user interface for improved ease of use

Color Finesse LE is also capable of exporting your "looks" as color look-up tables, which can then be applied in After Effects CS5 using its new Apply Color LUT effect. Plus, Color Finesse 3 LE has been updated to natively support 64-bit operating systems.
Digieffects FreeForm Digieffects FreeForm--included with After Effects for the first time in Creative Suite 5--vastly increases your 3D design options, allowing you to do more in After Effects, such as creating flags, bending floating video panels, and extruding layers without requiring a side trip into dedicated 3D software. FreeForm automatically responds to 3D cameras and lights in After Effects, making it easy to integrate the results of this effect into any 3D scene. (FreeForm has a user interface that is English only.)
Work with collaborative online services Users of After Effects CS5 may also enhance their workflow on large After Effects projects by accessing Adobe CS Live online services, available separately, including:
Adobe Story, the innovative new online service for crafting scripts. Story allows you to capture metadata in the writing phase, and use that metadata to plan your shoot more efficiently in Adobe OnLocation and help produce a preliminary rough cut in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Adobe CS Review, an online service that enables peers and clients to take part in the review of page layouts, image comps, illustrations, and video sequences.
Acrobat.com, a set of online services for creative professionals who need to accelerate discussion and information exchange with colleagues and clients.

For more information about these and other CS Live services, visit www.adobe.com/go/CSLive.

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Adobe Flash Builder 4 Standard Review

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(More customer reviews)While I've installed and 'poked around' the Eclipse IDE before, I believe that Adobe has made it just a bit friendlier. My comparison is that I also use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Pro...
The move from Flex 3 to Flash Builder 4 wasn't that much of a shock. Once you get into the work flow things move along. While this is touted as an IDE, be ready to still to a significant amount coding in 'code view' mode. The autocomplete function in code mode is hit or miss in my experience. Getting used to keywords being case sensitive took some getting use to. Some are capitalized (Keyword), some are camel-cased (keyWord).... I've found that this has been the main obstruction to the autocomplete function working properly.
Error messages in the debug window are confusing at best, totally mind boggling at worst as the wording sometimes gives you absolutely no idea of what the problem was. Search online for these errors and you'll see that others have this same problem also. Even Adobe admits it in their forums. I read a lot of "well, the error says xxxxxxxxx, but what it really means is xxxxxxxxxx." My question to Adobe is "why?"
One thing I've found utterly frustrating is simply adding an icon to a button. In VS2008 I click the "image" property and select the icon I want to appear on the button. In Flash Builder 4 you have to create a new 'skin' and then add the code to show the icon on the button. Huh? This same procedure applies to any component you want to add an icon or graphics to (except the image component itself).
In some areas there is a confusing overlap of the "

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Adobe Flash Builder 4 (formerly Adobe Flex Builder) software can help you accelerate development, build higher performing applications, and more easily integrate new projects with your existing infrastructure. This feature-packed release improves workflows for developers and designers through integration with the new Adobe Flash Catalyst interaction design tool.

Adobe Flash Builder 4 Standard Edition Adobe Flash Builder 4 comes in two editions: Standard Edition and Premium Edition. The Premium Edition adds professional testing tools, including profilers, network monitoring, an automated testing framework, integration with Flex unit testing, and command-line build support, plus it includes Adobe ColdFusion Builder software.

Develop cross-platform rich Internet applications Flash Builder 4:
Enables intelligent coding, interactive step-through debugging, and visual design of user interface layout, appearance, and behavior of RIAs
Provides productivity tools for working with databases, web services, REST APIs, and other data sources
Includes powerful testing tools, such as memory and performance profilers, network monitoring, and integrated support for automated functional and unit testing, that speed up development and lead to higher performing applications

Improve productivityAccelerate development and testing of expressive web applications using powerful developer tooling.
Powerful coding toolsTake advantage of a powerful Eclipse based IDE that includes editors for MXML, the Adobe ActionScript language, and CSS, as well as syntax coloring, statement completion, code collapse, interactive step-through debugging, and automatic generation of common code.
Code refactoringQuickly navigate through code or restructure it by renaming all references to a class, method, or variable. Flash Builder 4 adds move refactoring.
Native support for Adobe AIRCreate applications for the Adobe AIR runtime with Flash Builder 4, including all the tools required to build, debug, package, and sign AIR applications. Adobe AIR lets you quickly develop RIAs for the desktop using the same skills and codebase you use to build RIAs for the browser.
Debugger improvements Set conditional breakpoints, evaluate expressions, and set watchpoints on variables to halt execution on value change. Use the Expressions view to watch variables selected in the Variables view and to add/evaluate watch expressions. Break out of a loop during a debugging session using run to line.
Custom templates Customize default information contained in new MXML, ActionScript, and CSS files, such as author and date, introductory comments, copyright information, opening and closing tags and attributes, ActionScript declarations, namespace prefixes, and more.
ASDoc support Display comments in MXML and ActionScript editors using ASDoc.
Adobe Flash Professional workflow Import and update custom Flex components using the new workflow between Adobe Flash Professional software and Flash Builder 4.
Integrate with existing infrastructure

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Adobe Flash Pro CS5 Student & Teacher Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)Before using Flash I have had no exposure to animation programs. Having learned how to use flash I wish the interface was more user friendly, by that I mean I wish it was setup more like Illustrator. Fairly often I found myself wishing it would rotate something or align something like in Illustrator, there is the option of importing but I heard that takes up more memory. I read the review about crashes, on the Mac I have had zero crashes and have not had to fuss about anything like that. So in general I have read this version adds some stuff but it's all new to me, I would recommend this to anyone starting out. Though I am looking into similar programs and might consider switching.

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Adobe Flash Professional CS5 software is the industry-leading environment for interactive authoring and delivery of immersive experiences that are presented consistently across personal computers, mobile devices, and screens of virtually any size and resolution. Design expressive content with professional typography and pixel-precise drawing tools, write code precisely and efficiently with code completion and customizable code snippets, and deliver superior-quality video to audiences practically everywhere.




Create and deliver rich interactive content
New text engine Take control over your text with print-quality typography via the new Text Layout Framework. Work with columns and bidirectional text, and maintain layout and formatting with greater fidelity when importing from other Adobe products.

XML-based FLA source files Manage and modify projects using source control systems and collaborate on files more easily. An XML-based nonbinary implementation of the FLA format allows projects and associated assets to function as items in a directory or folder.

Improved Adobe Creative Suite integration Enhance your productivity and workflow when using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Flash Builder. Leverage the FXG graphics file format and integration with Adobe Mini Bridge for digital asset management.

Code Snippets panel Reduce the ActionScript 3.0 learning curve and promote greater creativity by injecting prebuilt code into projects. Quickly include functional code for timeline navigation, actions, animation, audio and video, and event handlers.

Enhanced ActionScript editor Increase development speed with an improved ActionScript editor, including custom class code hinting and code completion. Use Adobe Flash Builder software as your primary ActionScript editor for Flash Professional projects.

Object-based animation model Use object-based animation and visually achieve granular control over motion attributes with the Motion Editor. Develop interactive content more efficiently with the Motion Preset panel, which offers prebuilt motion effects and lets you create, save, and share your own.

Inverse kinematics Take advantage of advanced motion capabilities and visually add realistic physics effects with new strength and damping settings for the Bones tool. Easily create natural, chain-like motion with a simple and familiar user interface.

Advanced native drawing tools Author expressive interactive content with easy-to-use tools. Draw stylized shapes and transform them into complex patterns and effects, and animate 2D objects through 3D space with 3D transformation tools.

Video improvements Streamline video embedding and encoding processes with on-stage video scrubbing and a new cue points property inspector. See and play back FLV components directly on the stage.

Support across devices Deliver interactive content consistently for more runtimes across personal computers, mobile devices, and screens of virtually any size and resolution, and leverage integration with Adobe Device Central for enhanced testing and debugging.

Top new features of Adobe Flash Professional CS5
New text engine Flash Professional CS5 adds support for the new Text Layout Framework built into Flash Player 10, enabling you to use print-quality typographic functionality and take the experiences you create to new heights. Support for the Text Layout Framework provides rich, multilingual typographic control that previously was not available in Flash Professional, as well as a comprehensive set of APIs to manipulate text content, layout, and markup. The new text engine in Flash Professional CS5 also maintains layout and text formatting with greater fidelity when importing content from Adobe InDesign software and other Adobe products.

Print-quality typographic control Designers have come to expect rich typographic control in applications like InDesign and Illustrator. However, it's been extremely difficult or even impossible to set professional-level typography on the web--until now. With the Text Layout Framework support in Flash Professional CS5, designers can take advantage of rich typographical controls, including:

Advanced text styling such as kerning, ligatures, tracking, leading, superscript, subscript, discretionary hyphens, margins, hypertext, baseline shift, typographic case, digit case (oldstyle/lining figures), and digit width (proportional/tabular figures).
Advanced text-layout controls including threaded text blocks; the selection, editing and flowing of text across multiple columns; linked images; text wrap; and inline images (supporting PNG, JPG, SWF, or any Flash Player DisplayObject). Tab stops and CSS anti-aliasing are also supported.

Global language support The Text Layout Framework brings advanced multilingual typographic and layout features to Flash Professional CS5. This support includes the ability to display and edit not only right-to-left scripts, but also top-to-bottom scripts, and those that often use a mixture of left-to-right and right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew.

The new text engine offers additional features for East Asian typography, including an East Asian justifier, vertical text support, and Tate-Chu-Yoko, or blocks of horizontal text embedded into vertical runs of text.

Advanced inline text editing Working with text inside of Flash Professional is now a far more efficient and productive experience. In addition to cut, copy, paste, find, replace, and spell-check functionality and standard keyboard and mouse gestures for editing (Ctrl/Command, Home/End, double-click), a new Selection mode allows text to be treated as read-only, read-select, or read-write.

Advanced rendering support While offering advanced typographic control to designers is important, you want to know that what you see on your screen matches your viewers' experience as well. The Text Layout Framework builds on the history of consistent high-quality playback and display across multiple devices in Flash Player by adding support for transparency and for device and embedded fonts (including anti-aliasing of embedded fonts). A new embedded font format (DefineFont4) provides improved typography features, international support, and reduced file sizes.

Ability to distribute content virtually anywhere Deliver consistently across screens of virtually any size and use Adobe Device Central for enhanced device testing. The Distribution service available separately through Adobe Flash Platform Services offers free and paid methods for distributing applications to social networks, mobile devices, and desktops. It also enables developers and businesses to track the distribution of and user engagement with their applications, and enables monetization of applications through ad hosting.

Deliver to mobile and consumer devices. Deliver content that plays back on millions of devices worldwide. Packager for iPhone preview, included with Flash Professional CS5, compiles ActionScript bytecode into native iPhone application code. iPhone applications are distributed as iPhone application installer (IPA) files, via the iTunes store.
Deliver to desktop computers. Take advantage of the ubiquity of Flash Player within browsers and Adobe AIR for extended support on the desktop. Content displays with a consistent look and feel across operating systems and browsers.

XML-based FLA source files Flash Professional CS5 uses an XML-based implementation of the FLA file format called XFL, offering improved cross-product integration and workflow productivity. This compact and efficient file format both accurately maintains data in a Flash document and makes the individual elements easier to manage and use.

For example, an image that is currently used in a Flash project could be checked out of a source control system, updated, and checked back in. The next time you open the FLA project file, you would instantly see the updated image without having to manually import it into the project.

With better support for multiuser environments and cross-product compatibility, the XML-based format in Flash Professional offers the following benefits:

The uncompressed format allows several users on a team to work on the same project simultaneously--no more having to split the project into multiple FLA files.
Integration with source control systems is now possible because each team member can work on separate assets in the XFL package, eliminating the need to resolve differences.
Mobile developers can work on the same files as other developers. (In the past, mobile content could not load other SWF files.)

Using XML-based FLA source files, Flash Professional CS5 provides a richer environment in which to exchange data with other key Adobe Creative Suite tools, including After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Adobe Encore, and Flash Catalyst.

Code Snippets panel Flash Professional CS5 provides a new way to quickly include code for things like timeline navigation, actions, animation, audio and video, and event handlers with the Code Snippets panel. By injecting prebuilt code into projects, you can work faster, freeing up more time for creativity.

For example, the sample code snippets allow you to create interactive buttons without extensive code experience. Code snippets also contain helpful comments and clear instructions right in the code and can greatly reduce the ActionScript 3.0 learning curve by helping new users learn how the ActionScript language works. In addition, because the panel is extensible, you can create and share snippets with others, helping to reduce overall production time.

Enhanced ActionScript editor Increase development speed with an improved ActionScript editor, including custom class code hinting and code completion, and reference your own code or external code libraries more efficiently. Novice developers can start projects and have code hinting assist them as they try to grasp the fundamentals of the ActionScript language. Flash Professional CS5 can automatically write the import statement for libraries, and more experienced and advanced developers can more quickly reference their own code or any external code libraries they are using.

Improved Creative Suite integration Flash Professional is an integral part of all Creative Suite 5 Premium editions. Flash Professional CS5 adds more ways to work directly with other Creative Suite 5 components for a more efficient workflow, including:

Edit bitmaps in Photoshop using the new Edit With Photoshop CS5 command
Export complex graphics via the FXG format, which you can open in Illustrator
Place finished SWF files into Flash Catalyst projects
Use Flash Builder as your ActionScript code-authoring environment
Open content from InDesign with greater text fidelity
Import FXG files from Fireworks
Open content from After Effects and retain editing flexibility

Flash Builder integration Adobe Flash Builder (formerly Adobe Flex Builder) is a professional Eclipse-based developer tool that enables intelligent coding, interactive step-through debugging, and visual design of the user interface and behavior for Flex applications. Rather than having to choose between one integrated development environment (IDE) and another, you can now write your ActionScript code in Flash Builder and then test, debug, and publish your content in Flash Professional.

Test Movie and Debug Movie. When invoked, these commands bring up Flash Professional CS5, open the FLA file that has been set in the properties of the current project, and test or debug the movie. Once the SWF window is closed (or the debug session is ended, in the case of Debug Movie), focus is returned to Flash Builder (and the FLA file remains open). You can also set breakpoints in Flash Builder that work in the Flash Professional debugger.
Publish Movie. When invoked, this command brings up Flash Professional CS5 and publishes the target FLA file. Once the export is complete, if compiler errors were found, Flash Professional is brought to the front with its Compiler Errors panel open and the errors listed. If no errors were found, a dialog box in Flash Builder indicates that the Publish request was successful.

Spring for Bones With Flash Professional CS5, Adobe integrates the power of a dynamic physics engine into the Inverse Kinematics (IK) system. This engine allows new users to create lifelike animation with ease, and gives expert users powerful functionality that is supported for both runtime and authortime. Spring gives IK animation movement that is 100% configurable, so you can now get realistic multi-object interactions that don't look robotic and rigid. Spring, a property of an IK Bone element, consists of two attributes: Strength and Damping.

Strength sets the amount of spring. When the value is greater than zero, the bone reacts with a physical movement that is proportional to the Strength value and the overall movement.
Damping adds resistance to the Strength value. This affects the rate of decay of the spring, which in turn determines the duration between the initial movement and the time when the IK Bone returns to its rest position.

Video improvements With integrated support for content created with Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe After Effects software, it's easy to work with video content directly in Flash Professional CS5. Streamline embedding and encoding processes with on-stage video scrubbing and the ability to define cue points directly in the Properties panel. Now, when you have an FLV playback component on the stage, you can see the video on the stage, whereas previously you had to test the movie. Flash Professional CS5 also includes Adobe Media Encoder, enabling you to convert just about any file format to FLV or F4V.

New Deco drawing tools Flash Professional CS5 extends the functionality of the dynamic Deco brush tools, enabling you to easily draw shapes and add advanced animation effects. These new brushes include:

Particle System. Quickly create movement for particle phenomena like clouds or rain.
3D, Decorated, and new Grid brushes. Draw stylized lines or create patterns with multiple objects at once.
Tree, Flame, Lightning, and Building brushes. Use specialized tools to add and customize these stylized shapes.

Adobe Flash authoring tools With Creative Suite 5, Adobe delivers a variety of tools with the capability to author interactive content for the Adobe Flash Platform. Each project you work on is unique, presenting various requirements and specifications regarding design, development, and deployment. This comparison chart is a quick reference that will help you choose the best tool or tools for what you want to accomplish.

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Adobe Soundbooth CS5 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I got Soundbooth CS5 as it came bundled with the Master Suite. I launched Soundbooth to get started editing some audio files, and it didnt even load; Windows said it stopped working. So I tried uninstalling Soundbooth and reinstallin it, then I ran into a worse problem; it wouldnt install. I got an installation error! I tried to get support, but the support options are REDICULOUS. Trying phone support only led to further frustration. After 2 1/4 hours of pure hold time with nobody ever picking up led me to chat support. After allowing the tech support guy invade my pc via remote connection for 2 hours, he only tells me that my previous CS4 installation was creating the conflict. So I download all the install cleaners from adobe and unistall everything, run the cleaner tools, then reinstall everything, it still crashed. NOW, online support is always busy, the little icon never turns green to get an online support agent, so I am now reduced to email support. 4 days ago I sent an email explaining the problem, completely attached with the system debugger with all the error code and I have heard NOTHING back. NEVER WILL I BUY AN ADOBE PRODUCT EVER AGAIN! NEVER EVER!

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Adobe Soundbooth CS5 software is a professional audio editor that makes it easy to create, edit, and clean up audio for all your productions. Intuitive, task-based features and tight integration with other Adobe applications save time and help you achieve professional results. Mix royalty-free, customizable soundtracks and sound effects with dialogue in the improved multitrack environment for complete creative control.

Create and edit audio with ease
Fast audio cleanup Automatically detect and fix common flaws in audio recordings such as hisses, hums, buzzing, phase problems, crackling, and pops. Create special audio effects or add reverb to match on-location room ambience.
Visual healing tools to remove individual sounds Visually edit your audio with frequency space editing workflows. See phase problems and background noises and fix them with standard graphics editing tools.
Multitrack support Create your own soundtrack by combining multiple audio clips on multiple tracks. Combine with Soundbooth Scores and sound effects. Enhancements in Soundbooth CS5 include multitrack track resizing and multitrack default view.
Recording and mastering of audio clips Record mono or stereo files. Use streamlined mastering tools to polish your file to clarify vocals, make your music sparkle, and give the whole soundtrack presence and punch.
Tight integration with other Adobe Creative Suite tools Create and edit audio in Soundbooth, and then move it effortlessly to Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe Flash Professional. Drive animation or create captions through ActionScript by exporting Soundbooth markers as XML or in FLV.
Nondestructive audio editing The Adobe Sound Document format packages single or multiple tracks into a nondestructive ASND file that can be easily shared with Adobe Premiere Pro or Flash Professional software.
More ready-to-use audio assets Select from over 130 royalty-free Soundbooth Scores and thousands of sound effects in Resource Central, and then drag and drop them directly into your project to customize, combine, or layer multiple scores and effects.
Speech Search Convert spoken dialogue into searchable text transcripts to quickly find assets within Soundbooth. Export transcripts in XML for ActionScript language searchable video development. Use the new Custom Dictionary feature for improved accuracy.
Volume correction Equalize volume levels within a specific file with a single click. Use the Match Volume task to quickly match the volume of multiple clips to one another or to a single reference volume level.
Loop creation tool Increase your creative options by easily creating loops. Save time and create loops quickly and accurately with beat detection.
Top new features of Adobe Soundbooth CS5
Improved multitrack editing High-impact visual media depend on effective use of sound and music, and Soundbooth CS5 makes it easy to place sonic elements precisely to create the perfect blend of dialogue, voice-over, music, and sound effects. With the improved workflow in multitrack edit mode, you can mix and edit multitrack projects faster and with more control. For example, you can resize the tracks in Multitrack View to view entire multitrack projects at once or to zoom in on specific tracks. Split, move, and copy audio clips more easily with enhanced clip editing; these improvements let you align sound clips to specific points in a scene, duplicate clips within a track, or move clips between different tracks.
Expanded library of royalty-free Soundbooth Scores and sound effects Kick-start your soundtrack with a dramatically expanded selection of royalty-free content: Soundbooth CS5 now offers access to the enhanced Resource Central panel, where you'll find more than 10,000 sound effects and more than 130 customizable Soundbooth Scores. Scores are easily identified by genre in Resource Central, which you access from within Soundbooth; just click the Play button next to the title of each Soundbooth Score to hear a preview. Drag and drop sound effects or Soundbooth Scores from Resource Central into your multitrack project to customize, combine, and layer them. Soundbooth Scores include not just music, but ambience and environmental sounds as well. Combine scores and sound effects until your soundtrack sounds exactly the way you want, and it's ready to send back to Adobe Premiere Pro or Flash Professional for final export.
Soundbooth Scores: Flexible music and ambience for any production Soundbooth Scores are extremely flexible and configurable. Professionally composed, each Score is a multipart instrumental performance or a mix of instrumental and ambient sounds. Each self-contained score has clearly marked sections such as intros, endings, and thematic variations. You can easily align start and end times of a score with the length of a scene simply by dragging the start and end points. Internal sections are automatically stretched or shortened to keep the integrity of the performance consistent. If you need to shorten a scene by a few seconds, just drag the end points to match the new length, and your soundtrack is automatically adjusted. Intuitive controls make it easy to configure a score to match changes in mood and intensity throughout a scene. By adjusting controls for intensity, atmosphere, and lead (an instrumental variation), you can change the complexity and mood of the performance to evoke just the right level of emotion for your scene. These controls can be adjusted overall in the Properties tab, and you can also set their levels on the score itself to coincide with hit points in the scene.
Sound effects: Much more than explosions Crashes, explosions, and tire screeches are great to have in a sound effects library; they can save you a lot of expense, not to mention threats to life and limb. But a good sound effects library offers much more than bangs and booms. Among the 10,000+ sound effects available through Soundbooth in Resource Central*, you'll find sounds that can not only punctuate a scene, but set it entirely. A wide variety of sound effects is easily accessible in Resource Central, organized in clearly labeled categories such as Sports, Transportation, Household, Human Elements, Liquids/Water, Weather, and others.
As with Soundbooth Scores, it's easy to browse and preview sound effects in the enhanced Resource Central panel. Drag and drop the effects you like into one or more tracks. Zoom in and increase the track height to align the effect precisely with the scene. Adjust overall volume of the track using on-clip controls, or set keyframes that match volume to changes in scene intensity. Open an effect in Single-track Mode and apply effects to give the sound punch and clarity with compression and EQ, or to create a sense of space with reverb.
Among the huge number of sound effects, interactive designers will find many that are ideal for triggering rollovers, transitions, and other behaviors in FLV and SWF rich media.

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Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0 (Mac) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This should be called "Print Disappointment". It's buggy, some of the really cool features, like color gradations on a shape, don't work. You can't open networked files. The clipart is amateurish. There is a very limited colorset. I asked tech support about that and they said it can't be expected to provide the same features as professional software. Well, I've been using Printmaster on a PC for 8 years, it cost $20, and the earliest version I used worked better than this product.


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For years Print Explosion® has offered Mac users the fastest, easiest way to create spectacular custom print projects. Now Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0 takes advantage of the latest OS X innovations, delivering more creative options than ever before-from store-quality greeting cards to photorealistic scrapbooks.And you can do it all without ever leaving your Macintosh. Print Explosion Deluxe's easy-to-use interface will walk you through the process, from concept to finished product in a matter of just minutes!Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0 is ideal for first time publishers and professional designers alike because it contains rich graphics, layout features and text effects once found only in programs costing ten times as much.Optimized for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs, this brand new version features an enhanced user interface, thousands of new projects plus complete integration with iTunes and iPhoto!You can even use the enhanced mail merge feature to automatically personalize and send greeting cards to people in your Mac OS X Address Book.LOOK WHAT YOU CAN CREATE! - Greeting Cards- Signs & Posters - Scrapbooks- Banners - Certificates- Calendars - Labels- Letterheads - Envelopes- Business Cards - T-Shirts- Web Pages - Postcards- Crafts - And More!LOOK WHAT YOU GET! •Expanded! 13,000+ Readymade Designs, Including 5,000+ Store-Quality Greeting Cards •Expanded! 100,000+ Premium-Quality Graphics and 900+ Fonts •Hundreds of Text Effect Combinations •Hundreds of Label Layouts-All Avery®- Compatible •Hundreds of Signs, Posters, Banners, Certificates, Postcards, and More! •Turn Projects into Web Pages •Electronic Greetings •Brand New User Interface •New! Browse and Import Photos from iPhoto •New! Print CD/DVD Labels with iTunes Playlists •New! Photorealistic Scrapbook Graphics •New! Mail Merge Integrated with Mac OS X Address BookSYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Universal Binary: Runs natively on both PowerPC (G3 or faster) and Intel-based Macintosh computers; Mac OS X 10.2 or later; 512 MB RAM; DVD Drive. Software furnished on DVD. CD-ROMs available free via mail exchange. See user manual for details.

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Adobe Premiere Elements 8 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Updated 09/23/2010
Adobe released Premiere Elements 9 Trial, I have experienced none of the problems with Ver 9 that were present in the stability challenged Ver 8. PE9 remains 32 bit and is slow but it is stable, it is a very usefull editing tool for short projects and lower resolution video. Skip PE8 and go directly to Premiere Elements 9.
Updated 03/03/2010
If you like to get "under the hood" of your computer and spend countless frustrating hours sorting out performance problems, Premiere Elements 8 is for you. PE8 has numberous fatal flaws some of which have been traced to conflicts with Realtek Audio drivers and Nvidia graphics driver installation software, other are the direct result of the feature bloat that was added to this release. These conflicts and issues render the PE8 useless to those that have Asus and Nvidia hardware or software on their computers. Asus and Nvidia are major players in the computer hardware industry; the extent of the conflict problem can be seen in the large number of reviewers that have given PE8 a very low rating. This type of conflict should have been sorted out by Adobe in beta testing before the product was shipped. Adobe released a patch 8.01 (02/26/2010)to address several of the problems plaguing PE8, some users report slight improvement but stability is still questionable. A large percentage of users report that even with the patch, Nvidia's newest drivers and ulilizing all know user researched tweaks, PE8 refuses to perform as advertized. PE8 does not work well in AVCHD, also do not consider this software if you are using 1080 resolution or above.
By all means download the free 30 day trial version from Adobe to test compatibility with your PC before purchasing this product or wait untill Adobe releases a patch to solve the stability issues many are experiencing. You may also wish to try PE7 which has very good stability and isn't bloated with marketing gimmicks and useless "new features" of PE8.
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I received my copy of Premiere Elements 8 and Photoshop Elements 8 today. Installation was fairly easy with both programs but I can't see any improvements over PE7 unless you consider being even more resource dependent an improvement. The one feature that I was really hoping for in this version continues to be absent, PE8 cannot write Blu-Ray format to a file, disk only. The conversion of videos from PE7 to PE8 also caused many problems, skipping frames, refusal to render,dropping sound and repeatedly hanging the program during rendering of a four minute video. I have a new dedicated video editing Asus P6T,Intel Quad Core i7 with twelve gig of ram, Windows 7 64 bit ...what does it take to satisfy Adobe PE8? Those who give high marks to PE8 must have a server farm in their basement or are not editing in HD which slows PE8 to a agonizing crawl. Do not buy this software if you are filming in HD and your videos exceed five minutes or are multi track, PE8 simply can't handle the load of Blu-Ray quality editing, a fatal flaw for those of us with newer equipment. I have used Primere Elements for many years, I wish I could continue using it but it just can't meet the demands of multicamera HD. Sony Vegas is a far more suitable editing tool for HD, there is however a learning curve to overcome with Sony's unique "event chain" interface.
I recommend that all users of PE7 skip this upgrade as it offers nothing in usefull functionality or performance. I honestly don't see how Adobe can justify calling PE8 an "upgrade", it is simply a destabilized PE7 in a new box. The best feature is that PE8 does not overwrite PE7 so you will still be able to access and edit your PE7 videos which PE8 refuses to update or edit. Save your rupees for PE9, 10, or 11, PE8 is the upgrade that never was.
Bad Software: What to Do When Software Fails


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With Adobe Premiere Elements 8, the newest version of the #1 selling video-editing software, making incredible movies is easier than ever. Bring all your video clips and photos together in one convenient place where you can easily find, view, and manage them; protect them with automatic online backup and 2GB of free storage; and then dive right into a full range of creative activities. Create your movies with smart, automated options that save you time and effort. Enhance your stories with professional effects and sound. And share movies with friends and family in interactive online experiences and on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, mobile devices, and YouTube.

Top reasons to buy Adobe Premiere Elements 8
Do it all with one powerful yet easy-to-use product Use Adobe Premiere Elements 8 software for all your video needs. Import and manage your video clips; edit them together yourself or choose automated options to effortlessly create incredible movies; enhance your movies with professional-quality effects, sound, titles, and Hollywood-style motion menus; share them on the web, on disc, and everywhere else; protect them with automatic online backup and 2GB of free storage--enough for up to 24 minutes of DVD-quality video or 1,500 photos; and view them anywhere you are.
Create a polished movie instantly Using creative techniques from Hollywood directors, InstantMovie automatically edits together your best clips with coordinated music, titles, effects, and transitions from your choice of movie theme. New customization options enable you to get just the results you envision. And all-new themes are included.
Quickly find the clips you're looking for Want to find your best video clips or clips that meet a particular set of criteria? The Auto-Analyzer automatically tags your footage and photos for quality and interest, and a variety of smart search options make it easy to zero in on just the media you need.
Make movies with drag-and-drop ease Create your story fast in the Sceneline, an easier alternative to the more traditional video-editing Timeline. Make your movie by simply dragging and dropping thumbnails of your clips, transitions, and effects.
Edit and preview in one convenient place Edit and view your movie in one convenient place--the large Monitor window--where you can easily trim and split clips, drop filters and effects right on a frame, create fun picture-in-picture effects, type titles and text right on the screen, and more.
Add professional-quality effects and transitions Add entertaining graphics that automatically follow the action in your movie. Easily combine elements from different scenes for entertaining results. And add visual appeal with hundreds of amazing special effects and TV-style transitions, including several all-new options.
Energize your movies with music Use SmartSound to add a variety of musical soundtracks that automatically adjust to perfectly match the length of your movie. Even synchronize scenes to the beat of your soundtrack.
Get creative inspiration Bring your ideas to life with relevant tutorials that appear just when you need them. New tutorials help you explore creative possibilities.
Conveniently share your movie and enjoy the latest technology Follow easy steps to create your movie once and then share it in many ways, including on disc, the web, or mobile devices. Share on high-quality HD or Blu-ray Disc, so you can enjoy your movie on virtually any screen, from your iPod to your HD flat screen TV.

Top new benefits of Adobe Premiere Elements 8
Experience the ultimate media management hub Bring all your video clips and photos together in the powerful, easy-to-use, fully featured new Organizer--the hub of yourvideo and photo experience. Easily find, view, manage, and protect your media, and then dive into a full range of creative activities and start enjoying your memories.
Save time with new automated options Make movies with less effort. Adobe Premiere Elements can automatically fix shaky footage and color and lighting problems, trim away all but your best footage, and balance audio elements to give you professional-quality sound throughout your movie.
Enliven the action with artwork and animations Add sparkle to your scenes thanks to an all-new library of artwork, including fun frames, objects, and animations.
See the same video clips and photos on every computer Forget trying to manually maintain your clips and photos across multiple computers. With automatic syncing, media added or edited on one computer will automatically be synced to another.
Share memories in fresh, exciting ways on the web Showcase your videos in one-of-a-kind Online Albums with your choice of dynamic, animated templates. Adobe Flash technology lets viewers interact with your videos for an entertaining experience. And share via public or private galleries--friends and family won't have to register to look.
Get the big picture See the full effect of your video clips and photos from within the Organizer with new full-screen previews.
Enjoy support for Windows 7 Take advantage of support for the new Windows 7 platform and the hands-on capabilities of Windows Touch technology.

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ACDsee 8.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)ACDSee 8 is a great file-level manager, and easily surpasses most, if not all, of its competitors at the file-level manipulation and organizational functions that are the basis for creating an efficiently structured and effectively manageable digital photograph library of thousands of photographs in size, and larger. ACDSee 8 also sports a basic image editor, a slideshow and screensaver module, and a backup module. Compared to Corel Photo Album 6, ACDSee is missing a creative projects module, which ACDSystems sells in a separate product, as PhotoSlate 4. ACDsee is a great choice for those who need to manipulate a massive number of files regularly. However, ACDSee 8's cumbersome implementation of metadata management features -- the meat of a digital photograph manager -- makes the program difficult to recommend the program to mainstream users.
What makes metadata support so important? A photograph may be worth a thousand words, but not always. Without aid, the casual viewer may not understand or remember a picture's content or context. (E.g., When and where was this picture taken? What is this a picture of? Who are these people? Why did I take this picture?) Even the photographer himself may not remember these things one or five years later. In an analog photograph, one could write a description on back of the print itself. With digital photos, this sort of information is kept as metadata. Without metadata, that interesting digital photograph (Holiday Party 2005: Roy and Ciara with Mayor Mike. Unbeknownst to Mayor Mike, Roy and Ciara rose to power by wasting hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.) is just another anonymous picture. It is metadata that imbues digital photographs with their context and meaning, and that enables digital photograph collections to be quickly organized or synthesized in a wide variety of ways - by timeline, event, location, person, etc.
ACDSee 8 uses three separately maintained subsystems to support image metadata - a proprietary internal database that stores thumbnail images, ratings and category information; and two other subsystems to support the EXIF and IPTC metadata standards. IPTC is the preferred standard for storing picture descriptions; EXIF is the standard for camera information (picture timestamp, exposure settings, etc.). Support for EXIF and IPTC metadata is important, because these two standards enable photograph descriptions (complete memory = photograph + metadata) to be accessible seamlessly:
- outside of ACDSee, relegating product lock-in to the past;
-across online photo sharing sites (such as Fokti and Flickr);
-by family, friends, or other users who don't use ACDSee;
-by posterity, if ACDSee were ever to be discontinued.
While ACDSee 8 has the most complete metadata support of any consumer-grade digital image manager, it is quite cumbersome to use. Searching for a picture or music file? It isn't easy to do in ACDSee. ACDSee has Google-like simplicity only when searching for information in its internal database. To look for data stored in EXIF, IPTC, or ID3 (for music files) metadata, you'll need to specify the field(s) to search, a Boolean condition for the search (is, starts with, contains, etc.), and the data you're looking for. It's as painful as it sounds.
ACDSee's IPTC metadata subsystem is new to Version 8, and is not as developed as the ACDSee internal database and EXIF subsystems. While the program supports batch operations (working on multiple files simultaneously, e.g., assigning the description Grandpa's Birthday to a collection of photographs) for ACDSee's internal database and EXIF subsystems, batch operations are not supported for IPTC metadata. IPTC metadata entries must be painstakingly made on a per picture basis in ACDSee. Experienced users may look to PixVue, a free Windows Explorer extension, for a full IPTC/XMP metadata editor that supports batch operations, so at worst ACDSee users will find it burdensome to transfer information from ACDSee's internal database or EXIF metadata subsystem to IPTC. ACDSee does not support Unicode, so foreign language support (for recording foreign toponyms and friends in your photographs without the need for Romanize them) is limited.

ACDSee 8 continues to be a great file-level digital image library manager, best for those with thousands of pictures and those who don't care about metadata. With improvements to its search and IPTC metadata features, ACDSee could be a standout product for everyone. Interestingly, since ACDSee 8 supports searching through ID3 metadata (albeit painfully), future versions of ACDSee may potentially be good music managers, too.

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ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)My wife and I saw a demo of this at a education industry trade show and very impressed on the overall photo management capabilities, they have a more sophisticated term called digital asset mgmt. I had photos in so many different folders and drives, especially our wedding photos. This program automatically identified them, helped us organize quickly into categories and help rate them in importance to us. The program looks identical to the windows operating system so our user experience was a breeze. The photo editing feature is good, but not great. We bought this for the management part and its worth every penny just for that. I highly recommend to anyone with alot of photos and who feel they are unorganized on their computer.

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PitStop Professional 09 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Magazine staff of 3 graphics folks use this to check PDFs before going to print. It works great and has a lot of features that we don't even know the full depth of yet. This was an upgrade for us from a version several years older and they've added a lot of nice touches to this package. It's taken a while to get used to the new layout of things, but we're really liking what we're seeing so far. If you need to prepare, preflight or edit PDFs for print, I highly recommend this package.

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Adobe Acrobat X Professional Upsell Upgrade Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)It is a good product, but I miss the Organizer facility in Acrobat 9. I also find that the complementary training package that comes with the purchase does not currently cover Acrobat X.

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Upgrade to Adobe Acrobat X Professional To install an upgrade version of Acrobat X Professional software, you must have an eligible earlier version of Adobe software:
Adobe Acrobat Standard 7, 8, 9, or X
Adobe Acrobat 3D
Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended 7, 8, or 9

The Latest Version of Adobe Acrobat: Acrobat X Professional
When it comes to creating and sharing professional-level PDF files—with audio, video, and rich media—there's Adobe Acrobat X Pro, and then there's everything else. Acrobat X helps you increase your productivity and deliver better, more polished work. It's so much more than just a simple PDF creation tool. Also confidently store and share documents through easy-to-use services at Acrobat.com.
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Robohelp Office 7 Win 1U Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Wha-hoo! What makes Robohelp 7.0 great is the extended conditional tags. Now you can tag TOC and Index entries, as well as sections of documents.
What does this mean? Before if you had table of content entries or links that you wanted to exclude for a particular website or version release, you would have to craft the TOC to a conditionally tagged page. If the TOC entry was a book, and all your TOC books were linked, then you would have a dead link if that page didn't make the conditional release.
This version of Robohelp allows you to conditionally tag just about anything, including the index.
Snippets are another plus. These are similar to the Dreamweaver snippets in that they are library files. Correct the snippets in one place and the change is migrated to all pages containing the snippet. Yes, even in the footers.
Robohelp works seamlessly with Visual Sourcesafe (which is a tad more robust than Robohelp's source control).
This latest release handles Captivate media files extremely well!!
The only thing that still needs improvement is the Acrobat PDF integration. I still have to generate a Word document to preserve the links before I generate it to Acrobat.
Another big improvement is that the program allows you to keep your baggage files in folders rather than creating them in the root directory.
I couldn't move fast enough to this release.

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Adobe Acrobat X Professional Upgrade Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have been a user of Adobe products for 20 years. I have upgraded my Creative Suites from its origin to its current CS5 Design Premium. I have recently had trouble installing updates to Illustrator -- and after 6 hours with customer service and technical support was told to uninstall and reinstall, which I did and did NOT solve the problem. They have no answer. I was having the same problem with Acrobat 9 Pro and spent additional WASTED hours. Finally, I decided to upgrade to Acrobat X Pro. I purchased it from Amazon. I tried to install it on my laptop, put in the X serial number and copied the 9 serial number from my registration page at Adobe -- and it did not recognize my serial number as valid. So deleted the 9 serial number and typed it in exactly as it was on the Adobe registration page -- and still not a valid serial number! I finally called Adobe customer service, who could do nothing, and transferred me to technical support. After 45 minutes (!) on the phone, I was given a pin number which activated my Acrobat X Pro on my laptop. I told them that I did not want to keep calling to get a pin number for an installation on my desktop computer and for a new laptop I planned to buy shortly. They said they would look into solving the problem so that my own installation would automatically activate the program. I got a call back from technical support in India and was told that I could only install by calling technical support every time and get an activating pin number. This is TOTALLY INEXCUSABLE! Imagine your hard drive crashing and having to reinstall and spending waiting time, often over 20 minutes and then head time of around 10 minutes just to activate a program from a company whose products you have used for 20 years! The new Acrobat X Pro is NOT WORTH THE TROUBLE!

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Upgrade to Adobe Acrobat X Professional To install an upgrade version of Acrobat X Professional software, you must have an eligible earlier version of Adobe software:
Adobe Acrobat Professional 7, 8, or 9

The Latest Version of Adobe Acrobat: Acrobat X Professional
When it comes to creating and sharing professional-level PDF files—with audio, video, and rich media—there's Adobe Acrobat X Pro, and then there's everything else. Acrobat X helps you increase your productivity and deliver better, more polished work. It's so much more than just a simple PDF creation tool. Also confidently store and share documents through easy-to-use services at Acrobat.com.
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Adobe Contribute CS5 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I hoped for a flawless product, but for example, on a line with no type, unless you put a space before the return you don't know if your line spacings will show up on the published version the same as they appear in the draft. Or if you edit-publish-edit, the line spacings might jump around in an unpredictable way.
But it is better than my early version of Contribute, which was a real pain.

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Adobe Contribute CS5 software enables users to quickly create and edit web pages collaboratively in an easy-to-use WYSIWYG HTML editor, without writing code. New features include in-browser editing of text, hotspot images, and CSS for content authors, as well as drag-and-drop input of FLV, SWF, and PDF files. Managers can encourage creative web development while easily controlling workflow, review, and version processes to produce static or dynamic websites with one-click publishing.

Simplify website management
True WYSIWYG web authoring Enable content authors to see the results of their edits and additions instantly with enhanced CSS rendering, without writing code or knowing HTML. Contribute immediately updates edits to XML content and Spry widgets.
Collaborative publishing Establish collaborative workflow processes to author, review, and publish content. Define different review paths at the template level, whether a single approval for an internal web page or multiple sign-offs for a public page.
Predefined content types Define content types that specify the design template and review process that will be used automatically when a new page is created for that content type. Content type can be HTML or XML.
XML file editing Edit XML file content without opening an XML editor. Easily update Spry data sets and other pages that render content from XML files or dynamic XML-based sites by editing the corresponding XML file.
Rich media support Easily drag and drop images, FLV and SWF files, or PDF documents into your web pages. Contribute automatically uploads the dependent files to the web server when the pages are published in predefined locations.
Dynamic website editing Add content to dynamic websites powered by Movable Type, TypePad, or WordPress. Simply define the Contribute connection with the proper settings, and site content is instantly available for updating.
Cross-browser preview Verify the look and feel of updated pages in multiple browsers. Preview edited pages in any installed browser. Windows users can view three browsers simultaneously for side-by-side comparison.
Publish to websites and blogs Publish with a single click to a wide variety of websites or blogs. Contribute is the one web authoring tool that supports FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, MetaWeblog, and Atom protocols.
In-browser editing Allow authors to edit pages directly in a web browser with no need to open another application. The Contribute CS5 in-browser editor supports most browsers, including Firefox 3 and 3.5 and Internet Explorer 7 and 8.
Simultaneous shared reviews Enable multiple reviewers to comment on drafts simultaneously with in-context collaboration tools for faster and more effective web publishing cycles.
Top new features of Adobe Contribute CS5
Predefined content types With predefined content types, web administrators can specify particular Dreamweaver templates, XML templates, and workflows that will be used when creating new pages based on content type. This allows new pages to be created quickly, drawing on existing site designs, preserving current page functionality, and defining content regions for secure editing by contributors. Set edit workflows to hold new pages for review or to have them go live instantly. Set expiration dates automatically as new pages based on predefined content types are created. The content types can be defined for both XML and HTML pages. Defining content types can greatly simplify the administrator's task of site management.
Published pages based on content type can be tracked as a Smart List--an XML file providing the metadata about each publish operation of the content type, such as author name, date and time of publishing, and so on. This list can be used as dynamic data in another file or can be used as data for site analytics.
XML editing Edit site-associated XML content natively, without having to leave Contribute in order to open an XML editor. Easily update the contents of XML files that are rendered by dynamic pages. Allow modification of XML element and attribute values, while protecting document structure elements such as nodes and tags. In the past, XML data editing has typically been assigned to an expert, but now content authors themselves can easily update XML data without fear of disturbing the underlying structure. This feature also enables editing of Spry data sets and other dynamic pages that render data content from an XML file, or even entire dynamic sites built using XML; the content author simply browses to the corresponding XML files to edit them.
Cross-browser preview Another task that normally falls to web administrators is the dreaded browser compatibility check. With Contribute CS5, content authors can verify the look and feel of updated pages themselves, in multiple browsers. You can preview edited pages in three popular browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, and they need not be installed on your system. Running Microsoft Windows, you can view three different browsers simultaneously in split windows for side-by-side comparison. In Mac OS, you can preview using any browser installed on your system. Just specify the browser or browsers for comparison, and they're automatically launched when Browser Preview is invoked.
Spry widget editing With Contribute CS5, content authors can edit data contained in a variety of Spry widgets, including data within accordion, tabbed, and collapsible panels. This is accomplished with the new Widget Properties button in Edit mode, which allows the user to access and edit the displayed data, and to change certain properties of the visual effects.
Multipage search and replace Use the enhanced search-and-replace capability in Contribute CS5 to update information on multiple open draft pages. Streamline the update process by performing in minutes what used to be a tedious task. Search based on text, images, and other elements.
Subversion support An important aspect of any web administrator's duties is the archiving and redeployment of content. One of the most popular solutions for this task is Subversion, an open-source version control system. Contribute CS5 lets you work with Subversion with minimal configuration, or with the built-in Contribute rollback system. (Subversion is not included with Contribute CS5; see subversion.tigris.org for more information.)
Image hotspot support Previously, programmers and designers usually added hotspots to images using specialized image-editing software such as Adobe Fireworks during the design process. Now content authors can set up hotspots themselves from within Contribute CS5, without having to roundtrip the images to the art department. Users can create multiple links to different parts of a single image with integrated WYSIWYG hotspot support. Draw one or more hotspots onto any image, and then add alternative text and URLs for immediate interactivity.
W3-compliant code when embedding SWF and FLV files Embedding SWF and FLV files in a web page is traditionally a task left to the Dreamweaver web experts--and with good reason, as the coding required to ensure smooth and consistent operation across platforms isn't exactly the stuff you can copy and paste. Insertion of SWF and FLV files was possible previously, but now Contribute CS5 automatically creates Dreamweaver-compatible web standards-compliant code when you insert the file into your page. This helps enable predictable behavior within the Adobe Flash Player while allowing cycle-accelerating drag-and-drop authoring in Contribute.
Server Side Include editing Another task normally left to the Dreamweaver experts is the editing of Server Side Include files (SSI). These are usually small text files that are nested within a page, often with the goal of having them be updated more frequently than the rest of the page content. Contribute CS5 allows content authors to edit SSIs directly, eliminating another potential web-production bottleneck. Authors can choose include files from a list, and then edit the SSI data within Contribute.
This new capability of Contribute CS5 facilitates quick editing of included PHP, CFM, or any other SSIs from within a web-page edit workflow. When a content author selects a region in the page that is coming from an SSI, Contribute provides an Edit Included Files menu to quickly edit the included file. The user doesn't have to identify the Included file's path manually by looking at the code.
Text and image enhancements One of the strongest benefits of using Contribute is its word processor-like WYSIWYG editing environment, which facilitates the update process. With several new enhancements in Contribute CS5, this functionality helps Contribute take a big step towards becoming a real-time web page layout solution. Now content authors can create superscript and subscript text directly in Contribute. Image-editing capabilities are greatly expanded with direct editing of embedded images in Photoshop or Fireworks software, if the user has them installed. Changes are displayed accurately with enhanced CSS rendering.

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