As people are (finally) upgrading to Creative Suite 4, I thought it prudent to recap some of the more important tips.
1. DO NOT do an upgrade install. This will cause you a lot of headaches (been there). Use the Uninstall/Reinstall option – it will give you a complete cleanout and fresh install, thereby removing old elements that the upgrade can leave behind.
2. Seems obvious, but run ALL updates after you install. CS4 has been out for 10 months, and during this time Adobe has sent out a lot of updates and bug fixes. Be sure to run your Windows/Apple updaters as well.
3. In PS CS4, you may notice that the Extract and Interactive Layout Photomerge are missing. This was a conscious effort to move people to other options in the program. If you want to bring these back use these links:
Photomerge Interactive Layout: Mac Windows
4. Use Bridge to create your Web Photo Gallery, not the “lovely” Web Gallery in Photoshop. This new version, found under the “output” view in Bridge is much more savvy and is Flash Enabled. Very cool and professional, plus you preview in a browser from Bridge and can output it directly to ftp.
5. Contact us with your questions. We get them all the time and have probably heard it all. You’d be surprised at the number of people who panic and restart, reinstall, erase, wipe hard drives, etc. before they ask someone for help. Many times, not all, problems are an easy fix.
You can always start with resetting preferences (hold opt/alt+ctrl+shift during app startup).
You probably already know that when you find the file you are interested in, in Adobe Bridge, you can double click on that file and it opens in the program that made it. And that’s great. But what if you want to place a PSD file into InDesign or Flash (or After Effects or Illustrator)? The fast, convenient way is to do the following: select the item or items you want to place into another Adobe program, go to the File menu, go Down to “Place” and choose the program you want the files to goto. Voila!
You have always been able to add keywords to images in Adobe Bridge but new in CS3 is the ability to apply sub-keywords and their parents in one simple click, assuming you have made a series of keywords that are related. I created an “animal” keyword that applies to all animals, a “dog” sub-keyword for dogs and a “Labrador Retriever” sub-keyword for just that breed of dog. If I click on just “Labrador Retriever” I apply only the keyword “Labrador Retriever”
But why wouldn’t I want to apply the parent keywords of “animal” and “dog” to this image also? I can do so with 1 click, not 3. If I shift-click on “Labrador Retriever” it adds that keyword and all its parents which is very frequently what I want
