What's In The Box? Adobe Creative Suite 2 comes in two different editions, Premium and Standard, as shown in Figure 1-1. The Premium Edition contains the full suite of five major applications. The Standard Edition is a lower-priced product with three major applications. (Look closely at the boxes, and you'll see that the Premium Edition has five leaves, but the Standard Edition has only threeget it?) All of the other applications, as well as the Extras, that we describe below are included in both versions. Figure 1-1. Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium Edition (left) and Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard Edition (right). 
The Applications Here's a brief summary of all the products, including the shared components, included in Creative Suite 2. Adobe Photoshop CS2 is a digital imaging application that allows you to retouch images and apply color corrections, as well as combine images, text, and effects. Photoshop CS2 also includes ImageReady CS2, the specialized program for creating web graphics and animations. Photoshop is featured throughout this book. Adobe Illustrator CS2 is a vector-drawing program that you can use to create everything from simple logos to intricate maps, package design, illustrations, technical drawings, and web graphics. You'll find references to Illustrator throughout this book. Adobe InDesign CS2 is a state-of-the-art page layout program with professional type controls and imaging effects. InDesign features are covered in most of the chapters of this book. Adobe GoLive CS2 (Premium only) is web- and mobile-design software that allows you to combine text and graphics for web pages using CSS, XHTML, and SMIL. Some features of GoLive are covered in various chapters; most appear in Chapter 17, "To the Web". Most of the time, though, we'll focus our attention on the print products of the suite. Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 (Premium only) gives you a full set of features for editing, enhancing, and viewing PDF documents. You'll find many references to Acrobat throughout this book, as well as in Chapter 14, "Creating and Using PDF Files". Version Cue CS2 is one of the special shared components of Creative Suite that enhances file management and collaboration between members of a workgroup. We look at Version Cue in-depth in Chapter 13, "Integrating Version Cue into Your Workflow". Adobe Bridge is a new file browser and communications tool that gives you complete control over viewing, arranging, placing, and working with files that you use in Creative Suite. Given its importance as one of the shared components, we've devoted a whole chapter to it (Chapter 3, "View from the Bridge"). Adobe Stock Photos Service is an electronic service that makes it easy to search for and purchase stock photography from some of the leading stock photography providers. The Stock Photos Service is covered in the "Accessing Adobe Stock Photos" section of Chapter 3, "View from the Bridge". Adobe Reader 7.0 is a free PDF file viewer. This product is included as part of Creative Suite to make sure that you can read the manuals and installation instructions without having to download any other software. If you have bought the Premium Edition containing Acrobat Professional 7.0, you probably won't need the free Reader.
InCopy CS2: The "Cousin" to Creative Suite What about InCopy CS2? It's on the same development cycle as Creative Suite 2, but it's not included in the package. What is it? InCopy is a text-editing program that works in tandem with InDesign. While a designer works on the layout for a project, an editor can work simultaneously, editing the copy. InCopy has many features that make it especially useful for editors, such as tracking changes, counting overset lines, and commenting. In addition, unlike with ordinary word processors, editors working with InCopy can see their text in the context of the layout. InCopy is sold separately from InDesign and Creative Suite. See the Adobe web site for more information on purchasing InCopy. |
The Extras Applications are only part of what's in each box. Creative Suite 2 also includes several content CDs that contain valuable extras. Because this content is not automatically installed along with the applications, very possibly you installed your edition of Creative Suite without taking advantage of its wealth of material. Look over the following lists for any files that you would like to use. Then dig out your original installation disks and transfer the files you want to your computer. That way you'll get the full benefits of working with Creative Suite. Guides and Manuals Each Creative Suite 2 box contains a myriad of publications, only one of which is in book form: Adobe Creative Suite 2 Design Guide is a small, printed manual that gives you an overview of what's in the suite as well as instructions for installing the software. It also contains some excellent tutorials that will help you work with the applications. Don't be upset when you look at the size of the Design Guide. What about the application manuals? Sure, Adobe doesn't expect you to work without any official user guides! Fortunately, the user guides are included on the Resources and Extras disks. Here are the guides (as PDF files) found on the Resources and Extras disk, in the Documentation folder: Photoshop CS2 Help is the complete, searchable product documentation (including ImageReady). Illustrator CS2 Help is the complete, searchable product documentation. InDesign CS2 Help is the complete, searchable product documentation. Version Cue ReadMe is a brief guide for installing and using Version Cue. PDF Integration Guide is a brief guide for incorporating PDF files for web pages, electronic file distribution, editorial reviews, printing proofs, prepress, and archiving documents. Color Guide is a self-help guide for managing color workflows within the Creative Suite applications.
If you have the Premium Edition of Creative Suite 2, you will find the following PDF files on the Resources and Extras Disk 2, in the Documentation folder: GoLive Help is the complete, searchable documentation for GoLive CS2. Acrobat 7 Help is a getting-started guide for what's new in Acrobat 7 and learning how to use Acrobat. This is not the complete Acrobat documentation. That file is available by opening Acrobat and choosing Help > Complete Acrobat Documentation.
Printed guides Many people don't like the idea of electronic guides. They'd rather have honest-to-goodness printed manuals they can scribble in, paste sticky notes onto, and dog-ear pages for future reference. If you must have such manuals, you can go to the Adobe online store (http://store.adobe.com/store/products/trainingandsupport/) and purchase the supplemental user guides for Adobe Creative Suite. Be aware, however, that the online Help contains more material than the printed manuals. See "Getting Help," later in this chapter, which describes the online help for the Creative Suite applications. As you're reading the manual, you'll see references to the online Help files. Premium Supplemental User Guides (US$59 for the set) contain separate printed user guides for each of the five main applications in the Premium Edition of Creative Suite 2. Standard Supplemental User Guides (US$49 for the set) contain separate printed user guides for each of the three main applications in the Standard Edition of Creative Suite 2. Point product user guides (US$29 each) are available for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive. There is no printed user guide for Acrobat.
Technical Information The Documentation folder isn't the only place where you can get information about working with Creative Suite 2. Of course, there's this book. In addition, there are several important technical guides and white papers that have been created for working with Creative Suite. You'll find the following PDF files on Resources and Extras disk in the Technical Info > Creative Suite 2 folder: Bridge JavaScript Reference is a reference for how to write JavaScripts for automating Adobe Bridge. Getting Started With Transparency is a brief introduction to the transparency effects found in the Adobe applications. We have included some of this information in Chapter 11, "Transparency," along with additional information on transparency. Designer's Guide to Transparency is an in-depth reference for avoiding production problems when using the transparency features in Adobe applications. Again, some of this information can be found in Chapter 11, "Transparency." Understanding Version Cue is a more detailed look at working with Version Cue. We have included much of this information in Chapter 13, "Integrating Version Cue into Your Workflow," along with additional information on setting up Version Cue workflows. PDFX is a short guide that explains how to create print-standard PDF/X files from the Creative Suite applications. We cover much of this information in Chapter 14, "Creating and Using PDF files," along with addition information on creating PDF/X files.
Each of the individual applications also has a self-named subfolder of technical information in the Technical Info folder on the Resources and Extras disk. These are the files for Photoshop CS2: Photoshop CS2 Scripting guides is a collection of four PDF documents: JavaScript Reference guide, AppleScript Reference guide, Visual Basic Reference guide, and Photoshop Scripting guide.
Technical information files for Illustrator CS2 include the following: Illustrator CS2 SDK is a folder that contains the software developer's kit (SDK) for those who want to create plug-ins for Illustrator. Scripting is a folder that contains the documentation for creating scripts. In the Macintosh version of Creative Suite 2, this folder contains AppleScript and JavaScript documentation. In the Windows version, it contains Visual Basic and JavaScript documentation. This folder also contains sample AppleScripts, JavaScripts, and Visual Basic scripts. These scripts are also installed as part of Illustrator's Scripting folder. White Papers is a folder that contains two background papers. The first, AICSXMLGrammar, explains the syntax used for working with XML in Illustrator. The second, Illustrator New Features, is self-explanatory.
InDesign CS2 has the following technical information files: InCopy CS2 Plug-ins contains the plug-ins necessary for working with InCopy. Don't let the name of the folder throw you off. While most of these plug-ins are useful in an InDesign/InCopy workflow, some features are useful within InDesign alone. Install the plug-ins, and then read the InCopy section of the InDesign Help files. InDesign PDF Automation for Acrobat 7 contains plug-ins and documentation for setting up InDesign to work automatically with Acrobat. Scripting contains a wealth of information on how to create AppleScripts and JavaScripts (Mac) and Visual Basic and JavaScripts (Windows) for InDesign. There is also a folder of sample scripts. Unlike Illustrator scripts, these scripts are not installed in the InDesign application folder. Every week we meet a student who asks how to do a particular task that would be solved instantly by using one of these scripts! InDesign CS2 Printing Guide is a comprehensive resource for ensuring that your documents print correctly. We cover much of this information in Chapter 16, "Preflighting and Printing," along with additional information on printing. Tagged Text is a list of all the tags (codes) used for styling text that is imported from databases and from other applications that don't have paragraph or character styles. Using tags, you can import text that comes in completely formatted.
Here are the technical information files for Adobe Customer Support: If you're working with GoLive, you'll find its technical information on the CS2 Prem Content CD (Disk 2) in the Technical Info folder: GoLive SDK is a folder that contains the software developer's kit (SDK) for those who want to create plug-ins for Illustrator. White Papers is a folder that holds the GoLive Mobile Intro PDF. This document explains how to use GoLive for creating content and interactive applications for mobile phones.
OpenType Fonts When you install Adobe Creative Suite, more than 160 OpenType fonts are installed. We discuss this in the "Unified OpenType Support" section of Chapter 6, "Type Magic." Goodies Who can resist goodies? In Creative Suite 2, goodies are the extras that fall into many different categories. They might be textures and plug-ins for Photoshop, clip art for Illustrator, or design templates for InDesign. You'll find them in the self-named product folders in the Goodies folder on the Resources and Extras disk. Here are the goodies for Photoshop: Adobe Type Library is a PDF file with information on Adobe Type Products. We cover much of this information in Chapter 6, "Type Magic." Channel Mixer Presets is a folder of the presets that you can use with Photoshop's Channel Mixer dialog box. Custom File Info Panels contains information on how to customize the metadata that appears in the Macintosh and Windows file-information dialog boxes. Although included in the Photoshop CS2 Goodies, this information can also be used for Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and GoLive. We cover an introduction to metadata in "Mastering Metadata" in Chapter 3, "View from the Bridge." Hi Res RGB Textures contains images that can be used to create textured background. Textures for Lighting Effects contains images that can be with the Photoshop Lighting Effects filter. Web Photo Gallery Templates contains a wide assortment of additional templates you can use with the Photoshop Web Photo Gallery dialog box (File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery). You can also modify these templates to create your own Web Photo Gallery designs. lynda.com Web Swatches contains an assortment of swatches that can be used for web designs. We cover working with swatches in Chapter 10, "Colors and Color Management" and web graphics in Chapter 17, "To the Web." Optional plug-ins are some added plug-ins for new file formats, filters, and scanners.
Illustrator goodies include the following: Clip Art and Stock Photos is a folder that contains an incredible assortment of more than 1,600 vector clip art files and 100 beautiful stock photos. Sandee, who is a real clip-art and stock-photo junkie, is thrilled with these! 6d Art Pen Brushes is an Illustrator file containing special vector-artwork brushes that have been created to work especially with the Wacom 6D Art Pen. For more information, see the Wacom web site (www.wacom.com/art_pen).
InDesign goodies include the following: Adobe Fonts contains the fonts that are included with InDesign. You don't have to install these fonts, as they are installed along with the applications. InDesign CS2 Sample Files is a great resource for beginners and experienced designers. There are sample files for creating a newsletter, interactive presentation, community newspaper, annual report, and book chapter. These files not only offer good design inspiration, they also show how the professionals create their files.
GoLive goodies are found on the Resources and Extras Disk 2: Extend Scripts is a collection of 10 extensions for working with GoLive. MenuMachine isn't really a goodie, but a PDF document describing a commercial product for building multilevel menus in GoLive.
Acrobat goodies also are found on the Resources and Extras Disk 2: Extending Acrobat is a collection of web links that give you more information about working with Acrobat. Test Files is a collection of 16 documents that explain various Acrobat features, such as OCR (optical character recognition), the touchup tools, and features in PDF 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 files. These files will be great to use as you read Chapter 14, "Creating and Using PDF Files."
Last, but certainly not least, you'll find a separate, extra CD with a Total Training Video Workshop. This video workshop contains more than 60 minutes of professional training with onscreen lessons on various components of Creative Suite. |
