Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS2 [OLD VERSION]

by Adobe

Product Features

• Unified design environment
• Simplified file versioning
• Greater control over images in Adobe Photoshop CS2
• New power for vectors in Adobe Illustrator CS2
• Rich, versatile layouts with Adobe InDesign CS2

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00080DPCW
• Item model number: 28040290
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 4, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,124 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From Amazon.com

More than just an upgrade to the world's leading imaging, design, and print production software, Adobe's Creative Suite 2 will change the way you harness your creativity. Creative Suite 2 is a fully integrated design and workflow environment that is engineered to help creative professionals work faster, smarter and with better results. Robust new tools in Photoshop CS2, tighter integration between Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2, new object styles in InDesign CS2, and the revolutionary streamlining and collaboration offered by Adobe Bridge make Creative Suite 2 Adobe's biggest release yet. Other top features include the ability to establish color settings across all the components of Adobe Creative Suite, access to robust help services, and easier control of, and access to, historical and alternate file versions.

The premium edition of Adobe Creative Suite 2 combines full new versions of Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, GoLive CS2, and Acrobat 7.0 Professional software with new Version Cue CS2, Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Stock Photos.

Adobe Photoshop CS2
New tools in Photoshop CS2 give you more creative options, better file handling and batch processing of digital camera RAW-format files, plus complete integration with Adobe Bridge (see below) for a seamless workflow. Designed to fit the way you work, Photoshop CS2 is only limited by your imagination. Top new features include:

The new Vanishing Point tool lets you edit and enhance images to match the source image's perspective.

• Vanishing Point: Achieve amazing results in a fraction of the time with the groundbreaking Vanishing Point, which lets you clone, brush, and paste elements that automatically match the perspective of any image area.
• Multiple layer control: Select and move, group, transform, and warp objects more intuitively by clicking and dragging directly on the canvas. Easily align objects with Smart Guides.
• Smart Objects: Perform nondestructive scaling, rotating, and warping of raster and vector graphics with Smart Objects. Even preserve the editability of high-resolution vector data from Adobe Illustrator software.
• Multi-image digital camera raw file processing: Accelerate your raw file workflow with simultaneous processing of multiple images while you continue working. Import images into your choice of formats, including Digital Negative (DNG); enjoy automatic adjustments to exposure, shadows, and brightness and contrast; and much more.
• Image Warp: Easily create packaging mock-ups or other dimensional effects by wrapping an image around any shape or stretching, curling, and bending an image using Image Warp.

Adobe Illustrator CS2
Return to your love of vector drawing and illustration with Illustrator CS2. The big news here is a new bitmap conversion tool that lets you convert images to scalable, editable artwork in seconds. This version is designed to make it easy to find the tools you need quickly, while allowing you to customize your workspace to suit your way of getting things done. With Illustrator CS2 it's also easier than ever to take your graphics to the printed page, Web sites, video, mobile devices--virtually anywhere you want to go. Top new features include:

Quickly convert your bitmap images, such as scanned sketches, to scalable, vector-based paths.

• Live Trace: Quickly and accurately convert photos, scans, or other bitmap images to editable and scalable vector paths with the Live Trace feature.
• Live Paint: Apply color to any region or edge and use overlapping paths to create new shapes with the Live Paint tool, which intuitively colors artwork and automatically detects and corrects gaps.
• Control palette: Discover new features and find existing features faster in the context-sensitive Control Palette. Accessing selection-based tools from a single location eliminates the need for multiple palettes.
• Custom workspaces: Work more efficiently and optimize your screen area using custom workspaces that display only the palettes you need for a specific task. Save, share, or access any workspace at any time or use workspace templates.
• Photoshop layer comp support: Control the visibility of layer comps in linked, embedded, or opened Photoshop files from within Illustrator.

Adobe InDesign CS2
With new object styles and vastly-improved layer controls, InDesign CS2 offers print publishing professionals powerful new tools. Improved text and graphics handling and greater integration with other Adobe software is built in, too, allowing you to output your files with complete confidence and deliver projects faster. Top new features include:

Experiment with different designs by selectively displaying layers and layer comps in Photoshop files, as well as layers in Adobe PDF files.

• Object styles: Apply and globally update object-level formatting more efficiently using object styles. Save a wide range of graphic, text, and frame-level attributes as object styles to create more consistent designs and speed up production tasks.
• Adobe Photoshop and Adobe PDF layer support: Selectively display layers and layer comps in Photoshop files, and layers in Adobe PDF files, to experiment with different design options or use multiple variations of a file in your layout--all while linking to a single file.
• InDesign snippets: Easily export InDesign objects as snippets, which can be shared with colleagues or reused in other documents. When you place or drag a snippet into a layout, InDesign recreates the original objects, their formatting, and their relative positioning on the page.
• Adobe InCopy CS2 assignments: Assign only the elements of a document that an editor using Adobe InCopy CS2 software needs to work on while you're designing the rest--whether that's specific frames on a page, frames on one or more spreads, or all the frames in a document.
• Save backwards to InDesign CS: Export your InDesign CS2 document to the InDesign Interchange (INX) format and open it in InDesign CS for sharing with people still working in the previous version.

Adobe GoLive CS2
With GoLIve CS2, you have the power of an easy-to-use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) Web design tool that is compatible with the latest Web standards. Take full advantage of CSS and take your ideas to new places with powerful mobile authoring tools based on CSS/XHTML, SVG Tiny, SMIL, and other global standards. What's more, like the other components of the Creative Suite, GoLive is tightly integrated with other applications so you can work efficiently. Top new features include:

GoLive CS2 is ready to power your designs for mobile devices.

• Enhanced live rendering: Preview changes to Web and mobile content in a real-time, integrated engine built on the Opera browser that supports Small-Screen Rendering (SSR).
• Simple visual tools to build and edit CSS-based pages: Build Web pages that conform to open standards using innovative new visual CSS workflows based on the CSS Editor and CSS prebuilt block objects.
• Visual CSS authoring for mobile devices: Easily author and validate standards-compliant CSS content for mobile devices using simple visual tools.
• Visual SVG-t inspection and authoring for mobile: View SVG-t content in split-view interfaces, enabling art tree, source, and XML outline views and access to an animation scrubbing timeline for rapid development.
• Total site management: Track and manage everything in your site, from assets to links, uploading content using Secure FTP and WebDAV via SSH or SSL. Easily synchronize local and remote files.

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional
Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional is the total PDF delivery solution, offering the fastest, most flexible way to produce and deliver secure, high-quality Adobe PDF documents for client review and print output. Top new features include:

Use Acrobat's powerful print preflighting tools to preview designs before they go to press. Clients with the free Adobe Reader 7.0 can also add comments to your PDF files during design review.

• Inclusive electronic reviews: Use Acrobat 7.0 Professional to enable anyone with free Adobe Reader 7.0 software to add comments to Adobe PDF files during design reviews.
• Improved preflighting of Adobe PDF files: Check for problems in Adobe PDF files using the improved preflighting tool--which now supports droplets for automation--and share preflight reports as comments.
• Powerful print production tools: Correct common problems in Adobe PDF files--such as converting colors, previewing separations, remapping spot colors, flattening transparency, and fixing hairline rules--without having to recreate the file.
• Ink coverage, rich black detection, and overprint warnings: Minimize prepress errors with new warnings for total ink coverage, rich black detection, and overprints.
• Support for the latest standards: Create Adobe PDF files that are compliant with the PDF/X-1a:2003 and PDF/X-3:2003 print production standards, used for prepress document exchanges, and that include JDF product definitions with details about the jobs you're submitting for print production.

Version Cue CS2
Tired of confusing filename conventions and versioning nightmares? Bring an end to all of that with Version Cue CS2, the file-version manager that's built into the Creative Suite. Find files quickly using extensive search capabilities, create alternates to show as comps, and manage versions within Adobe Bridge. With Version Cue, the right file is always right at hand. Top new features include:

Version Cue CS2 makes it easy to find, link and share your design elements.

• Productivity made simple: Find files fast, track versions across applications, link files together, and share them in creative collaboration without fear of overwriting someone else's work.
• Shared project information: Actively track the status of project files and enable this information to be easily shared across workgroups.
• Simplified sharing for small workgroups: Easily share files with others within the Version Cue Workspace and keep your files safe without fear of them being overwritten. View the status of each file to know who is working on what file.
• Automatic file naming: Say good-bye to awkward filenames such as "brochure_final_final3.indd." Instead, you can name a file to suit your preferences and let Version Cue handle the version tracking without the need for a naming convention.
• File version notification: Receive helpful reminders while updating versions or placing photos and illustrations in layouts.

Adobe Bridge
At the heart of Adobe Creative Suite 2 lies Adobe Bridge, the new navigational control center built to join together all of the Creative Suite components. (Adobe Bridge is also available separately in Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, and GoLive CS2 software.) Based on the File Browser introduced in Photoshop 7.0, Adobe Bridge goes a step further by providing centralized access to your suite project files, applications, and color spaces, and other settings. With file organization and sharing, plus Adobe Stock Photos, at your fingertips all the time, Adobe Bridge is where you keep your ideas moving. Top features include:

Adobe Bridge CS2 intelligently links all of the elements of the Creative Suite together, so you can work more efficiently.

• Organized assets: Quickly organize, browse, locate, and preview the assets you need every day--Photoshop images, Illustrator graphics, InDesign layouts, Adobe PDF files, GoLive Web pages, and a variety of standard graphics files--with visual previews and scalable thumbnails as you work.
• Project and file sharing: Work collaboratively and access multiple versions as well as alternate renditions of your files through Version Cue CS2 in Adobe Bridge. Actively track the status of project files and enable this information to be easily shared across workgroups.
• Accessibility anywhere: Jump to Adobe Bridge from within Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, or GoLive CS2, work in it as a standalone application, or have it float onscreen as a palette.
• Powerful file searching: Search for files on a hard drive or across a network using extensive metadata information, including attributes such as all files that use a certain PANTONE color or set of fonts.
• Convenient access to stock photos: Browse and search royalty-free images from multiple stock photo agencies using Adobe Stock Photos in one convenient, familiar location. Purchase images from several agencies in a single shopping cart, and manage your imagery without ever leaving Adobe Creative Suite 2.

Adobe Stock Photos
Need royalty-free stock photos now? Adobe Stock Photos delivers hundreds of thousands of them, right from Adobe Bridge. Adobe has teamed up with top stock photo providers to deliver a comprehensive, centralized place to get all the images you need. Top features include:

Search over 230,000 images from multiple stock libraries at once from Adobe Bridge.

• Fast image searching: Search over 230,000 images from multiple stock libraries at once from Adobe Bridge. Adobe Stock Photos tracks your search path automatically, so returning to recent searches is easy.
• Hassle-free image creation: Double-click comp images to open watermark-free versions directly in Photoshop. Or drag and drop images from your favorite folders into InDesign or Illustrator.
• Simple image management: Don't worry about tracking image ID numbers. The Adobe Stock Photos service automatically retains the data associated with each comp image--even after editing.
• Instant purchases: Purchase directly from within the document containing your comp images. Buy all your images at once--even if they originate from multiple providers.

Product Description

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium software is a unified design environment that combines full new versions of Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, GoLive CS2, and Acrobat 7.0 Professional software with new Version Cue CS2, the Adobe Bridge file browser, and Adobe Stock Photos. Delivering the next level of integration in creative software, plus consistent color and Adobe PDF file creation across components, Adobe Creative Suite 2 enables you to realize your ideas anywhere—in print, on the Web, or on mobile devices.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A cost effective way to get the industry standards., October 11, 2005

By 

mhnstr (Christchurch, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS2 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat are the industry standard in their respective applications and purchasing Creative Suite is more cost effective than purchasing each component individually.

One point to pay close attention to is the RAM requirement for this software. If you want to run just one application at a time, you need a minimum of 384MB. To run more than one application, you need at least 512MB with 1GB recommended by Adobe. CS2 checks the RAM on installation and will not even install on a computer with less than 384MB.

Another point is that you are not buying the software. You are licensing it from Adobe and agreeing to their terms and conditions. Part of the agreement is that you can make a limited number of copies of your CD's and that you can install CS2 on a second computer such as a laptop as long as you don't run it at the same time as your primary computer. I had planned to do this, but ran into the RAM limitation on my laptop which is an older machine. It can run Photoshop 5.0 by itself, but not CS2. I tried to install Photoshop CS only instead of the entire CS2 package but it would not accept the registration number. Adobe support told me that installing individual components of CS2 is forbidden and will not work. You can only install the entire package. This will not affect your primary computer since it is what you are buying the software for in the first place. But in this case, I may have been better off just buying the parts that I need and can use on the laptop rather than paying to upgrade my RAM.

Once installed, Adobe CUE CS2 is programmed to start when you turn on your computer. However, you can stop it from doing so if you don't want it hogging all of your RAM when you are not using CS2.

57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No substitute for Adobe Creative Suite, July 12, 2005

By 

J. Yonk "J Dziner" (Washington state) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS2 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

As a graphic designer, I have to work with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat on a daily basis, and Adobe keeps coming out with better and more efficient products.

CS2 helps to streamline workflow with Adobe Bridge, and new features such as Live Trace and Live Paint in Illustrator CS2 have saved me a lot of time on multiple projects.

There is really no substitute for the Adobe Creative Suite. Photoshop and Illustrator are industry standard and InDesign is starting to become a front-runner against Quark Express for professional page layout design. Don't fool yourself by buying Microsoft or Corel graphic design programs, as they aren't industry standard, and you might run into more headaches finding a commercial printer or graphic designer who can utilize your files.

Also, take note that the Creative Suite is not for beginners or photo enthusiasts. If you are looking to begin your venture into the graphic design world, I would recommend downloading the 30-day trial versions from Adobe's web site before forking out $1100. Or if you just want to edit home photos, think about Photoshop Elements as a substitute.

And remember that with graphic design, the key is learning how to use basic design principles and design well. If you can do that, then you are ready to move onto using tools such as the Adobe Creative Suite.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you're running a RAID configuration with this watch out!, January 8, 2006

By 

J. M. Dessler - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Creative Suite Premium CS2 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Well it finally happened. My luck finally ran out with this newest version of Adobe's Creative Suite software. I'd read horror stories in the past about the software activation causing problems on certain user's machines, but I hadn't experienced any issues myself until I upgraded to the new CS2 version.

Everything was fine until my DVD-RW drive went bad and had to be replaced. That started what would be a long, irritating chain reaction of events that took me a couple of days to get resolved. Once the DVD-RW drive was replaced, I kept getting prompts to re-activate my software because "my system configuration had changed." The software couldn't do the repair activation automatically, so I had to call for assistance. I talked to a tech support representative and she gave me the activation code to supposedly fix the problem and it seemed to work until the next day.

When I arrived at the office the next day and launched Photoshop I was asked to re-activate the software again. I was shocked, but went ahead and clicked the activation button. It seemed to work, but I had to do the same thing when I launched InDesign and Acrobat as well. Then I noticed something strange. When I rebooted the machine after lunch I was prompted to re-activate all the software once again. I knew something wasn't right so I called Adobe's tech support. After talking with a few support agents, it was discovered that the RAID configuration on my workstation was causing a conflict with Adobe's activation software. I was issued a patch and so far the problem hasn't re-occurred.

I'm getting a little tired of all this activation crap. All it seems to do is cause problems for honest, legitimate users. The pirates aren't affected because they are running cracked versions with the activation taken out anyway.