Newly-developed and enticing the marketplace, Adobe released its plans for its next master collection — CS5. Announced on April 12, potential customers were led to a video at Adobe.com to see what to expect from the new software. The site introduced to customers some of its new changes and adjustments. For SCAD students, the new program has not been issued for an installation date to computers as of yet. What is certain is that the student body has started expressing their praise and concerns for the new software.
One of CS5’s new features allows the user to point and click to correct errors, build websites without code and crop and paste, which may have taken longer to fix in previous versions. For the technologically-challenged, the possibilities seem endless with this new user-friendly software.
Julian Young a third-year graphic design student, has some reservations regarding the new system, stating, “because of those features… it is going to be hard to distinguish the real people who actually edit photos from the ones that just [edit] photos with a click of a button. Yeah, it is a good user-friendly feature, but added on to a professional program like Adobe is a wrong turn, especially for [SCAD students] like us. Now we have to try to go against the ones who use those tools with a click-of-a-button feature, versus the people who actually do the work. If Adobe is able to mimic it, so you can’t tell the difference, that’s going to be a problem.” From this statement, the question of who the real designers are becomes the main focus. Taking a cue from Young and his conflicting thoughts, some students are harboring a slight fear for their burgeoning professions.
Forkparty.com describes the scene in detail, “Adobe [has] replaced the countless hours of sampling from the background, merging with the clone tool and sliding around different opacities, with one single button. No company manager [is] going to hire designers ever again. They [will] look at a video demonstration of Photoshop and say, ‘Pff, I can do that.’”
Some students and companies seem to be in a state of panic. Prisca Raymond and Bryant Stokes, both freshmen and fashion marketing students, ogle the computer screen while watching the Adobe launch. Raymond starts in a low tone, “CS4 is more manual, and you have to know your way around it. [Whereas] here, [with CS5] you’re skipping, like, two or three steps to get one thing done which is pretty good. For somebody going from CS4 to CS5, I can see why they may be frustrated with it, though.” Students including Raymond and Stokes are just learning CS4 and will now have to learn CS5’s new features as well.
Stokes, throughout the launch segment, maintained a simple “wow.” He agrees for the most part with Raymond, “I haven’t used CS4 very much, but seeing CS5 has gotten me excited for the Creative Suite. [I am also excited to know] that if I want a simple website or newsletter, I can bring things in from Illustrator and Photoshop and just drop them in this new “Catalyst” thing, which is new for somebody just getting into the creative suite.”
The “Catalyst thing” to which Stokes refers is Adobe’s Flash Catalyst CS5, “a new professional design tool that lets users create web application interfaces and design interactivity without writing code,” Jackie Dove, a technology writer, editor, and software reviewer from Macworld.com, states. On Dove’s blog, John Loiacono, senior vice president and general manager of Creative Solutions at Adobe, observes that “Adobe is committed to driving innovation on the web by providing the best tools to designers and developers.” He continues, stating, “By bringing together the reach of the Flash Platform runtimes with the power of the Flash Platform tools integrated in Creative Suite 5, designers and developers can collaborate more effectively, reducing the time required to deliver the compelling applications and content that users now expect on the web and mobile devices.”
So, why is everyone in such fear over the program, if the designers say the software is helpful? Raymond and Stokes answer the question directly: “You, as a business professional are using the same tools as your customers. It presents a problem of how creative do I have to be and what tools am I using to put me at the platform that I am the business professional and you are the customer.” Raymond adds, “it challenges you as a business professional to put out better work than the customer.” Stokes continues, “Now, you have to find more tools; you want something the customer doesn’t have. That is why they come to you as the professional.”
For Adobe, countless buyers have already signed up to buy the program in advance and are waiting by their mailboxes for the new “click-and-fix” tool. The verdict is still out on whether this software will be the next great thing for SCAD students or if we will be playing violins in the rain to a tragic loss of the design professional.