Adobe Creative Suite (CS) 4 Malaysia Launch

Last week I attended the Adobe Creative Suite (CS) 4 Malaysia launch at Shangri-La hotel. If I had to describe the launch in a single phrase; it’s not only cool stuff but really great stuff. I missed the earlier part of the launch due to a business networking event. But the rest of the energetic launch definitely made up for it – especially the creative evangelists; Tim Cole, Karl Soule and Paul Burnett.

I’m not going to dwell into all 16 Adobe applications; better known as the Adobe Masters Collection, as what I want to share is my first experience coming an Adobe Malaysia launching event. So you won’t find me talking a lot about the new cool and great features. But, you’ll be learning how to make an Adobe fleece jacket reach to the other end of the hall.

At the time me and my friend (Jackie Chan) entered the hall, Tim was already finishing up on the cool stuff Adobe Illustrator CS4 is prepared to offer. Time ran short (or, fast) but I still found the new gradient tool in Adobe Illustrator CS4 cool. My attention to Adobe InDesign CS4 was mildly interesting since I rarely use it. However, after the coffee break I was looking more forward to Tim’s presentation on the all-new Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Then, here came to me the best reason why every Malaysia designer should attend a launch like this. You’d learn more of the cool stuff faster than reading a book or playing with the new software later. Plus, you get the additional benefit of a creative, creative evangelist who’s bound to entertain you.

After lunch it was a date with Karl, who brought us video, video and video! Now I’m not a video evangelist, but by the time Karl had presented half of the new cool stuff I was already thinking; why didn’t I major in video? Adobe has done wonders with Dynamic Link and it has improved the workflow of the Adobe Creative Suite by leaps and bounds.

And thanks to Karl for the 15-seconds of fame, I got myself a freebie – Adobe fleece jacket. :D

But the show must go on. So after another coffee break, it was time for the web creative evangelist; Paul Burnett. When Paul came on, his sense of humour was a lot different than Tim and Karl because Paul isn’t American – he’s Australian. All of the evangelist were quirky but I’d have to say Paul was more open with the floor. He had something like this to say in the beginning:

You know what? I just realized I can’t get your attention unless I’ve some stuff beside me. *puts Adobe freebies beside him*

Also, Paul introduced the ‘flying Adobe goodies’ into the hall. While freebies were flying, Paul was also almost all the time on his feet moving around. Well, I guess that’s what over excessive use of the Adobe Flash CS4 can do to you. :P

And I have to say this, I’ve fallen in love with Flash all over again. The Adobe Flash CS4 animation timeline has been totally re-written, there is 3D depth now, deco tool (easy cloning) AND…oh-ho-ho-ho, you’re gonna love this; Inverse Kinematics (IK) or better referred to as bone structure.

Imagine a 2D construction crane. Now, all you have to do is click and drag to create the bone structure. Then from there, you’ve created a movable crane arm with your mouse. WITHOUT writing a single line of code! As Paul would say, now that is great.

Other than the creative evangelists, 2 lucky people walked away with an Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection worth more than RM10,000. Yes, 10 freaking grand! Sigh, it would’ve come in handy for me to not use but create more startup capital.

Oh well, the Adobe Creative Suite (CS) 4 Malaysia Launch was still awesome and I’m looking forward to the next one. Not only for more quirky creative evangelists but also to meet up with people like Muid, mclelun, rames, smashpop (won 1 of the Adobe CS 4 Master collection!), technophile, doinkz_gaara and Hermainie.