Looks like we will not have to wait for the 23rd of September (or the 24th of September if you are on this side of the world) to see Adobe’s CS4 Event because all the information on the new Crative Suite is now available on Adobe’s website! CS4 has new version of Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Fireworks, After Effects, InDesign, and other members of the Creative Suite. New features of the suite include 3D painting in Photoshop and Bones and Inverse Kinematics in Flash. The demos of the applications are still not available nor are the actual release dates but they are expected to ship next month. The Suite is available in the same Design, Web, and Production bundles (Premium and Standard) that were introduced in the last release. Check out all the details on Adobe’s website.

Artweaver is a Freeware application that includes most of Adobe Photoshop’s basic tools and a similar interface that previous photoshop users can easily become accustomed to. If your looking forward to using a lighter photo editing application, Artweaver offers various selection tools, brushes, shape tools, color palettes, filters, tablet support and much more. You can download Artweaver for free, the installation file size is only 8.8 MBs in size and different language packs are available for download as well.

[via DownloadSquad]

Digital Web Magazine posted a nice article comparing Photoshop to Fireworks through a debate by two groups of designers each supporting one of the programs. Photoshop has always been the industry standard for digital image editing, even though it was primarily made for creating print material, while Fireworks on the other hand was specifically made for creating web friendly graphics. It is possible in theory to do almost everything you do in one of these in the other, so which one should you use?

I have personally been a Fireworks user for years, I had never gotten into Photoshop and Fireworks never gave me a reason to force myself to go and try and learn Photoshop seriously. Fireworks was in fact made just for web design and it does that one thing extremely well. In addition to this, the introduction of CS3 has provided tighter integration between all of Adobe’s Creative Suite, so it is now easier than ever to juggle from one program to the next so you do not need to use Photoshop just because you are working on a project with other people using Photoshop.

What about you guys, do you use Photoshop or Fireworks, and why?

Red Gaint’s the producers Knoll Light Factory has developed a new software called Radium Glow which produces sophisticated glimmer and glow on a whole new level, unlike the normal blur glow filters. Radium Glow 1.0 gives its users pinpoint control over the glow, with editable shapes that can generate precise outlines or create glimmering points. Its highlight features include Intelligent area selection, Genuine glow plug-ins and Shape library. You can read more about Radium Glow here. It is also up for sale here for $99.99.

[Via CGIndia.org]

Adobe released yesterday the public beta of the next edition of its image prototyping application Fireworks CS4, web development application Dreamweaver CS4, and sound editing tool Soundbooth. Major enhancements in Fireworks CS4 include a new UI, CSS export, PDF export, support for Adobe’s new Adobe Type font engine, and AIR authoring tools. Dreamweaver CS4 on the other and adds a new live viewer for better display of content within Dreamweaver, a new related file manager for CSS, JavaScript, and XML navigation, enhanced CSS functionality, support for Photoshop Smart Objects, and Adobe AIR authoring tools as well.

These beta applications can be downloaded at Adobe Labs, holders of CS3 licenses can use the beta versions indefinitely until the official version comes out while non-CS3 license holders can try the applications for two days only. Check out Adobe Labs for more info.

VectorDesign is a program similar to Adobe Illustrator and Freehand developed by TweakerSoft, it has recently won the MacWord best of Show Award for its simplicity and power. VectorDesign features all the basic features of vector tools such as smart shapes, bezier creation tools, boolean tool for combining shapes, and even a tool for conversion of raster images to bezier. An interesting feature of VectorDesign is the integration of a Flickr browser to easy search and insert images.

VectorDesign is available for the Mac OS only, it can be purchased for $70. Click here to learn more about it and to download the applications trial.

Aviary is a set of web based applications for creating all sorts of media. The concept of this suite of creative content creation tools is similar to Picnik, Google Docs, and Adobe Kuler, all of which are rich internet applications (RIAs) to be used within your browser. RIAs provide the possibility to run the application on any machine that has a proper browser and an internet connection without the need to carry your data along with you or even install the applications on the computer you work on. The nature of web applications creates unlimited opportunities for collaboration at real time as featured in Google Docs.

Aviary takes RIAs one step further by providing relatively more powerful applications than what we have seen before, these applications include an image editor, a vector editor, a 3D modeling tool, a video editor, a music generator and other creative tools that make up its 14 application-suite. The video below illustrates the capability of Phoenix, Aviary’s image editor:

I personally use many web applications and Google Docs and Picnik are some of my favourites. I find Aviary’s project very interesting and think that it shows us a glimpse of how the future should be.Aviary is currently in private beta and invitations are floating around the internet. You can submit your email to the invitation queue and learn more about Aviary from their official website.

Many of the tech corporate identities we see everyday were not born that way and had evolved over time, one like Adobe’s logo might have not changed drastically much since it was made, but did you know that Apple’s first logo had a drawing of Isaac Newton under an apple tree or that Nokia’s original logo had a fish? Neatorama posted a nice article on how the logos of several of the biggest names in technology evolved over time. Check it out here.

[via TechCrunch]

The CGSociety.com – part of Balistic Publishing – announced the winners of their latest CG competition. The topic of the competition was ‘Strange Behavior’ - “The unexpected can delight or shock. It can be exciting or frightening. It’s often funny. It’s never boring!” With over than US$90,000 worth of prizes, 15 winning entries were chosen by previous CGS competition winners, and Jinko Gotoh, Film Producer; Dan Curry, Film producer/director and Paul Gulino, Head of Screenwriting at Chapman film school. ” With so many outstanding entries the judging was difficult, but the jury selected the 15 entries that stood out as truly world class.” Mark Snoswell said, President of the CGSociety. To view the winning artworks, visit CGSociety.