Intro to Adobe

Hello Friends -

Adobe is by far the most powerful production suite on the market today. You can do everything from create your own custom animations to creating banners and logos for sites. The products of Adobe's that most people are familiar with are Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. Each is the leader in their respective categories.

Flash is great for animations as well as product display if you are trying to add a little spice to your website. With some of the newer features in CS2 & CS3 you can do some pretty amazing things. Personally I am a fan of CS3 more so than CS2 for the simple fact of ActionScript 3.

ActionScript 3 was introduced in Flash CS3 and this version of ActionScript is more like actual programming than ActionScript 2. The learning curve for this language is a little greater and the code requirements are more strict than ActionScript 2. But the good news is that if you are happy with ActionScript 2 you do not have to learn ActionScript 3 b/c ActionScript 2 is available on Cs3 & Cs4 versions of Flash. I'm not sure how long they willl keep it around but as long as it's available and you are more comfortable with it you might as well keep using it.

For people more interested in animation dealing with Flash I have come across a great site to help you really get the most out of Flash. The site is CartoonSmart.com. They have a large selection of Flash tips and videos to help you achieve the results you are looking for. If you are looking more along the lines of creating nice websites and using Flash to create a portfolio I would suggest checking out LearnFlash.com .

One of my favorite new features of CS3 is the integration aspect. With Flash CS3 you can load Flash swf files right into your PowerPoint presentation. That's right if you have a Powerpoint presentation and want to add a little flare to it you can add your swf document from Flash right into your presentation. Just make sure you save the Flash file in the same file/folder with your PowerPoint presentation and upload away. You will be guaranteed an "A" or your next homework assignment or really amaze your clients for that next business meeting.