Well, the strangest thing of the whole event was the CS4 logo. The webscast was overly professional; it looked like a television show, with fancy animated introductions, realtime cut-aways, great lighting and funny head-mounted microphones.

Overall, Adobe is driving customer expectation. They are making web users expect more from websites, and video on the web is extending website visits to 25 minutes in the case example of BBC, 8 times longer than with BBC’s previous website. They spent a good amount of talk-time on creating communal viewing experiences by moving web content from the PC to the living room entertainment center. Their right of course, TV is being web-ified.

The new CS4 Collections focus on three work flows. Converting print designers into multimedia designers, cross-program integration with video collection, and the “web” collection, which seems to be the real focus of the company.

Ok, enough of my cynical banter, here’s the good stuff:

After Effects:
+ Added Mocha AE, a much better motion tracker
+ Import textured 3D models from Photoshop (see below)
+ Better integration with other video collection apps

Photoshop:
+ Wrap large images around 3D models. Pretty neat.
+ Content Aware Resizing, amazing!
(great video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFCV2spKtg)

Flash:
+ After Effects style timeline
+ IK Bone Systems similar to the Puppet Tool
+ 2.5D animation

Well, that’s about it. Despite their bad humor the features in Flash & Photoshop are amazing. Someday they will buy a 3D program, then we’ll see some real video enhancements.

Thanks!