XtremeCamera

There is much excitement out there with digital photographers, web developers, graphic designers, and illustrators about the upcoming Adobe Creative Suite 4. This incredible suite of applications is expected to ship sometime this month, and XtremeCamera had the privilege to see and hear all about it during an Adobe press event. While much of what we learned is under NDA (non-disclosure agreement) there is one terrific application we can talk about. This little application is going to make upgrading to CS4 very inviting, because with it you can better manage your digital workflow with the amazing new Photoshop CS4.

Photoshop Configurator

Adobe’s new development platforms, FLEX and AIR, have one of the quickest adoption rates in recent years. While you could argue that they are still in their infancy stages you can witness the power of FLEX by bopping over to photoshop.com, a web site photo-sharing experience made with FLEX. After signing up (its free) and uploading a few photos, you’ll begin to realize that web-based applications will soon be every bit as powerful as desktop applications. (XtremeCamera is being completely rebuilt in FLEX and should be ready in mid-2009)

I bring up photoshop.com and FLEX/AIR only to emphasis the power of the platform. In advance of CS4 Adobe has shared with us a very powerful AIR application that will, I am sure, become one of the most used apps for those using Photoshop CS4.

If your digital photography workflow begins and ends with Photoshop you’ve no doubt experienced the massive amount of tools, commands, Photoshop actions, widgets and scripts during your working ‘sessions’. It can get quite extensive, and while every aspect of Photoshop is at one time or another extremely important to your workflow there are times when you need only a certain number of tools, actions, etc. Having a way to create a panel of just the tools, scripts, etc that you need for your current session, or future sessions, is exactly what Photoshop Configurator is all about.

Creating a panel of tools, actions, scripts, and whatever else you might need is as easy as creating a new panel with Configurator and dragging elements to it, organizing it the way you want it, even size it to your needs, and simply saving it to the Plugins folder. Once created you can share your panel with co-workers, locally or globally, so that when sharing the work on a project all the items you need to access quickly are there, and are there for everyone involved.

Photoshop Configurator will only work with Photoshop CS4 and if you wish to share your panel with others they too will need Photoshop CS4. Without a doubt this handy tool will quickly become something every Photoshop CS4 user will adopt and come to depend on as a valuable time saver in their digital workflow. It will be especially useful to digital photographers because of the certain components we use in our workflow. Configurator is going to make our work lives a little better, less stressful, and a whole lot more productive. Best of all, it comes with all editions of Creative Suite 4.

Look for a series of reviews in the coming weeks for all the applications that make up Adobe Creative Suite 4.

Julia Barnes