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September 28, 2006

Over 70 members attended our September 28 Boston IDUG meeting, which was held in the Trustees Room on the 11th floor of the Tower Building of MassArt. Not only does this room have a much better view, but the smaller venue also made it feel more like a social gathering, and members mingled with greater ease.

James Alexander, Director of Adobe Stock Photos®, began the evening with an overview of the stock photography market. He explained the different types of stock photography (rights Managed, royalty-free, etc.) and why and how Adobe entered the stock photography business. After a brief demonstration of Adobe Bridge® (the “home” for Adobe Stock Photos and other fantastic features), he showed some of the unique aspects of the Adobe Stock Photos service. Next, he demonstrated how seamlessly Adobe Stock Photos works with Adobe InDesign®. Adobe Stock Photos really makes the stock photography searching, comping, and purchasing process painless. For more information about Adobe Stock Photos, visit the site:

Adobe Stock Photos
www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/adobestockphotos/

James also demonstrated and explained how the new Acrobat® Connect service (formerly Macromedia Breeze), part of the upcoming Adobe Acrobat 8, can enhance collaboration between designer and client.

Noha Edell, Adobe Business Development Manager, took to the podium next. Noha gave the audience a preview of some of the upcoming features of Acrobat 8, such as the improved interface, the new combine files feature, PDF packages, new forms creation and distribution features, preflight enhancements, the improved crop marks feature, and more. For more information about Acrobat 8, visit the site:

Adobe Acrobat 8
www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/

There were many questions regarding upgrade prices. Here’s a quick summary:

Upgrade to Acrobat 8.0: $159
Upgrade from Creative Suite 2 Premium to CS2.3 with Acrobat 8 and Dreamweaver: $159
Upgrade from Creative Suite 1.x Premium or Standard: $549

The evening concluded with some major giveaways. One lucky attendee walked away with a copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium. Two copies of Adobe InDesign CS2 were also given away, as well as the TableStyles and CellStyles plug-ins from Teacup Software. We also raffled off the usual stack of books and DVDs, provided by Adobe, Peachpit Press, and Total Training.

Many positive comments were received at the end of the evening, such as:

“Okay, you’ve outdone yourselves this time!!! Acrobat 8.0 and Adobe Stock Photos are the BOMB!!”

“Excellent talks, great information, and amazing new products/services…”

“Both presentations were excellent. Stock Photos is a very interesting service — could be very useful. Acrobat 8 looks great.”

“Venue was great – smaller, more intimate, giving greater ability to actually SEE the screen. Can we continue to meet on the 11th floor?”

Interesting random Boston InDesign user group factoid: of the 56 evaluations received at the end of the meeting, 48% of users ranked themselves as InDesign beginners, 34% ranked themselves as intermediate-level users, and 18% called themselves expert users. (Three people were undeclared.)

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