Orlando InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

May 22, 2007

May’s meeting of the Orlando InDesign Group brought 138 people to the Orlando Sentinel eager to see the official road show presentation of CS3, presented by Lynn Grillo of Adobe.

Lynn started the night with a rundown on how CS3 interacts with the various operating systems and highlighted that CS3 runs native on the Intel Mac machines. She also mentioned that there were many enhancements to the overall suite and that she could not get to absolutely everything, so urged everyone to review the enhancement handout and to visit the Adobe website for more information.

She then launched into the specific feature enhancements of the CS3 upgrade, starting with the Bridge. Lynn explained that though Bridge came to CS2, the CS3 enhancement includes improved speed and real-time view, plus a host of other organizational features. Much clapping and appreciative noise followed as Lynn showed how to view multiples and apply filtering processes using folders and metadata. Once an asset group is defined, it can be viewed as a stack and that can be scrolled through or played like a movie.

She provided a demo of a how metadata templates can be used and applied to photos being downloaded from a camera. The different metadata fields can then be sorted, selected, and used as filters.

She pointed out that the use of the Bridge was a great productivity tool, and that there is a host of information available via Bridge Home/Resources.

Though show of hands indicated that very few participants were using Version Cue® at this time, Lynn explained that it can be a very useful productivity tool. She indicated that the install includes a license for two places, that being the scenario where someone uses a desktop at work and has a laptop to travel or work from home. She explained that Version Cue is installed separately and is server-based, and is also customizable.

Lynn then moved into a show-and-tell of Photoshop CS3 features, which prompted loud clapping and exclamations of “wow!” from the audience, particularly for the quick selection tool and vanishing point. The demo included a review of the following features:

The menu highlighted CS3 “new” features, which can be toggled on and off
Work panels (previously palettes) are more flexible and can be pulled out and toggled to be 1 or 2 columns, creating an efficient way to manage workspace
The addition of intuitive icons for the panels was met with enthusiastic response
The Quick Selection tool allows an area to be “painted” and the resulting selection can be easily modified and refined
The Refine Edge allows users to use slider controls to modify a selection
The Automatic layer alignment and blending, where multiple images can be easily merged (more applause and wows!)
Vanishing Point, which is now easily adjustable, was a crowd favorite.

Lynn also reviewed Illustrator features including enhancements to color, swatches, tracing, the eraser, export and import, and 3D layering.

After a short break, Lynn completed the evening with a review of the CS 3 InDesign enhancements, saying that it’s sometimes “the really small ones that make you want to smile.” Her favorite productivity enhancement: the black arrow Selection tool that turns into a white arrow Direct Selection tool with a double-click.

She also went over the following:

Frame fitting options, using presets
Templating and using object styles for importing multiple files
Preloading various types of files that then be individually selected and dropped into the appropriate frames (“freakin’ awesome!” as one audience member exclaimed)
Flip and Rotate tools
Transparency
Enhanced find and replace, which includes text, locked layers, hidden layers, footnotes, format
Table styles!

At the very end of the presentation, Lynn went over the enhancements to cross media export to the multimedia portions of the suite, including Dreamweaver and GoLive.

Comments from the meeting included:

“CS3 is tremendous. This was an extremely informative and exciting presentation.”

“I was blown away by the amazing new features.”

“Excellent high-energy presentation. Please bring Lynn back again.”

“I learned a lot and was inspired to do more.”

“My first InDesign User Group meeting! The presenter was awesome. Appreciate the interactive group.”

The Orlando InDesign User Group meeting notes have been prepared by Kathlean Shannon.

Edward Feldman
Chapter Representative
Orlando Adobe InDesign User Group

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