Bridge CS4
Bridge’s interface is much tighter than it was in CS3 and it’s now much easier to switch between layouts than it was before. Additionally, because of the new file types available in CS4, like .ASND and multiple artboard files in Illustrator, you can preview most of these files directly inside of Bridge.
While the requirements for Production Premium continue to grow larger (with CS4 requiring 2 Gigs of RAM for the complete installation), the actual performance of CS4 is much better than CS3 was, especially on Macs. Our primary test machine was our 1.86 GHz Core2 Duo with Windows XP Pro x64, 3 Gigs of RAM, and the nVidia Quadro FX 1500 card (which was kindly provided by the folks at nVidia). We also tested this on a couple of Macs, including an older 15” Macbook Pro 2.0 Intel Core Duo with 2 Gigs of RAM.
The improved ability this software exhibits shows up in it being extremely solid and dependable. Initial programs open much more quickly and linked programs launch much more efficiently than they have in the past. Additionally, Premiere Pro and Photoshop both show increased performance with their new x64 support if you’re using one of the x64 operating systems. (Hopefully, CS5 will show complete support for x64 in all of the programs in the lineup.)
With the price staying the same as it was in CS3, CS4 is an amazing value. If you haven’t made the jump to the Production Premium package, there’s never been a better time to do so than now. If you are already using CS3, Adobe has dropped the price on the upgrade from $799 to $599. Considering how much bang for the buck they’ve packed into CS4, I think they’ve definitely packed $600 worth of improvements into it, especially if you’re a Mac user. If nothing else, the fact that the software runs so much more smoothly and efficiently will save you so much time and headache that it’s a no brainer if you’re using your production studio to make money when you’re not making your own films.
While there are still areas that the Production Premium can improve on, especially when it comes to improved accuracy with the Speech transcription and even more fully realized Dynamic Link support, the amount of improvement and successful innovation in this package is absolutely amazing. While I always hate giving software packages a perfect ten, this marks the third time in a row that the Adobe Production Premium package has earned this extraordinarily rare score here at MFM. And, just like the past releases, CS4 improves so much beyond the last release that it completely deserves it. If you haven’t used Adobe’s past versions of Production Premium, then I would highly encourage you to download them demo of this program and see if it doesn’t fit your needs.
