When the Creative Suite series made its debut back in September of 2003, it was clear that Adobe's mission was to seamlessly integrate their long range of media creation tools for exchange of project assets. With each iteration, moving those assets through the Adobe pipeline has become easier and more instantaneous. Besides innovating how the suite hands-off its assets, AdobeFlas "teams have also shared the best methodology to how their graphics are produced and modified. Wherever one particular program has refined the workflow for using a common tool, that improvement is passed on to other applications that deal with the same type of medium. In this latest Adobe Flash CS5 Professional, the user will see that the majority of the advancements are based around these premises.
The Text Layout Framework offers 3 times as many options for working with text then previous versions of Flash.
Ease of Use
Flash has had a long history of being straightforward and logical in its workflow. There are not any brand new tools, per se, but a lot of strong improvements to the tools and operations that are already available. This is a great help especially if you don't have other supplemental Adobe products to handle things like page layout or creating vector graphics. Other changes would be considered invisible in the sense that they serve to allow better collaboration without having to do complex operations to set-up your projects.
If this happens to be your first time using Flash, or any 2-D animation program, you'll find that the workflow for creating your first animation within Flash CS5 Professional is pretty logical. Basic placements, motions, or morphing of an object can be achieved in 2 or 3 steps. Complexity comes from layering those simple operations over and over again to build your show. Further information on what can be done in Flash can be read about in our earlier review of Adobe Flash CS4 Professional found here or any number of sites with online tutorials. One of the great things about the Adobe Flash line is that it's easy to use and stays largely consistent from version to version.
Having the ability to flow text from box to box makes creating interesting layouts so much easier.
New Features
The changes and updates found in Flash CS5 Professional help to really strengthen the capabilities of its current toolset. The first big update is to the use of text in Flash with the new Text Layout Framework. In previous versions of Flash, the control of text was pretty basic in its options; just enough to get the job done, but not enough to be comparable to page layout program such as InDesign. Now with the new Text Layout Framework, controls for text like leading, tracking, baseline shift, and other alterations are now made available within the application. Text boxes can have their content flow from box to box, blending modes and filters can be applied, and advanced character changes to ligatures and case can also be utilized to control your page layout. And just in case you feel more comfortable assembling your page layout in InDesign, you can work out your composition and then export it as a Flash document. The layout and dimensions of the document will remain intact and ready for you to add that extra spice of motion to complete your work.
Another improvement that will be very beneficial to users who want to show their films, are the updates to how Flash handles video. Previously, when you needed to see the footage of your movie playing, you had to render a test, check it, and then return back to the Flash environment to make changes. As you no doubt know, that type of process is very tedious. With this latest update, you can now scrub the video and it will play through on the stage. This is very helpful if you've applied any transparency to the video and you need to see how it works in conjunction with any graphics that may be underneath. Being able to preview on the stage is also how you can set cue points to your video and modify them from the Property Inspector. Lastly, Flash CS5 includes Adobe Media Encoder, which you can use to convert a wide range a popular video formats to Flash's native .flv or .f4v formats. Changes like these help to guarantee that you will be able to get your film up quickly and efficiently on the web.
Another necessity when putting together your video player is knowing how to write the actionscript code that connects the video components with the video itself. For a first timer, learning to work in actionscript can be challenging and can take a long time to get used to how it works. With Flash CS5, code snippets have been updated to add code that is common for various operations within Flash, such as working with the timeline, video, actions, audio, and event handlers. After choosing a code snippet, the user is provided with comments and instructions on what to change in order to connect the code successfully to different parts of the Flash components, like movie clip instances and external video. And for the advanced user, custom code snippets can be saved for the purpose of reuse and/or being shared later. Code snippets are a great way to get comfortable learning Actionscript 3 as well as saving good code.
Code snippets are a good way of getting accustomed with working with Actionscript 3.
Besides making video players and applications, Flash is an extremely popular tool for making 2D animation for the web. Recent innovations to Flash's animation toolset have opened up more creative options to choose from and explore. Flash CS5 has updated a couple of those new tools to offer more options, such as the spring for IK (Inverse Kinematic) bones and the deco drawing tool. The new spring property is sort of like a simple physics engine for 2D movement. Essentially, it simulates a sense of gravity and resistance against a moving object, modifying the strength and damping attributes for the bone will change how much energy and resistant force is expressed on the object it's attached to. This feature can add more realistic movement to any object or limb with a pendulum-like movement. This type of animation could be done by hand, but would take longer to produce a natural-looking oscillation with mathematic precision.
The second tool to be enhanced is the deco-drawing tool, which was a new feature in Flash CS4. For those that are unfamiliar with this tool, the deco-drawing tool is a particle generating system. The particles it generates are instances that resemble representations of real-life objects or things that are purely decorative in nature. It's purpose is to allow the user to populate the scene quickly with the same objects, but also to have control on the variances of the instance. The upgrade to the deco-drawing tool now contains more objects to choose from such as a particle system, decorated brush, 3D brush, tree brush, lightning brush, fire and smoke animation, building brush, flame brush, and flower brush effects. The 3D and building brush has options to change its properties in order to diversify what is produced. The more natural brushes, like trees, bushes, flowers, and vines, also have subcategories and options so that the instances do not look the same. The deco-drawing tool speeds up the creation of repetitive objects allowing the user to spend more time on the focus of their show.
The building brush allows you to create a city-scape in minutes.
Depth of Options
Flash CS5 Professional offers a variety of ways to work with your assets both inside and out of the native Flash environment. In earlier versions, users could set-up their assets in Photoshop and Illustrator and import them directly into Flash. Flash would retain the document dimensions and assets of your Photoshop document while your objects vertex points and shape would remain the same from Illustrator due to the shared vector engine. In Flash CS5, InDesign has been added to the mix. Brought up earlier when discussing the Text Layout Framework, this new sharing of technology allows users to build their layouts in InDesign and then export their document as a Flash CS5 file to add animation.
Being able to split up the creation of assets for a project and pull them together seamlessly has been an important goal of the Adobe Creative Suite from the onset. Having XML-based Flash formats helps to establish a common means of passing data between programs within the Creative Suite. The new change is largely invisible to the user that works in Flash the way that they always have, but for those that want more collaborative advantages, this is a great find. The new way of handling data using XML gives some unique options in that you can now save in the new .xfl format that will process the file in the XML syntax, bundle all the used assets created, and then import them into a folder. Developers can open the .xfl file in any text editor to make changes without having to open Flash. Also, an artist in Photoshop, can make changes to a graphic or bitmap that's being used and the update takes place instantly back on the Flash stage. Finally, programs such as InDesign and After Effects CS5 can now export in the same format so that you can begin projects there to be finished up in Flash CS5.
Another cool option that may not pertain specifically to people working in film, but should be mentioned, is the Flash Builder environment. For users that are more adept in programming and do not need to visually work with graphics, the Flash Builder is an actionscript editor that will allow users to focus on just the scripting aspect. Any code written in Flash Builder has the option of being opened in Flash CS5 or simply linked to the assets being used in the project. So just in case you want to collaborate with a developer to help you put your video player or site together, code can be shared easily whether Flash CS5 or Flash Builder is being used.
Tree, flower, and vine brushes help to quickly add a natural setting, full of variety.
Performance
Flash has never really had issues with performance within the working environment. Considering that it is handling vector graphics for its most intensive animation operations, Flash is able to preview changes on the stage or in test without stuttering. That's not to say that it is perfect, just that it isn't an issue that users have to be concerned with when they are working. Even with the new updates and improvements to the Flash environment, CS5 works just as smoothly as its predecessors.
Flash Builder is another means of working with Actionscript 3 to modify code separately from the swf file it is interacting with.
Value
The new Creative Suite versions have been coming out every eighteen months for the last 3 versions bringing with it small jumps and big leaps in the various packages it contains. If you have never owned any of the Adobe programs or have not upgraded in a long time, purchasing anyone of the Adobe CS collections would be a great investment. Now if you already own a version of Flash prior to CS4, I would suggest checking out the demo, specifically with regard to the new motion tweening workflow. If you have CS4, some users may not feel it is necessary to move forward at this time, but being that the upgrade price is only $199, all the changes could be worth the cost to you, especially if you work with others.
Final Comments Flash CS5 Professional is a fantastic piece of software! There are a lot of variables that come into play when determining if it is right for you. For 2D animation, it is one of the best. Great tools to create your assets and logical workflow for bringing your work to life. For those that want to put together a custom video player or website with a unique layout that would be near impossible to pull of with standard coding practices, Flash is the defacto program to allow for that kind of creativity. So if you are new to using Flash, I highly recommend downloading the demo and giving it a shot. And for those that haven't upgraded in awhile, this is a great time to do that and see what you've been missing.
Ease
of Use
9.0
Depth
of Options
10.0
Performance
9.0
Value
vs. Cost
9.0
Overall Score
9.3
Michael Muwanguzi is a graphic artist and web designer currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Apart from working on print ads, web-related advertising, and 3D design work, he is currently working on new film production work and is designing a 3D adventure game from scratch.
When the Creative Suite series made its debut back in September of 2003, it was clear that Adobe's mission was to seamlessly integrate their long range of media creation tools for exchange of project assets. With each iteration, moving those assets through the Adobe pipeline has become easier and more instantaneous. Besides innovating how the suite hands-off its assets, AdobeFlas "teams have also shared the best methodology to how their graphics are produced and modified. Wherever one particular program has refined the workflow for using a common tool, that improvement is passed on to other applications that deal with the same type of medium. In this latest Adobe Flash CS5 Professional, the user will see that the majority of the advancements are based around these premises.
