Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium review

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium software is a fully stocked designer’s toolkit which has grown to become, pretty much, the industry standard for professionals.

Its combination of features allows you to develop expressive and creative content in print, web and mobile media, and also includes Acrobat Professional 9 which now integrates Flash content.

So whether you are looking to design web sites, magazines or even create professional standard animation you will be hard pushed to discover a more widely used product than this one.

What we like best

The package combines InDesign, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator as well as the aforementioned Acrobat 9 Pro, Bridge, Device Central, Media Player and Version Cue.

You should note that Adobe’s video editing software – Premier, AfterEffects and Soundbooth only come with the Master Collection.

The whole package has been overhauled to simplify the workflow, creating a new interface. So whereas before you had lots of different windows open whilst working on a new design you can now have everything in one, clean, easy-to-find tab based window.

CS5’s inDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator also have a really useful new tool called the Kuler colour web app.

This allows you to access the online Kuler community and check which colours work best with each other. It gives real insight into use of colour when designing pages.

What we like least

Ok so it might sound petty, but the installation process tested my will to live. It took about two hours (I’m informed that Adobe Master Collection CS5 will take a little longer) and while it was going on I was unable to use my PC for anything else.

This is because of the way that CS5 installs itself on your PC means that all other windows must be closed while the process takes place. It’s made worse by the fact that the installation progress bar doesn’t make any sense, so you have no idea how much longer it’s going to take.