Thoughts
When we set out to do this preview, we knew it would be challenging but had seriously underestimated the size of the task - hence its rather later than expected arrival and our equally late decision to offer it up in two parts. Apologies for any inconvenience.
Clearly, since this preview is only part-way completed, it would be very silly of us to end this overview piece with too many hard and fast conclusions. Even so, we do think it reasonable to offer up some of our thoughts.
As you'll no doubt have realised, we're massively hacked off at the on-going price differential between the price of Adobe's products in the UK and the USA. Frankly, we're pissed off big time with being taken for a ride this way and think it's time that Adobe - and a whole lot of other computer software and hardware companies - started treating us with a little more respect and consideration.
The current pricing situation is, in our view, reason enough alone to bypass all of Adobe's products unless, that is, they are utterly vital to an existing workflow. Perhaps other than After Effects, there isn't one Adobe-branded product in these suites that can't be equalled or bested by another maker's offering.
Nonetheless, it's hard to deny that the programs Adobe has created are rather more appealing than its anti-EU pricing policy. We're very keen on the new interface ergonomics, and very much like the way the apps now interactive. We're also massively stuck by one new feature found in Audition, offering an easy way to select and remove or lessen isolated audio glitches such as clicks, coughs and mic feedback without inserting a complete silence that would be readily noticed.
If you switch away from Audition's waveform display into its spectral-frequency display, two selection tools become available. There's a lasso with which a selection is drawn free hand, plus a marquee tool that drags out rectangular-shaped selections. Once the problem area has been selected, you can delete it.
Results are rather more subtle if using the lasso, rather than the marquee, and more subtle still if the choice is made not to cut out the glitch but to create a noise profile from the selection and then remove the noise – and that same profile can be used repeatedly and even saved for later use. Many times, though, a lasso selection and a cut does the job quickly and easily.
But for more on this an the other new features specific to Adobe's four new programs, you'll have to wait until part two of this preview, hopefully coming before the end of this week (but don't hold your breath, please).
