The full Creative Suite 2 (CS2) contains InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, Acrobat, and Version Cue, plus Bridge (a browser built right in for connecting to CS2 products). Depending on what you use InDesign for, chances are you will need at least one of these other applications and will probably find yourself using most, if not all, of the rest. If you think you'd use at least one of these products on a regular basis, in addition to InDesign, you may want to consider purchasing the full Creative Suite. If you think you may use two or more of these products, then the full Creative Suite is a must-have. Let's look at each of the apps in the CS2 suite:

• Photoshop: used for doing more to photographs and other images than basic adjustments such as cropping, rotating, or resizing. Photoshop allows you to retouch photographs, "airbrush" out unwanted elements, remove red-eye, darken or brighten an image, balance or shift colors, or combine elements of different images. Photoshop is also ideal for repurposing images, since it allows you to save composite, multilayered images and then go back and pull out pieces of an image at a later date.

• Illustrator: used for creating line art or other drawings such as logos, diagrams, maps, or illustrations. InDesign has some drawing tools, but for anything other than simple shapes and line drawings you will want the full set of vector-based drawing tools and features found in Illustrator. These will allow you (with a little skill and creativity on your part) to create rich, complex, and compelling illustrations.

• GoLive: used for creating websites. If you are creating content for a purely printed method of distribution, you don't need GoLive at all. However, as ubiquitous as the internet is, less and less content is being prepared only for print distribution.

• Acrobat: used when you want to create PDF files that are more ambitious than simple online versions of printed documents. Acrobat will allow you to combine, modify, and customize PDF files, secure PDF files, create sophisticated navigational structures, and add multimedia and interactivity to PDF files.

• Bridge: used to track different versions of publications, source files such as text documents, photos, illustrations, or stock images, work collaboratively on a project without having to check files in or out, or host web-based PDF reviews for clients or colleagues.

What's New in Photoshop CS2

Photoshop is so ubiquitous that in many circles, it's used as a verb. And it's so mainstream that people who have never used the product know of it and have a basic grasp of its capabilities. Photoshop becomes much more specialized when combined with the Creative Suite 2 applications. Photoshop is:

• An image editing and correction tool that is used on photos prior to placing them into InDesign, Illustrator, or GoLive.
• A graphics enhancement tool that is used to enhance graphics created in Illustrator.

These are the areas to master in Photoshop as a Creative Suite user. Although Photoshop can certainly do more than this, these are the tasks it excels at in the world of the Creative Suite. New features found in Photoshop CS2 are:

• Vanishing Point: continue a perspective plane for a building or object using the brush or clone to retain the correct perspective.
• Layer control: better control of layers by clicking and dragging right from the object on the screen to move, transform, and warp. Smart Guides also enable easy aligning of objects.
• Smart Objects: Allow scaling, rotating, and other transformation and preserving the quality and retaining the original image data.
• Multi-image digital camera raw-file processing: process multiple images while you keep working in Photoshop.
Image Warp: wrap images around shapes creating package layout design look.

What's New in Illustrator CS2

When you ask designers what program they'd use to do graphics, the answer is always Illustrator. Graphics can be sketches, line art, maps, cartoons, logos, and more. No other program offers the variety of tools and ease of use that Illustrator does. From basic logo design to high-end realistic graphics, and all the stops in between, Illustrator can handle any load. You can take a rough sketch, use Live Trace, add text, color, and shadows, and in no time at all have a finished product for printing, video, or web.

• Live Trace: trace photo or scanned images with a variety of presets, such as Hand Drawn Sketch, Comic Art, Detailed Illustration, Inked Drawing, Technical Drawing, Text, and more.
• Live Paint: lets you put color in defined areas quickly and easily as well as an automatic correction for any gaps.
• Control Palette: access tools that work with the object selected. Being docked at the top of the work area makes for easy find and use.
• Custom workspaces: create a custom workspace by arranging palettes and save the arrangement so you can activate it. This works great, especially when you have to share a computer with others.
• Photoshop layer support: when importing Photoshop files with layer comps, you can pick the version of the file you want to bring into Illustrator.

What's New in InDesign

Page layout is the process of combining text, graphics, and other elements together on a page. Page layout can be as simple as placing a couple of columns of text and a graphic or two together to create a one-page newsletter to photocopy and hand out at a local club meeting. Or it can be as sophisticated as a full-color, high-gloss, multipage advertisement in a major magazine. The key factor in page layout is the focus on combining existing content, rather than on creating new content.

• Object styles: apply and save a variety of object attributes so you can quickly apply to other objects to increase productivity.
• Photoshop and PDF layer support: now you can display layer and layer comps and PDF layers right in InDesign.
• InDesign snippets: create a snippet from an object for exporting from InDesign. Use the snippets to share with others, or use in another layout with all the original formatting and positioning.
• InCopy CS2 assignments: allow a user of Adobe InCopy to work with specific sections of a file.
• Save backwards to InDesign CS: save your InDesign file to CS by exporting the file.

Related Reading Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One By Deke McClelland