A few months ago, Acrobat launched its main creative design packages including Photoshop/ImageReady, GoLive, InDesign and Illustrator. After a long period of silence, it came up with a much better package.

Adobe's Creative Suite now comes in two new packages, the Standard Edition and the Professional Edition. The Standard Edition is composed of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. This package contains most of the print-oriented flagships. On the other hand, Adobe GoLive and Acrobat Professional comprise the Professional Edition, which focuses on web design.

Basically, these packages are combinations of the strengths each application offers. They are integrations of tools for handling colour management, screen display, type handling and more. They allow cross-application, meaning any file done in one program can be opened to the other programs as long as the file was created on one of the programs that comprises the packages. When a file is transferred, all other options can be applied. For example, when you open an Illustrator file to Photoshop, that file will be opened as a Photoshop file.

Every creative application on the package uses PDF file format. Not just a PDF format, they use the latest PDF 1.5 format. PDF format allows you to import and export directly. You can embed vector PDFs from Illustrator and bitmap PDFs from Photoshop in a multi-page InDesign PDF. This can also be exported for PDF web display or repurposed via GoLive.

Adobe Creative Suites has a new integrated file management system, which is essential in the software's workflow and tight integration. Different components and versions of a project are hard to manage, especially when you are going to use a lot of programs, as in workgroups. But Adobe has a solution to this, the Version Cue. Version Cue, through the application of Save dialog, enables you to store all job elements and important version of your project. The Open dialog accesses visual thumbnails of the project file. You will also be warned if other users are using the same file. In other words, it provides file versioning and management.

The packages also contain XMP or eXtensible Metadata Platform standards. This allows you to search for files according to related information like keywords or authors.

Creative Suite applications are guaranteed excellent tools to provide you with your desired result. Think of these packages as the total of all these applications.