Australian Trekkies take note: The world premiere of J.J Abrams’ Star Trek is happening in Sydney on April 7. That’s world premiere… before the US, before the UK… It’s like the inverse of a gadget release.

It’s happening at the Sydney Opera House, and J.J Abrams, Eric Bana, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Karl Urban will all be there. And so will I. Am I rubbing that in a bit? Probably.

But to soothe your pain, know that when the film launches in Cinemas in May, it will be hitting Australian cinemas a day before hitting US cinemas. Which should still make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

So while I go out and try and find a suit respectable enough to fit a “Cocktail” dress code, you guys should watch the above trailer again just to keep you going until May…

This year’s updates, which number into the hundreds, mainly concern workflow, that is, when you work with objects in one program, how well those adjustments are tracked and understood by the various other apps. With a heady number of improvements to so many super hardcore apps, I decided to paste in the main press release below, a gallery of the best new Photoshop screens, and links to key What’s New PDFs, and let you go on your own missions of discovery.

PDFs:
• Photoshop What’s New PDF
• Premiere What’s New PDF
• Illustrator What’s New PDF
• After Effects What’s New PDF
• Dreamweaver What’s New PDF
• Flash What’s New PDF

Adobe Introduces Creative Suite 4 Product Family
Radical Workflow Breakthroughs, New Levels of Flash Expressiveness and Integration Anchor Adobe’s Biggest Software Release

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sept. 23, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 product family, a milestone release of the industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow. Delivering radical workflow breakthroughs that bring down the walls between designers and developers — and packed with hundreds of feature innovations–the new Creative Suite 4 product line advances the creative process across print, Web, mobile, interactive, film and video production. With new levels of integration and expressiveness for Flash technology across the entire product line, Adobe’s biggest software release to date includes Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design editions, Creative Suite 4 Web editions, Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, Creative Suite 4 Master Collection, as well as 13 point products, 14 integrated technologies and seven services.

Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection CS4 combines virtually all of Adobe’s new design and development applications, technologies and services in a single box — the most comprehensive creative environment ever delivered.

“Designers and developers are shaping the way that people consume information, share ideas, sell products, tell stories and create memorable experiences — in print, online and via mobile handsets,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe. “Whether you’re creating a rich Internet application, a video or a best-selling magazine, Adobe Creative Suite 4 delivers powerful cross-media technologies that have the ability to elevate products, brands and ideas above the clutter.”

Broad Integration and Efficiency Improve Creative Workflow
Adobe Creative Suite 4 offers unprecedented choice among editions and stand-alone products, with comprehensive support for the most cutting-edge workflows for virtually any design discipline. Customers can choose from six suites or full version upgrades of 13 stand-alone applications, including Photoshop® CS4, Photoshop CS4 Extended, InDesign® CS4 (see separate releases), Illustrator® CS4, Flash® CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver® CS4, After Effects® CS4, and Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4.

A simplified workflow in Adobe Creative Suite 4 enables users to design across media more efficiently by making it easier to complete common tasks and switch between mediums without leaving a project. InDesign CS4 includes a new Live Preflight tool that allows designers to catch production errors and a newly customizable Links panel to place files more efficiently. The revolutionary new Content-Aware Scaling tool in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended automatically recomposes an image as it is resized, preserving vital areas as it adapts to new dimensions. An expanded version of Dynamic Link in CS4 Production Premium enables users to move content between After Effects CS4, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Soundbooth® CS4, and Encore® CS4, so updates can be seen instantly without rendering. Designers using the Adobe Creative Suite 4 product family will be able to gain unprecedented creative control using the new expressive features and visual performance improvements in Adobe Flash Player 10 to deliver breakthrough Web experiences across multiple browsers and operating systems.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 brings 3D center-stage providing the ability to paint, composite, and animate 3D models using familiar tools. Flash CS4 Professional now offers the ability to apply tweens to objects instead of keyframes, providing greater control over animation attributes. Also in Flash, the new Bones tool helps create more realistic animations between linked objects. With a searchable library of more than 450 dynamically updated device profiles from leading manufacturers, Adobe Device Central CS4 (see separate release) enables users to easily test mobile content designed using many of the Creative Suite 4 products.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 significantly expands access to services* available to creative professionals and developers who want to collaborate online. Adobe ConnectNow, a service of Acrobat.com, can be accessed from InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks® CS4, and Acrobat® 9 Pro, allowing real-time collaboration with two colleagues or clients. Designers can also share colour harmonies with Adobe Kuler™, which is now accessible from within InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 and Fireworks CS4. Other online resources include: Adobe Community Help for technical questions; Resource Central for accessing video and audio product-related news and tutorials, as well as Soundbooth scores, sound effects, and other stock media; and Adobe Bridge Home, a customizable resource for tips, tutorials, news and inspirational content.

Pricing and Availability
Adobe Creative Suite 4 and its associated point products are scheduled to ship in October 2008 with availability through Adobe Authorised Resellers and the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/go/gn_store.

Estimated street price for the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium will be US$1799, US$1699 for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium, US$1699 for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, and US$2499 for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.

Adobe plans to offer tiered upgrade pricing from previous versions. For a limited time, validly licensed customers of eligible versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Production Studio and Macromedia Studio will be able to upgrade to Creative Suite 4 for the CS3 upgrade price.

For more detailed information about features, upgrade policies, pricing, and international versions please visit: www.adobe.com/creativesuite.

Adobe Flash Player 10 is currently available in beta as a free download from Adobe Labs at www.adobe.com/go/astro with general availability expected by the end of the year. Adoption of the previous update to Adobe Flash Player 9 set all-time records by achieving over 80 percent reach on Internet enabled desktops in less than six months and Flash Player 10 is expected to achieve a similar adoption rate.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

[Adobe]

Hitting stores this week for Windows (’early 2008′ for Mac), I had a recent briefing on the new Photoshop Elements and it is so good that 98% of users should probably not go anywhere near the full version ever again. Under the hood this is THE SAME engine as CS3, and it actually makes a lot of hardcore tasks easier than CS3. Basically, unless you need CMYK, you should be starting here first. Upgrade pricing to CS3 from Elements is now available, essentially covering the price of Elements so you can safely start here with no price disadvantage and then step up if necessary.

$159 for each standalone, or $235 bundled. A few more deets down below.The new version has a streamlined workflow across Organise, Edit, Create, Share, with tabbed workspaces to keep everything streamlined. They’ve even gone for that upmarket dark grey look of a high-end compositing package.

Photoshop Elements 6

Photoshop Elements now does photo stacking on import, as well as EXIF tag data. The best feature is its new ‘Guided Edits’ that will do things like Photomerging group shots to build the best single image out of a group of shots. This is based on the new blend algorithms of CS3 but made much easier.

Quick sharing options are fantastic, letting you set up emails, messages, sizings, etc and then have an auto drop spot to have emails instantly ready to send. Adobe has also really used their Macromedia acquisition to great effect, incorporating new Flash-based Photobooks for putting on the web. These are interactive photo albums and the templates have a polish you’d usually expect out of the Apple template design studio.

You won’t get the full suite of effects you find in CS3, but then, who ever uses them all? As said above, with the new upgrade price option you can start with Elements risk free and take the step up only if/when you need to. Adobe told us that they wanted to make Elements 6 far exceed what you can expect to get from free apps like Picasa. That sort of competition has pushed them to really bring the quality of CS3 to the mass audience, and the strength of this package is such that $159 is well worth it for what we are seeing here.

Premiere Elements 4

We didn’t get a good look at this at the demo session as it was between builds on that day, but we heard there will be features like ‘Edit to Beat’ for music video style auto edits, and the power of Macromedia would be drawn on again by producing local FLV video files for YouTube uploads that look far better than what YouTube would auto compress at the other end. Plus output options for many mobile devices (using the power of Adobe Device Central features to pick your output device – not just iPod or PSP, but many specific mobile handsets too).

We heard at that time that *possibly* we would see DVD-style menu offerings that could be output to the web in Flash (a killer feature in Adobe Encore CS3), but a quick look at the Premiere Elements 4 site shows a hint of that in the sharing options, but doesn’t confirm it outright – we’ll need to test that when we get our hands on.

Other cool features spotted on the site are blue/green screen keying (how good it is will have to be tested) and support for burning movies for Blu-ray.

A version of Photoshop Elements will ship for Mac OS in “early 2008,” says senior product manager Mark Dahm, who said that instead of an iPhoto-like album organizer similar to the one in the Windows version, a Mac PSE would have something like the Bridge application that comes with full-fledged Photoshop CS3.More tantalizingly, a Premiere Elements for the Mac is not such a far-fetched idea, says Mike Iampetro, senior product manager for consumer video. Citing critical disappointment surrounding the latest, completely redesigned iMovie, Iampetro told me:

“With iMovie 08, there is a better opportunity for us on the Mac than ever before.”

Iampetro also confirmed that only Blu-ray burning would be supported in Premiere Elements, because Adobe didn’t think there was enough player support for HD DVD, or as many titles available for it.

But let’s not let the politicking get in the way of today’s improvements:

• Photomerge, in Photoshop Elements, lets you take multiple shots and combine them seamlessly. Panoramas and collages look great, but a smart feature lets you combine the best parts from different group shots for one perfect image. (See the three kid shots in the gallery: the third is a “best of” version of the other two.)

• Automatically generate an SWF Flash gallery for your photos, like the one in the gallery below: a simple tool lets you select how many birthday candles and what number should be on the cake. There are plenty of other super interactive themes like that.

• In Premiere Elements, there are now quick and easy movie themes that automatically shake up your clips and apply transitions and effects. All of that is editable once it’s in place. You can also upload a song and the software will analyze its rhythm, snapping photos or clips to the nearest beat.

• In today’s YouTube obsessed world, it would be weird if the announcement didn’t include an easier way to upload video, and also use mobile devices to capture content, not to mention view and share it. [Adobe Consumer]