Last month I reviewed Adobe Photoshop CS2 on its own because I felt it deserved the Cyber Aspect Editor's Choice Award ... But we can't leave the rest of the Suite out ... Lets take an indepth look at Adobe's Creative Suite 2 Premium Edition because, I can assure you, its the Bees Knees!

Consider for a moment that the Creative Suite 2 Premium Edition consists of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Acobat 7.0 Professional, Version Cue, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Stock Photos service and Acrobat Reader 7.0 whilst having a complete training video workshop, the complete Creative Suite 2 Design Guide, templates, sample files, clipart, photos and much more and you will agree that at its $1100.00 USD price tag it is unbeatable value. (To keep things in perspective, Photoshop CS2 sells for $599. USD on its own).

A new member of the Suite is Adobe Bridge, a standalone product that was formerly Photoshop CS's built in File Browser. The decision to make it a separate program is a good call by Adobe as now it is accessible from within any of the above applications. Bridge is a blessing that allows you to browse through scalable thumbnails on your hard disk, it also links through to Adobe's Stock Photos Service and incorporates version cue control.

Similar to Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2 has some quite ground-breaking new features, Live Trace, Live Paint, Adobe Photoshop layer comp support, to name a few. In fact, the new Illustrator is impressive enough to warrant its own review, so stay tuned for the next edition of the Web Builder Bulletin to read more about it.

Although, in my opinion, probably no real competition for Dreamweaver, GoLive has also had some new features included in the mix, like enhanced live rendering and visual CSS authoring for mobile devices. Similarly, InDesign has some added impact with object styles and photoshop and PDF layer support.

Anyone who has used Acrobat to create their own PDF files will appreciate the enhancements to Acrobat 7.0 Professional ... for instance, the ability to correct common problems such as converting colors, previewing separations, remapping spot colors, flattening transparency, and fixing hairline rules - without having to re-create the file. A major enhancement huh, again, one of many though.

Which brings us to Adobe Stock Photos Service. What is it? Well, it ties in with Adobe Bridge as I've already said, but it allows you to search through the image database, double-click the watermark free image and take it directly into Photoshop, and you can purchase immediately ... in other words, hassle free.

As a bargain-hunter I'm always on the look out for good bargains and this one sweeps the pool. Adobe Creative Suite 2 has some major enhancements and new features, Photoshop CS2 alone is worth the upgrade. Kudos to Adobe for continuing to get things right lately. The Suite gets two thumbs up from me.