In part one of The iMac 27″ for graphic designers, I covered the reasons for choosing the late 2012 iMac 27” to replace my 2006 Mac Pro. As a graphic designer who works in Adobe Creative Suite apps all day long, with file sizes pushing the 1GB range, power is important. But as I found out with my MacBook Air, the Mac Pro just isn’t necessary anymore. Not only does the iMac have all the power you need, but it’s a much more elegant hardware solution, and significantly easier on the pocketbook. I also listed some of the pros and cons of the iMac.

Now I’m going to talk a bit about my experience actually using the iMac for the last two months.

At first, the 27” iMac was a difficult transition as far as the screen size goes. I’ve been using a 30” LCD for quite a few years, so I not only lost the 160 pixels of height, but the physical dimensions of the 30” screen is larger. The 27” iMac just looks tiny sitting next to my old screen. The reality is that the iMac as plenty of screen real estate for all but the most app-crazy user—those who like to have Mail, Tweetbot, Safari and iTunes all open and visible at the same time.

Between the powerful processors, and the speedy SSD storage drives, the iMac offers more than enough juice to run the typical stable of design-related applications, such as: Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, etc. Along with those apps, I typically have Extensis Suitcase Fusion, Pixa, Apple Mail, Messages, Reminders, and Safari open. And finally, utilities such as Dropbox, aText, CopyLess, Evernote, Pocket, and Transmit are generally always open because they’re either background apps that live in the menubar, or small apps that take little resources to keep open. And of course, iTunes is almost always blasting music, or playing a podcast.

With all that running, the iMac still performs tasks at a speed that is not only acceptable, but impressive.

While Photoshop runs much speedier than it did on my 2006 Mac Pro, InDesign is the CS app that shows the most improvement. Scrolling documents with numerous images and vector art placed on each page is quite fluid now, showing no signs of the stuttering I experienced on the Mac Pro.

Saving enormous Photoshop files is fast, though it probably seems faster to me now that Photoshop can save files in the background while I switch to another app to continue working on something else.

Illustrator is also improved in virtually all areas, though I don’t use it often enough to say if it’s a great improvement.

Bridge (which I use much less often, now that I’ve found Pixa), runs really well. Folders with hundreds of high resolution images loads up quickly, and scrolling and zooming is fluid.

Unfortunately, Adobe still hasn’t implemented Full Screen support in the Creative Suite apps. When Apple introduced it I was skeptical, but now I love working in Full Screen mode. The iMac performs admirably while switching between Spaces—whether I’m swiping on the Magic Pad or hitting Control + Arrow keys to switch. Mission Control comes up instantly as well.

One app that always seemed to chug along at a snail’s pace on my Mac Pro is Apple’s iPhoto. I actually began splitting up my iPhoto libraries by year to speed up the thumbnail drawing process. With the iMac, I have several year’s worth of photos in a single library and it still opens and is ready to start viewing photos in a matter of seconds.

Overall, I’m quite impressed with the iMac as my main work Mac. While I still do a little work on the road using my MacBook Air, I’m finding myself making an effort to do it less often, so I can spend more time on the iMac.

If you’re due for a hardware upgrade, and you want a desktop Mac, I highly recommend the 27” iMac. The Mac Pro is a fantastic machine, and when Apple releases the new models later this year, they’re probably going to blow away the iMac in the speed and expansion departments. But the reality is that they’re still going to be more expensive than the iMac, and you’ll still have to bring your own LCD screen on top of that. Unless you’re doing high-end video/audio work and require massive amounts of internal storage, you simply can’t justify the price compared to the very capable iMac.

The Adobe Exchange panel provides a new way to search, discover, and install plug-ins, extensions, and other content for Creative Suite products. With this preview of the Adobe Exchange panel, you can browse through items that are available for your CS6 applications; download and install those items; and update acquired items when new versions are available.

For those who’ve been around a while, you may recall that Adobe Exchange was previously available only from the web – and it was an absolutely horrible web experience. This new Panel is a huge improvement!

With all the major Adobe Creative Suite apps being fairly mature in their lifecycle, new marquee features have taken a back seat to minor tweaks, small feature additions, bug fixes, and speed improvements. Creative Suite 6 follows that trend for the most part, and that makes it a bit easier to compare the speed of the apps between CS5 and CS6.

I’ve been using Creative Suite Design Premium for a few weeks now, and have collected my thoughts and observations about CS6 regarding speed. It should be noted that, with the exception of the launch-time chart below, these are my opinions based on very unscientific testing. I’ve not run any benchmarks or other timed processes, just real-world “eye-ball” tests.

Test Macs

All my observations are based off the results of running Adobe CS6 (and CS5) on two Macs, both running OS X Lion 10.7.4:
Mac Pro 2006 (MP): 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Xeon, 11GB RAM, 7200 RPM internal HD
MacBook Air 2011 (MBA): 1.7 GHz Core i5, 4GB RAM, SSD

Installation

I chose the download option for CS6, rather than the boxed DVD collection. So I installed CS6 from the mounted disc image on my hard drive. This is important to remember, and you’ll see why below.

Installation took noticeably less time than Creative Suite 5 did on both the MP and the MBA – you no longer have the luxury of running out to lunch while CS installs. However the difference in install times between the two Macs was dramatic, as you can see in the chart above. The MBA was more than twice as fast. Because my MP has three times the RAM and much more powerful processors, the only explanation is the SSD drive in the MBA. It simply reads and writes data faster.

This is important to remember, because much of what you do in any CS app involves reading and writing to the storage drive on your Mac. I’ll cut to the chase right now; everything you do with CS6 Design Premium is going to be faster on an SSD-equipped Mac, even if the remaining specs of the other Mac are greater.

Launch Times

I’m the type that tends to leave apps open. At any given time, I’ve got ID, PS, Bridge & Acrobat running. But I do still value the time (or lack of it) that it takes to launch apps.

Below is a comparison of the first launch and second launch times of the CS6 Design Premium apps after a restart. The exception being Acrobat Pro X, which launched near instantly on both Macs. The first launch after a restart always takes longer than subsequent launches, so the longer times on first launch are no surprise.

As you can see above, launch times are greatly reduced on my SSD-equipped MBA, particularly the first launch. While launch times aren’t as important as they used to be, they are an indication of things to come. Particularly in this comparison. As a side note: How obnoxious is Flash with those launch times… sheesh!

Real-World Use

Overall, an Apples-to-Apples comparison of CS5 and CS6 on the MBA show that CS6 runs smoother than CS5 in virtually all areas. I was extremely pleased to find this, as the CS upgrades the last few years have been spotty when it comes to speed – sometimes it got better, sometimes it took a step back.

InDesign CS6 performs better than CS5 in scrolling, object/text creation, dragging objects, page navigation, importing/exporting, and saving files. They aren’t sexy, but those are the things you do the most with InDesign files. Because I spend the majority of my time working on page layout, InDesign’s speed is important to me. Thankfully, InDesign on the MBA is a real pleasure to use. On the MP however, the speed is about the same as CS5: A bit choppy in some areas, and an improvement in others.

Illustrator CS6 runs vastly superior to CS5 on both the MP and MBA. Because Illustrator has been the weak link in my design toolbox for so many years, I wasn’t looking forward to even using it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it performs fairly well; which is to say that I actually may find it useful again. While it definitely performed much better on the MBA, it was still a nice improvement on the old MP.

Over the years, Photoshop has always been the fastest app of the bunch for me, so I was hopeful that it hadn’t changed with the latest upgrade. Photoshop CS6 performs quite well on the MBA – even better than CS5 did. Working with small web images is a breeze, and large 250+MB print files were no match even when running filters, CMYK conversions, and other complex operations. All aspects of running Photoshop CS6 on the MBA were a real pleasure. The same cannot be said of running it on my aging MP.

You would think that a Mac Pro with 11GB of RAM, even an older one like mine, would still be a real powerhouse for Photoshop work. Unfortunately this isn’t the case for me. Virtually everything about Photoshop CS6 on my MP is slow and clunky compared to Photoshop CS5. That’s not to say it’s unusable, it just doesn’t seem to perform well on my aging MP. The simple task of entering text in PS CS6 on my MP was painful at best. I was somewhat surprised about this, because I have numerous plugins installed in CS5, but none in CS6. You would think that alone would give CS6 the edge, but it didn’t.

As I mentioned earlier, Acrobat Pro X worked virtually the same on both Macs. Because of the type of file PDFs are, and the work you typically do in Acrobat, Adobe probably can’t do much more to improve the great speed we already have.

Dreamweaver and Flash CS6 are two apps I use fairly infrequently, it’s just not my area of expertise. But I can say that they perform a tad bit faster on the MBA, and about the same on the MP. I have to wonder if Adobe is putting more focus on developing Muse and other web-based apps moving forward, because neither Dreamweaver or Flash have changed much at all since they acquired Macromedia back in 2005.

The “holy cow” moment for me was Bridge CS6. The time it takes to display the thumbnails of a folder full of images has been drastically increased on the MBA, and at least noticeably on the MP. While I’ve used it on and off for quite a while, I can easily see myself keeping it open at all times now.

Recommendation

The short story here is: if you use Creative Suite apps for a living and you’re in the market for a new Mac soon, pay for the SSD drive upgrade. It’s well worth the investment. If you already have a Mac with an SSD storage drive, you’re going to be pleasantly surprised with CS6 in general. The overall speed increases found in all the apps is pretty sweet.

If you have an older Mac, the decision isn’t quite as clear. If you need the features found in CS6, you can upgrade knowing you’ll find it usable as far as speed goes. But if speed is the primary decision-maker for you, Creative Suite 6 may be a disappointment for you, and I would recommend you stick with CS5 until you can afford to upgrade to a new Mac with an SSD storage drive.

I used my old Mac Pro in this comparison because I know how long designers tend to keep their Macs – particularly those with Mac Pro towers loaded up with extra hard drives and RAM. The reality is that many of you probably have newer Macs than my 2006 Mac Pro. But this should give you some insights into how CS6 runs on Apple’s oldest supported towers.

Adobe can’t support aging Macs forever, and because CS6 runs so well on my fairly new MacBook Air, I feel comfortable in recommending Creative Suite 6 to any user who needs the new features, or looks forward to getting the latest speed increases with the CS apps on their newer Macs.

Adobe Photoshop's new appearance

While in early beta stages, Adobe appears to be working on a new, darker interface for the next version of Photoshop that resembles Pixelmator. In addition to the new appearance (which in beta stage at least, offers an option to revert to the existing platinum appearance), Photoshop will feature new 3D tools, healing brush and red-eye reduction enhancements, and a perspective cropping tool. AppleInsider has more details and screenshots here.

A long-time complaint about the Creative Suite upgrades is the frequency with which the upgrades arrive (every 18 months for the last dozen years or so). I don’t agree with those complaints, but Adobe is doing their best to address the situation. The entire Creative Suite is now on an annual development cycle, with major upgrades occurring in even years, and minor updates in odd years. Creative Suite 5 was a major upgrade released in 2010, and CS 5.5 (a relatively minor update) in 2011. So you can expect another major upgrade about early-to-mid 2012 if they keep with the plan.

While this new schedule is actually more frequent, there is a good reason. Adobe plans to work on major updates for every other release, and use the in between release for fixes and features that can be quickly added to address changes in technology. In addition, Adobe plans to release the upgrades and updates mid-year annually, so we can better plan our purchases.

Adobe has also announced that all major languages will be released at once. This is huge for those outside of North America. In the past, various languages took weeks or even months to catch up.

And now the bad news

Adobe recently announced at their MAX Conference that a new upgrade policy will be in effect moving forward. Along with their Adobe Creative Cloud offering ($50 per month subscription plan for CS applications), users who wish to keep their normal license and upgrade to Creative Suite 6, must already own CS5 or CS5.5. That means users of previous versions will have to pay two upgrade fees in order to get CS6.

For customers who prefer to remain on the current licensing model, we will continue to offer our individual point products and Adobe Creative Suite editions as perpetual licenses. With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.

Yeah, that’s not going to go over well with many users!

If you’re running an old version of Creative Suite, this is a great upgrade. If you already have CS5, you’ll most likely want to wait until the next upgrade is available unless you’re planning on doing tablet, phone or ebook development.

The question of the day: Will Adobe CS apps choke on Lion fur?

I received several emails since yesterday morning asking why I hadn’t posted an extensive review of Mac OS X Lion. I’ve already stopped replying to those emails, and thought it better to update everyone on the most common subjects.

Why no review of Lion on The Graphic Mac?

If you go through the archives here, you’ll find that I’ve never really reviewed the latest Mac OS X upgrades. The reason is simple. Everyone else already has it covered. Seriously, if you really want to read re-hashed press releases from Apple you don’t need me to do it. The features found in Lion are awesome. The updated interface is awesome. The new Mail is awesome. And for the most part, everything works just as before.

Just buy it, it’s only $30 and it’s awesome.

I’m running Adobe Creative Suite version X, will it work with Lion?

I run Adobe Creative Suite 5, so that’s the only version I can comment on with first-hand knowledge. In short, it works just as it did in Snow Leopard. And I mean that literally. Adobe CS apps don’t take advantage of any of Lion’s new features like Versions, Full Screen, Restore, and some multi-touch gestures.

There are a few issues with CS apps running under OS X 10.7, which Adobe has outlined in this Knowledge Base article, but for the most part they are minor.

Do the Adobe CS apps run faster or slower in Lion?

See comments above. They run just about the same as they did in Snow Leopard – whether you consider that fast or slow is a matter of opinion.

When will Adobe update their apps to work with Lion?

I work for an ad agency, not Adobe.

Is it hard to get used to running iOS on a desktop Mac?

No. But that’s because the idea that Lion is iOS for the Mac is way overblown. Apple has implemented a few features from iOS, ALL of which can be turned off or simply ignored. Other than the interface colors, and a few other minor tweaks, it’s not a whole lot different than running Snow Leopard.

That being said, if you’re unhappy with the direction Lion has taken, you’re going to really hate the next few years. If you buy a new mouse for your Mac today, it’s not far-fetched to say it’s probably the last one you’ll ever use (if it’s a decently made one, anyway). That spaghetti string of cables behind your desk is probably going to get a lot smaller in the coming years. Everything is going wireless – including the charging of your iPhones, iPods and other small devices.

I believe we’re on the front doorstep of a new revolution of change in the technology industry. In closing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

CS5.5 focuses on digital content creation

Adobe has announced the next version of their Creative Suite software. CS5.5 is heavily focused on designers wishing to take their work to tablet, smartphone, and EPUB users. All versions of their individual apps will be updated (except Acrobat, which remains at version X), as will the Creative Suites that comprise the apps – including InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Flash.

Beyond the numerous features for building interactive documents for use on iPad, iPhone, and other tablets and smartphones, there’s not much information available covering feature updates for print-based designers.

An Adobe CS5.5 pricing chart is available to help you decide what versions of the Suites or individual apps you wish to purchase.

This is where it gets interesting. Adobe has also announced a new month-by-month subscription plan for all their major Creative Suites and individual applications. For instance, you can rent Dreamweaver for as little as $19 per month, or the entire Creative Suite Web Premium for $89 per month. Serious Creative Suite users will most likely still want to purchase their preferred Suites, but for those who just need to complete a quick website and only own Design Standard can rent Dreamweaver for the price of a week’s worth of coffee at Starbucks.

With any Adobe Creative Suite update comes discussion of frequency and cost of updates. Adobe is making changes in this area. From now on, the Creative Suite will be on a 24-month development cycle for major upgrades (CS3, CS4, CS5, CS6, etc.). Every 12 months they will also release a mid-cycle update (such as the CS5.5 just announced) which will offer only minor feature enhancements, bug fixes, and code tweaking. Previously, Adobe released Creative Suite upgrades around every 18 months.

Unless you’re doing a lot of work destined for a tablet, smartphone or ebook reader, you’re probably going to skip this release and wait for Creative Suite 6. But if you do that type of work, CS5.5 appears to be a dandy update.

Icon Generator is a website and a companion Adobe AIR application, both free, that allow you to create your own CS5-style icons with little effort.

Create your own CS5-style icons easily

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can type in your own letters (up to 15, but it looks bad beyond three), choose a face and font color, and even add or remove icon shadows and glare. I should also note that if you preferred the Adobe CS4-style icons, you can choose that style instead.

But it Icon Generator doesn’t stop there. You can choose to use an image on the face of your icon, rather than letters. You simply upload a 512×512 pixel JPG or PNG file. As you can see below, the results are pretty darn good!

Icon Generator allows you to use images instead of text on your icons

Once you’re finished customizing, Icon Generator allows you to download a .zip file containing various sized PNG files of your icon, and even update your Twitter profile icon if you wish.

Icon Generator is free, so if you like the Adobe CS4 or CS5 icons and want to customize more icons to match, this little AIR app is just what the doctor ordered.

First let me say that in case you missed it, I covered my thoughts on the new CS5 application installers last week. They’ve been greatly improved over the last few CS installers. But one thing they didn’t fix about the installation is where things get installed.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 has me happy so far, but it's not without faults

Adobe everywhere

Like its predecessors, Adobe Creative Suite litters your hard drive with apps, utilities, preferences and documents. I mean they’re everywhere. And once you run the apps, you get even more folders appearing in the oddest places. Items get installed in all three of your Library folders, fonts reside in multiple locations, utilities get installed loose in the Utilities folder, as well as within sub-folders. There just doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to it. I’m not sure why they can’t figure out a way to gather all these apparently necessary files into a single folder in the Applications folder. Heck, even Microsoft figured out how to do that!

The need for speed

Speed is a relative thing. An application’s speed is tough to judge because every Mac performs differently depending on numerous factors. On my test Macs, a rev. 1 MacPro with 11GB of RAM and a MacBook Pro 13″ with 4GB of RAM, I found CS5’s speed to be a mixed bag. CS4 launched fast, but lagged in many areas while working within the apps. CS5 on the other hand, appears to have doubled the launch time for all the apps on both my test Macs. This on both first launch, and subsequent launches. InDesign has always been a lagger in launch time, but now it’s just silly how long it takes. Photoshop CS4 launched on both my Macs in 2 to 3 seconds, but CS5 takes 6 to 8 seconds. That being said, I typically leave PS, AI and ID open for weeks on end, so the launch time isn’t too terribly important to me.

Once working in the apps, CS5 again operates at the opposite end of the spectrum from CS4. The apps feel smoother and more speedy in general. It’s quite “goodly” to be honest. Because Photoshop is now 64-bit, complex operations run faster – most likely due to having more RAM available. I’m not sure why Adobe didn’t re-write at least Illustrator and InDesign in 64-bit, I suspect it’s simply because of a lack of time to do so while still trying to add new features. In any case, if you’re looking for huge speed improvements, you aren’t going to find it, but CS5 is no slouch either.

Show me the toys

Adobe appears to have gone to great lengths to add lots of little features, along with the more widely reported ones. While Photoshop got most of the love from the press, every app benefits from things that will make your day a lot easier. In particular, I love what Adobe has done with InDesign. Leaving behind the interactive features, things like column spanning text and multiple page sizes in a single document can benefit a large portion of ID’s user-base.

Is it time to upgrade?

As always, the answer depends on which apps you use, and how you use them. To give it an absolute yes or no answer would be mighty assuming of me. If you skipped the upgrade to CS4 and have remained a CS3 user, then you’ll probably find enough reason to upgrade to CS5. Between the features CS4 introduced last time around, and the new ones in CS5, I think it’s probably a no-brainer.

If you only upgraded to CS4 in the last 6 to 8 months, an upgrade to CS5 might take a little more consideration. Because of that, I highly recommend you download the trial versions and base your decision on your own testing. The trial download for the Design Premium suite is just over 3.5GB in size, but you can also download individual applications in the suite if you so desire.

As for me, I found the features in the new InDesign and Photoshop alone to be worth the upgrade. I love having a mini Bridge built-in to the apps too, which is odd because I wasn’t a huge fan of Bridge prior to CS5. I’m fairly happy with the upgrade, and would highly recommend it to anyone who finds the new features useful.