[Looking for the list of Adobe CS3 program abbreviations?]
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta Released
(A prelude.)
Let’s start off by announcing Adobe has recently made Photoshop CS3 Beta available for download. It’s free as long as you have a valid Photoshop CS2, CS2, Production Studio, Video Bundle, or Web Bundle serial number and the final Photoshop CS3 version hasn’t come out yet. Another caveat: no tech support is available for the beta.
All the details are given on the Photoshop CS3 page, including download instructions and system requirements—at least 320 MB RAM and 64 MB video memory!
New Adobe Creative Suite 3 Program Icons
Adobe has been known to change branding strategies every new version, particularly the logo and icon aspects. Take Photoshop for example. From versions 1.0 to 7.0 there was the ever-present eye in each of the whimsically conjured designs. But this was followed by a more nature-friendly feather concept starting with the two generations belong to the Creative Suite.
For CS3, though, Photoshop and practically every other member of Adobe’s Product line has adopted a drastically different icon scheme (mentioned here), sporting two letters of the product name on a soft-gradient-fill-ed square. The typeface details are in the postscript of this entry. The color of the gradient is the color the product is assigned to on the color wheel. In the case of Photoshop, it’s a nice, deep blue, around #2B75CC (according to ColorZilla).
The Alphabet Soup and The Color Wheel
The Periodic Table of Elements comes to mind—transformed into a color wheel using the polar coordinates filter! (Kidding.) Yes, it’s very disorienting.
The general rule is, the first letter is bigger (capitalized) than the second. Compound words, e.g. PageMaker, use the first letters of the root words with the second letter in small caps. For simple words such as Flash, and yes, Photoshop, the second letter is in lowercase. However, just like the periodic table, not all elements are spelled in the same way (yes, I still remember why tungsten uses W: because it’s also called wolframium). Adobe Illustrator uses “Ai”.
I thought I’d list all of Adobe’s product names their corresponding shorthand here. This is based on the notes at the Flickr image uploaded by ÑdнarriÑ•oη (alternative by luxuryluke). Yes, I plan to update or upgrade this list once we have everything straightened out. Ones marked with asterisks are uncertain:
| Adobe Product Names by Icon Shorthand | ||
|---|---|---|
AE - After Effects Ai - Illustrator Au - Audition Aw - Authorware Br - Bridge CF - ColdFusion Co - Contribute Cp - Captivate Di - Director Dw - Dreamweaver | En - Encore DVD FB - Flex Builder* FH - FreeHand Fl - Flash FM - FrameMaker Fw - Fireworks Fx - Flex Gl - GoLive IC - InCopy ID - InDesign | JR - JRun/JobReady* LC - LiveCycle LR - LightRoom PM - PageMaker Pr - Premiere Ps - Photoshop RH - RoboHelp Sb - Soundbooth VC - Version Cue* |
To mix things up even further, some icons do not follow the letters-only rule and have retained their old logos. This includes Acrobat, Acrobat Distiller Apollo, Connect (formerly Breeze), Device Central, Digital Editions, Extension Manager, Flash Player, Flash Video Encoder*, Reader, Version Cue, and a currently-unidentified icon.
Adobe’s CS3 Icons Are Troubling
People have always been complaining about Adobe’s decisions with its branding strategy, but this will probably be the worst debate we will encounter. I probably won’t mind if only a few key products were modified, but it definitely felt awful seeing all those letters on a color wheel. While shortening words into two letters in typical chemical element fashion became a mini trend not too long ago, John Nack counters wants nothing to do with that.
One last point: if we wanted to design a ‘Periodic Table of the Elements’ we certainly have the capabilities to have done so. Our desktop brand system isn’t a marketing or advertising gimmick that we will toss out on the next rev, it’s a solution to real usability and identity problems and is something we can call wholly our own.
But understanding and recall will be difficult in this context. There seem to be too few distinct colors for all of the Adobe software. And using nomenclature reminiscent of Chemistry and all the memorizing we had to do—instead of our previous way of associating images with respective Adobe programs—is also traumatic. That I thought of listing what all the abbreviations stood for (via ÑdнarriÑ•oη and other people’s contributions) in order to keep track of which one was which is alarming enough.
Here’s another good albeit humorous point: good icons are usually so good that their silhouettes also recognizable. But what do you get when you silhouette Adobe’s new icons? Trouble in the Dock, that’s what. I’m not an Apple geek but people are complaining those blocks are hardly recognizable once they’re zoomed out and tiny. Then again, others argue that because they’re so minimalist, they stand out!
Seriously though, I would have preferred it if Adobe stuck to the graphical look rather than the minimalist. It is always good to have an icon that piques your imagination much like a modern-day muse. “What would Andy Warhol say?”
Worse, Adobe compromised. It was fairly inconsistent before but now it’s all the more obvious now that the Acrobat family kept the old logo, along with a few others.
Others ask: should we waste this much time kvetching about product icons when what we should be for or against is the quality experience an Adobe app gives us?
I did, because Adobe is a role model for all things (bright and) beautiful. They’re the company that has excelled in creating tools that make publishing so much cooler and easier to do. (Where are Corel and Macromedia now? No, this is not the place to insert the GIMP argument.) We don’t buy what others have dubbed as “lazy minimalism.”
See, Jason Santa Maria’s reasoning is just like mine.
This is a mistake.
damn, that is befuddling. this comes from a photoshop rookie, of course, mweheh.
@Chap: Are you referring to the icon design? It’s just sad!
@Corsarius: The color’s great and all, but two things: they made people dependent on color AND type. That’s not very “iconic”!
I dunno – do you really think that a feather or flower better communicates the software? I have to say that I kind of like the look, maybe it could have been executed better, but at least it’s more macromedia than adobe. I always favored the former’s brand.
@Mrad: I guess it’s a matter of taste, because I think a bunch of letters very alienating compared other artful figures. I do like the logos for Macromedia’s programs, but I think they’re different and better than these CS3 icons. :)
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I find the new icons very cold. There was a friendly creative feel to the CS2 icon set, and I really liked that. The icons simply look GOOD on my OS X dock. These big ugly starkly coloured icons are going to look nasty on there. I think Adobe are making a mistake. Okay in the scale of things application icons don’t mean that much, but with pretty operating systems like Tiger and Vista, this new branding seems a sad throwback to the uninspired techie-driven software brands of old… oh well.
your’s is georgeous too ;)
and i enjoy your article here :)
FB really likes the icons!!! i hate them!!! stick to the graphic i tell ya!
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@ia: every logos is, in its essence, comprised of color, type and shape. what else do you want?
i love them, and can’t wait to have an Adobe rainbow in my dock!
It’s a matter of taste, Steve. Some people like me prefer the nature-type logos to the alienating, chemical symbol-wannabe logos. The color is also questionable. With so many Adobe products, you can’t just depend on a slight variation of color and type to tell them apart. That color wheel is crowded. And that decision was not very usability-friendly.
Anyway, this argument will never end. Let’s see what Adobe will shock us with next.
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Hi there, its going to back Director MX or “CS3” ?
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I have also made some CS3 replacement icons, but the difference between mine and all the other alternative replacement icon sets that I have seen so far is that my icons actually make use of icons, rather than the 2-letter “periodic table” style — so imagine a complete set of how Device Central and Acrobat, etc. currently look.
http://www.archimediadesign.com/assorted/cs3icons/
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I had a G4 scrubbed and loaded with the new CS3 basic suite. Now the machine is experiencing some latency issues and it takes about a minute just to open up some of the programs. My current machine has 1GB of RAM and 2 empty slots for more. Does anyone have any advice for me? Do you think if I got 1GB more of RAM that it would correct the latency issues? I also have Quark loaded on the machine. HELP!
On behalf of Aquent and the American Marketing Association, I’d like to
invite you and your readers to join our upcoming (June 28th, 2007) free webinar featuring Chris and Jennifer Smith discussing “Accomplishing Critical Marketing Goals with Adobe® Creative Suite 3’s New Capabilities.”
Chris and Jennifer Smith are the co-founders of the Aquent Graphics Institute , a subsidiary of Aquent . Since 1994, they’ve provided training, support, and consulting services to marketers, communications professionals and publishers. Chris and Jennifer have collectively authored over 20 best-selling Adobe-related books, including Adobe Creative Suite 3 for Dummies . Most recently, they developed much of Adobe’s internal training for the Creative Suite 3 launch.
In this Aquent -sponsored webcast, Chris and Jennifer Smith of the Aquent Graphics Institute will share a marketer’s guide to Adobe Creative Suite 3. Specifically, they’ll highlight major enhancements made by Adobe and discuss how some organizations are already accomplishing critical marketing goals with these newly enabled capabilities. Given your audience, I think there’ll be a lot of interest in their advice.
We’d also appreciate your help in spreading the word about Chris and Jennifer’s presentation. Perhaps you’d include us in your calendar or you’d like to interview one or both of them before or after the event? I’d be happy to arrange a phone or email interview with then to deepen your research.
Register and get more info here:
http://www.marketingpower.com/webcast384.php
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Forget the icons, they are nothing compared to Adobe taking my Real Color Wheel painted in 1995 and putting their icons on it. It seems they want to switch from the their RGB color wheel to my RCW color wheel.
I agree everyone should have this colorwheel because it makes the yellow-magenta-cyan more usable by artists, photographers, and graphic designers. Opposing colors will now mix to a neutral black, that is something that had never been done before. Yellow darkening to brown and cyan darkening to ult blue doesn’t happen by accident, it took a lot of original work and thinking to come up with it. I started with painting on location for 30 years matching natures color shadows with there mixed pigments. I followed the elements of color and the crystals they made, they matched and proved my color theory. My color theory, given freely to over 250,000,000 web viewers with this in the code. “This material copyright 1996 by Don Jusko. To reproduce any information for sale, you must ask permission!”
If you are an artist, photographer, graphic designer or interested lawyer and want more information go to my website.
Don Jusko
http://www.realcolorwheel.com/colorwheel.htm
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Awesome article.