[UPDATE (April 2012) – The same two applications mentioned below remain 64-bit only for CS6.]
[UPDATE (April 2011) – See also the top questions answered for CS5.5!]
Last week there was an online Q&A session called “Ask a CS Pro,” where we got news on when CS5 would be released. The session with Adobe Evangelists Terry White, Greg Rewis, and Jason Levine lasted over an hour and there were a lot of other great questions addressed. Here are some:
Q: Is Creative Suite 5 64-bit-only? Or will it run on 32-bit systems?
A: Only two CS5 applications are exclusively 64-bit, Premiere Pro and After Effects. The rest, including Photoshop, will run in either 32-bit or 64-bit environments, including Windows XP. But CS5 users running on 64-bit native should realize noticeably greater gains in performance, in some cases as much as ten times the previous speed.
Q: How can I tell if my system can run the 64-bit applications?
A: See is your PC is running a 32-bit or a 64-bit version of Windows, or if your Intel- based Mac has a 32-bit or 64-bit processor. Complete system requirements for all CS5 products can be found on this page. See also Adobe’s helpful CS5 FAQ.
Q: What if I buy CS5 but don’t have a 64-bit computer yet?
A: If you decide to buy CS5 Production Premium or CS5 Master Collection, then complimentary 32-bit compatible versions of Premiere Pro CS4 and After Effects CS4 will be provided with your purchase (details and usage here).
[UPDATE (May 19th) – If you need the standalone CS4 versions of After Effects or Premiere Pro (for 32-bit systems or Windows XP), or any other CS4 product for that matter, you can find them still available for download here.]
[UPDATE (May 19th) – If you need the standalone CS4 versions of After Effects or Premiere Pro (for 32-bit systems or Windows XP), or any other CS4 product for that matter, you can find them still available for download here.]
Q: Will Adobe be releasing 32-bit versions of After Effects CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5?
A: It doesn’t appear so. Adobe felt they needed to push the performance and advancement of these products to the next level – see more about their reasoning here and here. Fortunately, the rest of CS5 will work fine on any type of system – including Photoshop, which includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and the others, which are built as 32-bit.
Q: Will the 32-bit versions of Adobe’s programs work on my 64-bit PC?
A: Yes. While 64-bit native applications (when available) will run faster and make better use of system resources, Adobe’s 32-bit applications will run quite nicely on 64-bit computers.
Q: Will there be a new version of Acrobat Pro in the suites?
A: CS5 ships with Acrobat Pro 9. There is no new version of Acrobat in yet.
Q: Will Content-Aware Fill allow me to select animals like pets better than CS4?
Q: Is there new support for HTML5 and CSS3 in Dreamweaver CS5?
A: These standards were too emerging to incorporate into the CS5 product development cycle last year. However in the coming weeks and months you’ll see new plug-ins and extensions for Dreamweaver that add support for these.
Q: I haven’t heard much yet about Fireworks CS5 – what’s new there?
A: For Fireworks, there are some new features but a lot of enhancements with many stability and performance improvements. It’s all covered perfectly here.
Q: Will Illustrator CS5 finally convert from layers to pages in PDF?
A: You can do this with multiple artboards in CS5 which will convert to multiple pages in PDF.
Q: Terry, I saw your InDesign ePUB for iPad video. Will the ePUBs produced with Adobe apps still be accepted by iTunes or has that changed?
A: ePUBs produced by InDesign CS5 should be accepted by the iBookstore AND in iTunes directly, as I did in my video.
Q: What about plug-ins for After Effects – do they have to be 64-bit as well?
A: Yes, After Effects CS5 plug-ins also have to be native 64-bit, but Adobe has been working closely with major plug-in developers to have them ready.
Q: I’ve heard about the new Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro CS5. What if I don’t have one of the supported graphics cards?
A: Mercury is a software engine written from the ground-up to leverage all RAM and all cores in your system, to maximize playback and rendering. At the moment, five NVIDIA cards are supported, with more coming. But you can still run quite brilliantly in software-only mode without GPU acceleration (for example, on a MacBook).
Q: What Content Management Systems (CMS) does Dreamweaver support?
A: Dreamweaver CS5 can work with any PHP-based CMS (e.g., WordPress, Joomla, Drupal), even homegrown, as long as Dreamweaver can connect to the server. You can style with CSS, rework JavaScript, and change HTML, all without having to leave Dreamweaver itself.
What other questions do you have about CS5? Just ask in the comments below and we’ll see if we can get them answered quickly for you.
@ProDesignTools
Thank you very very much!!!! I have a Windows 7 32-bit computer and I wanted only Photoshop and all the other apps (example Illustrator).