Tim attended the CS5 Launch yesterday in Chicago at Ascend Training and found the Adobe Story from script to metadata was a pretty cool feature. Industry-wise, Adobe’s purchase of Business Catalyst and Omniture could potentially give some CMS and Analytics tools a run for their money too.

Here’s a quick rundown on what’s new with Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Master Collection: a comprehensive toolset for designing across media with Design, Web, and Production Premium packages.

Limited 3D functions were introduced in several CS3 applications but Adobe really upped the ante with CS4.

Animators can now import 3D models into Photoshop, paint textures directly onto them and export PSD files with 3D objects intact for animating in After Effects. The resulting layers in After Effects retain all properties from the Photoshop document except for lighting, which of course can be re-created in After Effects. It’s a bit of a drawback, yes, but hopefully one that animators will be able to overlook in favor of having these new creative options at their fingertips.

XFL is a format new to CS4 that allows After Effects animators to export their compositions to Flash without flattening all layers. Supported features are converted to Flash layers while unsupported features are converted to FLV with or without alpha channels. XFL files can be opened in Flash with layers intact and saved as FLA files, giving developers precise control over elements that previously were flattened into SWFs or FLVs.