Link via Streamingmedia.com
 With CS3, Adobe took its video product line several notches above the norm in quality, allowing it to elbow its way into the spotlight alongside other premium video software manufacturers such as Apple and Avid. The product introduced many features, including consistent user interfaces with brightness sliders, outstanding support for Flash video, and a new, easy-to-use audio processing program called Soundbooth. All these features allowed Adobe to catch the eye of many video professionals who previously incorporated only Photoshop in their workflows
Each and every one of the suite’s features and technologies has been improved in CS4, some significantly. With an eye toward accelerating workflows and an initial foray into mission-critical metadata entry and retrieval, the product has some noteworthy improvements that merit attention.
Creative Suite 4 Production Premium is available at an academic discount price of $599
Link via MacWorld
 As you might expect, Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 contains a treasure trove of goodies for pixel-pushing photographers. But you’ll also find some unexpected helpers tucked inside CS4’s bundled applications, Adobe Bridge CS4 and Adobe Camera Raw 5. Here are five favorites all photographers should check out.
Photoshop CS4 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $299.
Photoshop CS4 Extended Student Edition is available at an academic discount price of $199.
Link via Creation Engine
 Office Professional 2007 $109 Academic Discount Price Special! (List Price: $199)
Includes Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Outlook 2007, Access 2007, Accounting Express 2008, and Publisher 2007. Offer good through 1/31/2009.
Link via PC Pro
 SketchUp 7 adds another major strength to its building block approach to 3D modelling with new support for dynamic components. Now, users of the Pro version of SketchUp can add easy customisability and interactive intelligence to the components that they’ve created. It’s a pity that users of the free SketchUp cannot do likewise, but there are already plenty of dynamic components available directly from SketchUp 7’s Components Browser.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at an academic discount price of $49 to students.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at no cost to instructors.
Link via MacWorld
 As a user and as a developer, my overall first impression is favorable. It took me a little time to get used to the new status toolbar, but I’m warming up to it finally. Persistent sorting, dynamic summary reports, editable table views—these are improvements I am grateful for as a user. As for script triggers, although I keep insisting to my daughters that I am not a geek, I find script triggers pretty exciting.
FileMaker Pro 10 is available at an academic discount price of $179.
Link via Creation Engine
Intuos3 4×6 only $159 (normal price $199) after $40 mail-in rebate! Offer good through 3/6/2009. Rebate not available for other Intuos3 sizes.
Link via Extreme Tech
 iClone 2.5 made creating 3D movies simple for the masses. The latest incarnation of the Reallusion software is even better, easier, more fluid, more user-friendly, and just generally more polished. Reallusion went out of its way to create a movie maker into which even the lowly amateur can jump—without hesitation.
Part of that is due to the awesome range of tutorials packed with the software and online. The rest lies in the interface: It’s intuitive, friendly, but amazingly powerful. The package comes with a number of readymade avatars, backgrounds, props, skies, and such, and they all function together in deceptively simple-looking harmony.
iClone 3’s rally cry is Play to Create. What that means is, when you’re actually “filming” a scene, you can control an actor, vehicle, or another ambulatory object with the standard gaming control keys (W, A, S, and D).
iClone 3 Pro is available at an academic discount price of $135. $24 off special! Normal price $159. Offer good through 1/31/2009.
Link via architosh
Architosh talks to John Bacus, Google’s SketchUp Product Manager, about the all new SketchUp 7 and SketchUp Pro 7 and Layout 2. Key points in the discussion include the new Dynamic Components technology and how to learn about it, discussion about OpenGL and multi-processing and multi-threading, and the value in understanding causality in interactive rendering versus determinate renders.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at an academic discount price of $49 to students.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at no cost to instructors.
Link via Gizmodo
 I’ve spent more than a month working with Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection. I’m impressed. It pushes the envelope again with new tools and enhancements that will save a lot of time.
Apart from using a text editor, I spend most of my work time in Facebook Illustrator and Photoshop, which I’ve been using since I was in college back in 1748 or 1994—I can’t remember. Until a month ago, I was happy with both programs in their Creative Suite 3 incarnation. Sure, they aren’t perfect, but they are fast in my 24-inch iMac, and they have all the features I wanted. Or so I thought. I didn’t find myself wanting anything more than a few fixes here and there, maybe just enhancements to this or that other tool, like transparent gradients in Illustrator.
I thought that CS3 was pretty much unbeatable for most of the bread-and-butter stuff that I or any other illustrator or photographer can do. As it turns out, CS4 adds enough feature punch to make the upgrade worth it.
Creative Suite 4 Master Collection is available at an academic discount price of $999.
Photoshop CS4 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $299.
Illustrator CS4 is available at an academic discount price of $199.
Link via Autodesk
SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Dec. 16, 2008 — Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) has announced that most of the top games hitting the shelves this holiday season have been created with Autodesk products. Autodesk technology helps game developers execute their creative vision from start to finish. This season, it has been used by numerous developers to create games that offer believable characters, wondrous environments and enthralling game play, such as: Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Gears of War 2, James Bond: Quantum of Solace and Mortal Kombat® vs. DC Universe.
Fallout 3
Bethesda Game Studios used Autodesk 3ds Max software to create the post nuclear role-playing game Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 game consoles and PC.
Far Cry 2
3ds Max and Autodesk MotionBuilder software were used by artists at Ubisoft to create Far Cry 2 for the Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3 and PC.
Gears of War 2
3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder software helped Epic Games raise the bar for Gears of War 2 on a very tight schedule.
James Bond: Quantum of Solace
Using Autodesk SOFTIMAGE|XSI and Autodesk SOFTIMAGE|Face Robot software, artists at Janimation created four in-game cinematics for James Bond: Quantum of Solace – available for the PC, Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS game consoles.
Mortal Kombat® vs. DC Universe
The Midway team used 3ds Max and Maya to create art assets for the game, and MotionBuilder for character animation.
Autodesk software is available at an academic discount price from Creation Engine.
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