You can attend in person on the IUB campus at the Kelley School, room CG1014 or on the IUPUI campus, in ICTC room IT497.

You can find an online link to the presentation here: http://webcommunity.iu.edu

Hope to see you there.

• Flash CS4: The Basics — Basic instruction on the interface, drawing, and Flash concepts.
• Flash CS4: Interactivity Basics — Introduction of ActionScript 3.0 to create interactivity using buttons in a Flash movie.
• Flash CS4: ActionScript Programming Basics — Basic concepts in ActionScript 3.0 such as the use of control structures, collision detection and animation.

While these workshops give you a great foundation in Adobe Flash, there are many, many topics that aren’t covered in-depth. Lynda.com can be used to fill in and augment the topics in these workshops. From now until December 20th, IU community members get FREE access to lynda.com. As of this writing, lynda.com offers 10 courses in Flash CS4 and 7 courses in ActionScript 3.0. Remember that the Flash platform isn’t limited to the Adobe Flash software. In addition to the Flash specific courses, lynda.com offers 4 courses on Adobe Air and 10 courses in Flex. That’s 31 courses about or relating to the Flash platform. To simplify things, this article will focus only on the courses related to the Flash application as well as ActionScript 3.0.

Continue after the jump!

How do you effectively take advantage of all this great Flash information? Let’s first talk briefly about some of the vocabulary that lynda.com uses and what it all means. When you log in, you’ll notice two titles included with almost every topic: Getting Started and Essential Training. Getting Started is analogous to STEPS workshops entitled “The Basics.” It includes information for beginners. Essential Training on lynda.com includes training on an application as a whole — the phrase “everything including the kitchen sink” comes to mind here.

For more information about how to navigate the lynda.com interface, check out this video: A Brief Tour of lynda.com.

The following table should help demystify the rest of the courses offered in Flash:

The following table describes the ActionScript courses related directly to the Flash application:

As you can see, Flash CS4 topics on lynda.com cover a broad range of concepts. Like I mentioned earlier in the article, I only covered the topics related directly to the Flash CS4 application. Lynda.com also contains many courses that focus on Flex and Adobe Air, which are also part of the Flash platform.

Hopefully this article helps you wade through one of the more complex topic groupings on lynda.com! Happy development!

First of all, let’s find out where to get this Extra Content.  It is available from IU Ware at the following address: http://iuware.iu.edu/list.aspx?id=196

NOTE: You should have any CS4 applications you wish you use installed before downloading and installing these files.  Fonts in these packages can be installed without installing CS4 applications.

Here you can download all of the Extra Content that is available. It is separated by program, but we will see shortly, that some of the files inside are duplicated.  First, let’s list what programs have Extra Content available, and what can be downloaded.

• Design Premium – This package contains fonts, all of which are duplicated in other packages listed below. This package also contains Read Me files for Acrobat 9, Device Central, and Adobe Drive.
  • Illustrator – Fonts, duplicated in the Design Premium Package
  • InDesign – Fonts, duplicated in the Design Premium Package, and a tutorial on scripting
  • Flash – Fonts, duplicated in the Design Premium Package.
  • Fireworks – Fonts, duplicated in the Design Premium Package, along with some sample projects, and tutorials.
• Dreamweaver – A PDF document containing links to download resources for Adobe AIR, and Spry.
• Photoshop – A group of useful plugins, including the PatternMaker plugin, along with a host of useful textures, scripts, and layouts.
• After Effects – Additional templates and backgrounds for use with the program
• Premiere Elements – A group of templates for use with the program.
• Premiere Pro – Something of a misnomer, this package contains extra templates for Encore CS4, and some additional files for OnLocation CS4.

Deciding which of these to download depends on what programs you use frequently, but the following should be considered absolutely essential.

Design Premium Extra Content – More fonts to choose from can be a great help, and if you install the Design Premium software, this package is absolutely essential. Since these fonts are duplicated in the Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Fireworks packages, these are not necessary to download if you download the entire package. To install the fonts, just press and drag the individual files into your Font folder (C:\Windows\Fonts). You might get some warnings about duplicate fonts, but just accept the warnings, and allow the non-duplicates to install.

Photoshop Extra Content - You can use Photoshop without these extras, but it is always good to have more options to choose from, especially in the textures folder. And the PatternMaker plug-in can be extremely useful in background replacement, as seen here. Follow the instructions in the Read Me files for installation instructions.

Premiere Pro and After Effects Extra Content – If you use After Effects or Encore CS4, then these packages are very important. The templates and additional backgrounds can help you be more creative, and give you more options to create unique and interesting projects.

Now that you have all of the information on what is in these packages, you can download exactly what you need, and not waste time trying to figure out what might be useful.

For more information on training options for the programs in the Design Premium package, visit IT Training & Education

Adobe is one of the largest software companies in the world, and while most people are familiar with their core apps, like Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash, there are many applications included in the suite that you might not be familiar with. In this post, we’ll take some time to examine all the different applications that you can install with the various Adobe suites. We will focus on the applications in Design Premium CS4 and Production Premium CS4. There are many add-ons and extra technology included in the installers, but we will look only at the applications included.

Design Premium CS4

The Design Premium suite is probably what most users will download first. This package includes the most common applications that Adobe offers. Let’s look at what’s included.

Photoshop – This is Adobe’s flagship application, and the one most people are familiar with. It is a professional quality photo editing program. It can be used by basic users, but is designed for advanced and professional users. Some tasks you could complete in Photoshop include resizing images, color correcting, making a collage of images, and even saving as a different format. More complex tasks can include retouching and repairing damaged images, or removing distractions.

Dreamweaver – Dreamweaver is a website creation program designed to allow users to see the web page they are creating as they are creating it, rather than typing in code. As the user creates parts of the web page, Dreamweaver writes the code in the background, which the user can view and alter as necessary. Dreamweaver also offers Cascading Style Sheet integration, and the ability to add code in several popular web programming languages like PHP and ColdFusion.

Flash – Flash is an animation and application development platform. You can create simple or complex animations, and use the ActionScript programming language to create full featured web applications. Because it combines animation and programming, it can become a very complex application, but it also means that you can create very impressive applications once you have some knowledge.

Acrobat Professional - Acrobat is a program that creates and edits PDF documents. PDF documents are designed to be read by anyone with the freely available Adobe Reader, but with Acrobat Professional, we can create these documents and add special features. We can create PDF forms, and add links, bookmarks, and file attachments to standard PDFs. We can also add security features to our PDFs with this program.

Illustrator – Illustrator is a program designed for the creation of print graphics. It is a program designed for artists, and requires good knowledge of the use of the tools and drawing in general to get good results, but with some time and effort, most users can become proficient with the tools.

InDesign – InDesign is a page layout program that can be used to create newsletters, brochures, flyers and even more complex publications like magazines and books. InDesign works very well in any instance where text and graphics need to be placed precisely. Again, it is a program that benefits from a solid knowledge of the tools and design principles, but is usable for basic users.

Fireworks – Fireworks is a lightweight graphic editor that is focused on web graphics. We can quickly optimize web graphics, and create web specific graphics like animated GIFs, image maps, and navigation bars. It is excellent for quick re-sizing and saving in web based formats like JPG, GIF and PNG.

Production Premium CS4

The Production Premium suite is focused on video editing and creation. These programs are likely less familiar to a broad audience. Also, Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator are included with this package, which are discussed above. These programs are almost universally more complex than the Design Premium applications, because the concepts are so much more complex.

Premiere Pro – Premiere Pro (not to be confused with Premiere Elements, a separate program) is a high-end video editing program. It is a complex program that requires a good deal of skill and know-how to use proficiently. Basic users are probably more interested in the more basic Premiere Elements (available as a separate download for IU staff and students from IUWare), or Windows MovieMaker, which is available by default on Windows computers.

Soundbooth – Soundbooth is a sound recording and editing program that comes with the Production Premium suite. In this program you can alter pitch and tone, change the sound levels, remove and add audio, and even add special effects to your sound recording.

After Effects – After Effects is a program that allows you to add special effects to videos like animation, or screen overlays. It can also do video touch-ups, much like the healing tools in Photoshop can touch-up photos. It is another program that requires a lot of knowledge of video formats and the tools to get good results.

Encore – Encore is a fully-featured DVD creation program. It allows us to create a DVD with all the features of a professional DVD, such as multiple audio tracks, animated menus, chapter lists, and even includes DVD burning. Encore is a DVD creation program only, and it relies on the other programs in the suite like Photoshop, After Effects, and Flash to create some of these more complex assets, but with some know-how, a basic user could create a simple DVD fairly quickly.

OnLocation – OnLocation is an organizational program to help keep track of video files as they’re being shot. It can track a shot list, including the camera that was used, the time of day, and other information essential to a large or small production. It is designed for professionals working on a complex video shoot, and is probably not of much use to the basic user.

Adobe Media Encoder – This is a program designed as an add-on to Flash and Premiere, but can be used as a standalone application as well. It converts video files from one format to another with great precision. Basic users can use the presets, and experiment with different settings to find a good balance of size and quality.

This has been a brief overview of the programs included in the Adobe Creative Suites. If you want to learn more about these programs, and how to use them, keep an eye on this blog or try these sources:

• http://ittraining.iu.edu – IT Training & Education offers in-depth classes on all of the programs in the Design Premium suite.
• http://www.adobetv.com – For shorter video tutorials, Adobe TV can give you specific tips and skills on all of the Adobe products.