Adobe offers Creative Suite 4 professional software in five different sets. The Master Collection offers professionals the most features. There are applications for making and editing digital pixel and vector graphics, print layouts, video, Web pages, and animation, and then repurposing that content for mobile devices. Those who don't need all those features might consider suites that cost less, such as Web Premium or Standard for Web design, Design Premium or Standard with tools for printed media, or Production Premium for film.

With Creative Suite 4, Adobe has unified the interfaces of all the applications for more unified and easier experience. The Flash-based panels within CS4 are a little more lively than its predecessors, and handy pull-down menus with preset styles enable users to shift among work space layouts quickly.

The Master Collection will set you back about as much as $2,499 for new or $899 to upgrade. A friend of mine called Adobe and was told that even the student discount cost $699 to upgrade despite the fact she just bought CS3 in August of 2008. It costs $1,599 for users of other CS3 suites to upgrade, or $1,199 for users with two eligible older versions of the suite. Buying all Master Collection applications individually would set you back close to $6,290, or more than $2,000 if upgrading from CS3 versions.

Surfing through the web, I found all kinds of complaints about Adobe's installer and updater, and most are justified. Every Windows application installer suggests you close any running applications, but you can usually ignore it and 99 percent of the time everything works out fine. Adobe forces you to close your browser and all Microsoft Office applications, because many of the programs in the suite--primarily Acrobat--spread way out-- throughout the working environment. In  addition to wasting a large chunk of time installing, you can't do anything else while it's happening..

Unfortunately, it took me nearly 2 hours to install the Adobe Master Collection CS4 on Windows Vista. But that's still less time than with CS3. Adobe's custom installation lets you pick and choose which components to embrace or reject, but there's no mechanism for migrating your settings and all your custom tools.

You'll need powerful hardware to run the heavy-duty CS4 applications: Users of Windows XP SP2 or Vista must have a processor of at least 2GHz, or 3.4GHz for working with high-definition video. Photoshop now natively supports 64-bit Vista.

Features
If you rely on Adobe software for work or school, then CS4 could be worth every penny, depending upon your staple tools. I found CS4 to be more than a worthwhile upgrade than CS3 was. There's not much to wow users of Photoshop who don't work with 3D content, but Illustrator finally manages multipage documents. Flash, on the other hand, really updated this application by cutting out some of the steps required to build animation.

Adobe aimed to improve the options for making round trips among the applications without rebuilding content. For instance, you can export Fireworks designs as CSS and bring them into Dreamweaver. There's greater integration from one application to the next, with support for the latest formats for Web sites and mobile phones, including desktop Adobe AIR applications.

Service and support
Adobe's comprehensive, self-serve options include embedded and online lookups, tutorials, and excellent videos. Also, the company has expanded its help-yourself and peer support online. The new Adobe Support Portal requires an Adobe log-in and password.