Transcripts

"Tech Talk"-Animation Madness

SUSIE GHARIB: In tonight's "tech talk" segment, how can you produce animations material for the web, television commercials and even cell phone content, all with one set of software? Our technology maven Scott Gurvey has a review of that software, the latest offering from Adobe.

SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Adobe Systems calls Creative Suite 3 the most important release in the company's history. Most independent reviewers are calling it a big success. Adobe has set the standard for image editing since 1989, when it released Photoshop. PDF files, the portable documents created by its Acrobat product, are in use worldwide by business and government. But Adobe has also developed or acquired dozens of other products all designed to help in the creation of content. Creative Suite ties them together. Senior editor Sean Carroll of" PC Magazine" likes what he sees.

SEAN CARROLL, SENIOR EDITOR, PC MAGAZINE: There are so many enhancements across the many, many programs that we have reviewed individually that we can't really talk about all of them, there's just too many. But the integration is something that is common to all of them. Almost every single one now has a common interface, so if you've learned one program, you've learned a lot of the other programs, which is great.

GURVEY: Several of the programs in the suite came from Macromedia, which Adobe acquired in 2005. Now, graphics created in Photoshop for a print project can be turned into a flash animation and published to the web using Dream Weaver. The same creative content can be combined with video to produce television advertising using Adobe's premier video production program.

And with demand growing for content on cell phones and other mobile devices, Adobe has worked with manufacturers to create a tool called Device Central, which lets you test to see exactly how your content will look on scores of mobile devices. There are Creative Suite bundles for design, web and video professionals and a range of prices and upgrade options for current customers. Adobe reported record revenue of more than $745 million for its second quarter, which ended June 1, citing strong sales for the new Creative Suite" and for Acrobat. Analyst Toan Tran of Morningstar says he expects the trend to continue.

TOAN TRAN, EQUITY ANALYST, MORNINGSTAR: Adobe should have a record year this year in terms of sales. And, of course, they're a very profitable company. And the proliferation of digital content is really driving Adobe's business right now, and I don't see that abating for the next few years.

GURVEY: We talked at length with Adobe's CEO Bruce Chizen and we'll have that exclusive interview tomorrow. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.