Photoshop CS4 is out

I got the trial of Adobe CS4 at work to check it out before we upgrade from CS3. And I can definitely tell you that I don't see any noticeable differences. Oh except that if you create something in CS4 you can't edit it in CS3... very inconvenient. If you make a design in CS3 or an earlier edition you can edit in CS4. I checked the adobe site to see what the new features were that I failed to notice. apparently there is an Adobe Configurator so you can drag and drop menu items, tools, video and images. There is also fluid canvas rotation. As far as I can tell the improvements are mostly to the user interface and not so much the capabilities. Still, it is nice to have the newest toy.

Move over Flash....

Over the weekend, my friend who works for a graphic design company in NYC told me about Microsoft Silverlight that covers animation mixed with interactivity. It was shown to the public last year at NAB 2007 and used a lot my movie studios like 20th Century Fox. For animation and visual design it uses an EME (Expression Media Encoder) to create games and interactivity for websites. Anyone else ever use this? Better or worse than Flash? Considering it's from Microsoft, I would imagine it's slow and hard to use like Vista.