As you may or may not have heard, Adobe's Creative Suite 4 was released this week. Some new features in After Effects and Photoshop have my curiosity piqued, but it is doubtfull I'll take the plunge into this latest incarnation anytime soon. (That is, not until the post houses and clients I work with begin to use After Effects CS4. Hell, I still have After Effects 6 installed just in case someone still uses that version.)

Of all the posts I've read on the web regarding the new version, Andrew Cramer at VideoCopilot.net has the most solid advise I've seen:

If you look at the big picture, After Effects 6.5 has enough capability to create things that would stop time and newer versions regard this as well.  After effects is a compositing application and it is up to us to build amazing things. No new feature is going to do that for us…

Though I'm waiting to see that in the feature list of CS5: "Amazing Builder™ — No designer needed!" Actually, scratch that.

We tend to get caught up in the latest featuresets and plugins ((Don't get me started on Trapcode plugins. Yes, I do use them. But for the love of God, Particular, 3D Stroke, and now Form do not instantly make your animations and designs 'teh awesomes.')) and can forget that they are just tools. And without us and our imaginations, they just sit idle.

Now I'm tempted to fire up that copy of After Effects 6.5... just because.