• Photoshop: Content-Aware Fill – remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels (I know, I already said it, but it’s so cool!)
• Photoshop: Refine Edge — precisely detects and masks the trickiest types of edges, such as hair and foliage, while eliminating background color contamination
• Photoshop: Puppet Warp — precisely reposition or warp any image element, such as straightening a bent arm in a photo or manipulating the landscape to generate a new perspective
• Flash: Text Layout Framework — professional-level typography capabilities with functions like kerning, ligatures, tracking, leading, threaded text block and multiple columns, as well as advanced multilingual typographic and layout features for more than 30 languages
• Flash: Code Snippets Panel — quickly inject code into projects for timeline navigation, actions, animation, audio and video
• Premiere Pro: NVIDIA GPU-accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine — open projects faster, refine effects-rich HD sequences in real time and play back complex projects without rendering
• After Effects: Roto Brush — isolate moving foreground elements in a fraction of the normal time
• Illustrator: Bristle Brush —  set bristle characteristics such as size, length, thickness and stiffness, as well as brush shape, bristle density and paint opacity, for simulated life-like blending
• Illustrator: Variable Width — control stroke width at any point along a path, align dashes to corners and path ends
• New Program: Adobe Flash Catalyst — transform designs into interactive components without writing code

If you’re more of a visual person, there’s also a really long video at the launch site that gives an overview of the latest features in the new Adobe Creative Suite –tell me how it is, if you make it through the whole thing ! Adobe also posted a few coinciding press releases: Adobe Unveils Creative Suite 5 Product Family; Adobe Unveils Creative Suite 5 Product Family (Multimedia); Adobe Delivers Creative Suite 5 Design Premium; Adobe Announces Creative Suite 5 Web Premium; Adobe Debuts Creative Suite 5 Production Premium; Adobe Launches Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended; InDesign CS5 Powers the Transition to Digital Publishing; Adobe Introduces Flash Catalyst CS5; Adobe Releases Illustrator CS5; Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Redefines Nonlinear Editing; Adobe Helps Prepare the 21st Century Workforce with Creative Suite 5.

For a quick, easy-on-the-eyes rundown, check out this Business Wire page.

Now, are you as excited as I am?! Well, hold that thought for just a bit longer… According to all those releases from Adobe, “Adobe Creative Suite 5 products are scheduled to ship within 30 days, with availability through Adobe Authorized Resellers, the Adobe Store and Adobe Direct Sales.” Remember, these press releases are all dated April 12th, the same day as the launch. So, are we going to see availability by May 12th!? Well, most retailers (that even have the product up) are taking pre-orders but without saying a date. Amazon has disclaimers that say June 30th on the product order pages. Could it be possible that SoftwareMedia.com have CS5 available before the online retailer giant? Hm… Mid-May perhaps? Hmm…..

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The coolest feature of Adobe BrowserLab is its ability to display your page using two different browsers, side by side in the same window. So, you could see the display differences say between Firefox 2.0 and Safari 3.0, side by side. It also has an “onion skin” feature that superimposes one browser view over top of another. This is very useful in tweaking the positions of your page elements.

BrowserLab is also available for use from within Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, as an extension. This tool allows you to preview content inside of Dreamweaver using different browser configurations, without having to upload your page to a server first.

For now, Adobe BrowserLab is only available as a limited free preview. Word has spread quickly this morning and the first round of free logins to the service have already been given out. However, Twitter updates from Adobe Product Manager Scott Fegette indicate that more capacity will be added soon. Adobe plans on offering BrowserLab as a paid subscription service eventually.

For complete information (and to try the service out once more logins are available), check out the Adobe BrowserLab homepage.

Greg Rewis is a long-time Dreamweaver user, and his way of walking you through a particular concept is clear and very straightforward. The new season of Taming the Web is even better than last year’s. Adobe TV is definitely catching on with users, and they are putting more and more effort into each episode. This is great for those of us that use Adobe products and want some clear tutorials, without having to pay for them.

I have embedded the first episode of Taming the Web below, to get you hooked on the series. This episode walks you through the site set up process in Dreamweaver CS4. Greg explains how to correctly configure the intial set up settings for your particular site using the Dreamweaver wizard. He also shows you how to use the new version control feature in Dreamweaver using a subversion server. This allows you to “go back in time” to any previous save of the site you’re working on, allowing you to reverse recent changes to your code. The next episode will look at actually creating your new website, once you have your settings configured correctly in Dreamweaver CS4.

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In previous versions of Dreamweaver, to preview and author complex elements like these you would have to bounce back and forth from your authoring window to preview changes in a browswer. However, Dreamweaver CS4 now includes a feature called “Live View” that lets you see your page, in the authoring window, exactly as you would see it in a browser. You can even interact with the page and see how the elements work together.

Even cooler, is the related files bar that brings in all associated pages (like CSS and Javascript files) into the design environment. You can now browse a page’s CSS file and make changes to it without having to leave your current view. Furthermore, with Dreamweaver CS4′s new “Live Code” feature, you can now see your source code exactly as a browser will see it. That means Javascript and other placeholders can now update on the fly as you navigate your site’s interactive elements. This will save you tons of time when you have to change particular elements of a CSS class for example.

Check out the video below for a visual of these cool new features in Dreamweaver CS4. For more videos like this, click over to Adobe TV.

When it was released in early 2007, CS3 was billed as the biggest release in Adobe’s history for several reasons. First, Adobe had acquired Macromedia Software, the leading maker of web design and development products like Flash and Dreamweaver. CS3 benefited from this acquisition as it provided designers with Adobe’s products and Macromedia’s products from one source and one price point.

Secondly, CS3 introduced an impressive amount of upgraded features to each of their products. Universally, they all share a streamlined workspace, with dockable windows and pallets, which allow the user to tidy up the workspace. Photoshop and Illustrator shared greater integration with the advancement of vector smart objects. Photoshop alone saw massive improvements like non-destructive filters, a clone source palette, and improvements in the 3D vanishing point tool. Improved features included better automated image stitching. And in Photoshop CS3 Extended there were introduced tools for importing and editing some 3D graphics, and video file support.

CS3 dramatically cut the startup time of all of their programs, making it much quicker to get to work on a project. CS3 was also the first time different “Editions” were available. These editions included Design Standard, Design Premium, Web Standard, Web Premium, Production Premium, and the Master Collection, and essentially allowed the consumer to purchase a package with only the software applications needed for their specific creative field.

CS4 has since improved the workflow and workspace of Adobe Programs by allowing the user to totally customize their pallets. Photoshop has a new Smart Scaling feature which works on an awareness to the content of your image. Photoshop also has new tools for editing 3D objects. Illustrator now allows multiple art boards in a single document, which comes in handy when you want to consolidate all of the different versions and revisions of a project in one place.

It should be noted that neither of these lists are comprehensive to the features of the versions discussed. But, in the opinion of one designer, CS3’s release was revolutionary. And CS4’s is retooling. Impressive, yes, but is it as expansive is CS3? Why don’t you be the judge: If you’re running CS3 why not download and test-drive Adobe’s new features and tell us in the comments if it’s worth the upgrade or not.

Download a trial version here: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/ and let us know what you think.