On September 23, Adobe just announced today the next version of Creative Suite: CS4. The new additions to the apps are amazing, positioning Adobe as a true leader in the design/creative industry: Never backing up and always surprising their users.

In Photoshop there’s a new Masks panel, 3D Painting and Content-Aware Scaling – this last one looks so useful! Extended depth of field, by merging several images -works great from what I can see online.

In Illustrator there’s multiple canvas -specially important to users migrating from FreeHand, an app still big in Latin America- that allows to have several pieces you’re working on displayed at the same time. Also, a big announcement is the separations preview, letting you glance at spot colors, overprinting, and CMYK blacks in text and placed files… A great tool for print designers!

Now, going over to InDesign the two features that strike me the most are Tabs (think like-browser tabs but with all open documents) and Smart Guides features, wich work like iWork’s smart Guides telling you when objects are aligned automatically or placing images within an InDesign document. A top new feature is Spread Rotation and my favorite, Conditional TExt – which lets you deliver multiple versions of a document from one InDesign file.

So, go over at Adobe.com and browse around. Find your favorite app and find your top fave features from the new version of the Creative Suite. Also, PeachPit Press has an extended CS4 Resource Center that covers many of the new additions and enchancements to each app. The apps are available for preorder on Adobe’s store.

You can see the recorded video from the broadcast here.