Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium for Windows is a complete package of professional software programs that allow you to create, manipulate, edit, enhance, package, and deliver images, graphics, audio, and video. The suite centers around Premiere CS5.5, for video editing, and After Effects CS5.5, for visual effects, and adds several other deep, powerful programs. With such a vast range of useful programs and tight integration between the applications, it's clear that the whole of the CS5.5 Production Premium collection is greater than the sum of its parts.
Those parts, of course, include some of the best-known, most-used applications in professional digital content creation: Photoshop CS5.5 Extended, Illustrator CS5.5, and Flash Professional CS5.5 are the household names, and their continually updated feature sets keep them essential. The suite is rounded out by Flash Catalyst CS5.5, Media Encoder CS5.5, Device Central CS5.5, OnLocation CS5, Encore CS5, Bridge CS5, and, making its debut in the suite, Audition CS5.5, which replaces Soundbooth and introduces true multi-track audio editing to Production Premium.
Start your production by recording quality-controlled video via OnLocation. Shepherd it through Premiere for cutting (where stronger support for dual-system audio is a welcome addition for DSLR video producers), Illustrator and Photoshop for graphics, and After Effects for visual effects (such as the Warp Stabilizer, for cleaning up shaky footage) and color correction. Use Encore, Flash Professional, and Device Central to deploy to the Web, mobile devices, TV, and Blu-ray disc. Throughout, keep all your assets updated and accessible via the application-spanning Bridge CS5. All that's missing from this picture is collaboration, and Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium addresses that aspect of creation, too. Adobe offers tight integration between this suite and its CS Live online services, which include Story, a collaborative script-development tool, and CS Review, an online review service.
Driving much of the back-end processing is the Mercury Playback Engine, which takes advantage of 64-bit computing to deliver video playback and effects processing at levels previously unseen outside of dedicated six-figure postproduction suites. Suddenly, 4K productions employing multiple streams of video and layers of effects are within your grasp.