Flash® Catalyst™ CS5 Bible

Chapter 3. Working with Other Applications

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Tools

• Choosing Your Comp Tool

• Adobe Flash Builder 4

Today, most major software companies package their main programs into suites. Adobe is no exception. While Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat are available as stand-alone products, almost everyone purchases them together as part of one of the Creative Suite packages. However, while they are purchased together, each program is designed to work alone. Adobe marketing talks about cross-suite workflows, but many a designer creates projects from start to finish in a single application such as Photoshop.

Catalyst is somewhat unique in that it's specifically designed not to work alone. It is the middleman in a Rich Internet Application (RIA) workflow. This workflow is not a marketing gimmick to sell more packaged software; it is the only way to work with Catalyst. Catalyst is not designed to be either the beginning or the end of a development process.

Catalyst was created to allow its users to take predesigned application comps and convert them into Flex projects. Therefore, in order to effectively work with Catalyst, you need other applications to sit at both ends of the workflow — design tools in which you create those comps and a development tool to finalize the project.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Tools

Adobe's Creative Suite provides an integrated set of professional design tools. The main applications that will be used by Catalyst designers are Illustrator, ...