Last month we looked at a cool little tool from this package Adobe After Effects 7.0 ... and as promised this month we're going to take a look at Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio Premium, the entire package ... with a view to answering the question ... is it worth the upgrade price?

Firstly, lets take a look at what the bundle contains:

• Adobe Illustrator CS2 (Available only in the Premium edition)
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Adobe Encore DVD 2.0 (Available only in the Premium edition)
• Adobe Audition 2.0 (Available only in the Premium edition)
• Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0
• Adobe After Effects 7.0

As we have already reviewed Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2 we won't go through the new features again here. So lets move on and take a look at some exciting new features in those other products sporting new version numbers:

Encore DVD 2.0 files are now fully compatable with After Effects 7.0, which means changes made in After Effects appear immediately in your Encore projects. There is also a slide show editor, Flowchart view for your navigation elements, automated chapter menus, you can now have multiple clips on a timeline and chapter playlists which means no duplication just reuse of existing clips.

Adobe Audition 2.0 now lets you see the timeline and video frames from your Premiere Pro 2 project and there's a video monitor so you know just where the audio is going. The video in the file is left intact when you are editing the audio. And, if you've ever used the "Healing Brush" tool in Photoshop, you're going to love the "Repair Transient" tool which effectively allows you to remove "blemish" sounds from an audio soundtrack while leaving the good sounds intact.

Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 at last brings us Multicam editing which lets you edit multiple camera shoots. DVD Authoring is now possible from the timeline. The new Adobe Clip Notes will let you embed video into a PDF file, e-mail the file to your client to review and enter timecode-specific comments, and then view comments accurately mapped on your project timeline. Not only that you can now export Flash Video (FLV) directly from Premiere Pro.

For me personally its worth upgrading solely for After Affects 7.0 but thats just me. If you've been putting off buying Photoshop or Illustrator CS2 and have an old version of Premiere Pro then there's no point in delaying it any further ... this is the upgrade you've been waiting for. This is a serious production suite for the serious producer and quite rightly earns a double thumbs up from me. Adobe's Creative Suite Production Studio Premium is the creme de la creme.