As multimedia shops have matured our needs increasingly expand into the areas of music production. Not long ago adding music to client projects meant hiring outside composers, musicians and recording studios. This is still the option of choice for high-end projects, but is beyond most modest production budgets. While modest projects can be satisfied with stock music and lower end music tools, creative control is stymied.

The new Production Bundle has changed since the old CS2 release. Adobe has acquired a number of companies, including Macromedia and Serious Magic, so there are more toys for each bundle. The Production Premium package now has an incredible amount of software, including: After Effects Professional, Premiere Pro, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator and Flash Professional.

The Casio Exilim-S880 is just such a sleek ultra-compact design that has been dubbed a “credit card camera”. Despite its small size, its all metal body packs a 8.1 megapixel sensor, 3x optical zoom and full frame MPEG-4 H.264 video, making it a stand-out in its class. It fits easily into a pocket or laptop bag with plenty of room to spare. It even offers some real cutting-edge features like its futuristic face-recognition system and Auto-Tracking abilities.