The recession has brought a sea-change in the way Adobe is marketing CS4. Instead of focusing on fancy new features, the new mantra is ROI -- return on investment. To that end, the company has commissioned what it says is independent research proving CS4 can save "thousands of dollars a year" over the previous version thanks to built-in timesavers and other workflow improvements. In other words, CS4 can do more with less.

The Pfeiffer Consulting study is clearly aimed at existing Adobe customers. It only compares CS4 to CS3 -- there is no comparison to competing products. The idea, according to Adobe VP Dave Burkett, is to give artists and designers some "ammunition" to take to their corporate bosses who may be reluctant to upgrade due to the recession. By demonstrating reduced labor costs, designers can justify the roughly $400-$900 per-workstation upgrade cost.

Pfieffer conducted 125 time and motion studies on typical CS4 tasks using design professionals in a variety of fields. For example, the Preflight feature in Adobe InDesign helped users identify and correct production errors more than twice as fast, according to the study. By calculating the time saved in terms of dollars, Pfieffer estimates that various productivity improvements can save CS4 Design Premium users more than $5700 per workstation, each year.

Several versions of the benchmark study have been prepared for download, each aimed at different segmentsof the creative community.