Adobe CS, CS2, CS3

I currently use Adobe CS for all my graphic design stuff, as well as Adobe Studio. Is there any real benefit to upgrading if your skills are sufficient?

 

yes and no. You hit the nail on the head, it's the craftsman, not the tools that do the work.

You could just as easily do drop shadows by copying a shape, selecting, filling with black, moving and blurring, and if you did it that way it wouldn't matter whether you were on CS for Photoshop 5.5 because it would work the same way.

As for the tools, there isn't much new or changed, but they did a TON of backend work. They cleaned up and reworked the native formats to all use PDF as the backbone....Photoshop still saves to a PDF, but that PSD is now WAY more compatible with being imported to other programs.

The tools seem to work better, tighter integration between the apps than ever before.

I've used Photoshop 7, CS2 and CS3 (skipped CS) and I say the new interface with dockable dialogs and the new backend work is worth the upgrade - CS3 is the firs time I think the difference between upgrades has been this good.

I'd upgrade again if I didn't have it, and I'm not ahuge fan of monopolistic companies (big open source user here) I was afraid that when Adobe acquired Macromedia that they were gonna turn into microsoft (vendor lockin, forced upgrades and lack of features and bugfixes) but I have been VERY NICELY SURPRISED that it only inspired them to turn up the heat and beat themselves. A very solid release!

 

I use CS3 at work, CS2 at home. I have no intention of upgrading to CS3, though. I actually find the docked menus to be extremely annoying! Photoshop doesn't seem to incorporate a whole lot of stuff that is of interest to the mainstream - they'll add a new feature here or there, but nothing spectacular.

 

any 1 hav CS3 download link with crack ???

 

i tried all of them, CS, CS2, CS3 , i prefer CS2 above all other versions, for one thing, while using CS3 , my pc hangs, so i use CS2 (it takes too much time to load, really annoying , but good enough for me)
and CS , i dont like it, it doesnt have many featured which are added in CS2..

 

Nope, sorry, I purchased mine, and it's for mac.

Seriously, if it's worth having, it's worth having right? there are plenty of free tools like the GIMP and Inkscape that can be used even in a professional capacity if you're just looking for some simple image editing.

If you want Adobe, go buy Adobe, if you want software go download the free but powerful stuff.

 

Thanks innovati. That's sort of what I expected. I'm just wondering if it is worth the upgrade. I personally went from Photoshop 7 to CS and have been very happy with the changes. However, as a network admin I deal with users who use CS2 and CS3 and I have yet to see any real benefit of those over CS. At least not for the money Adobe wants.

 

I was CS2 extremely satisfied with CS2, it seemed like the perfect app

However, CS3 does have it's benefits, not huge but they may help

For one, it loads much faster than CS2. Also I perosnally like the new menus, much easier than traditional menus. Also Smart Filters, new vanishing point, new selections tools, etc...

So CS3 is a good addition, but don't bust your balls over it

 

I like some stuff from CS3 but would rather keep the stability of CS2. I bought CS3 on Leopard and find some things to be rough. Luckily I am a student and was able to get a discount on the suite. When I go to set a fixed ratio for a selection, crop, or shape, I can only set one value and when I go to do the other, the program glitches out and I cannot add my second value. This, along with the frequent unexpectedly quits, CS3 can be frustrating and you didn't get that as much as in CS2. If you have CS, upgrade, if you have CS2, I'd wait till it was more beneficial.

 

See that's the funny part, we have new intelmacs and CS2 had to run under rosetta mode and was buggy as all get out, crashing all the time, literally corrupting files, refusing to open files you'd just saved and then breaking them.

We made the switch here in the studio and CS3 hasn't cause us a single problem. I don't think I've ever had it crash on me (unlike the 15 minutes between crashes in CS2)

{edit}

I'm not trying to say you're lying or that CS2 was bad software, just in my own experience, with our setup of nice shiny new macs CS2 performed VERY subpar. I was not thrilled with that, but once we got native intel Creative suite up and running we haven't had so much as a hitch. Wonderful performance from CS3, they really shocked the socks offa me (being the skeptic I was. Open source folk have a natural fear of proprietary software and big corporations)

 

Exactly

when working with very large projects, CS3 is the app to go with

I was working with a project of mine that was over half a gigabyte (you can just image the load time hehe)
Well CS2 crashed sometimes, and worked really slow so that I was almost ready to work on the projects in parts so I wouldnt be dealing with the whole file at once. Well CS3 completely outperformed CS2, It was fastER(still slow with a .6 gig file ) but if you're looking for better performance .. CS3

 

I think CS3 is worth the upgrade.

 

I use a PC with Windows, so all versions of Photoshop are generally slow

 

um. markn26 , what is your PC specs?
Adobe photoshop requires minimum of 256 MB ram , i have 256 MB , and it works quite gently...
consider about upgrading your RAM

 

Yea iv'e heard that mac's are generally faster with this kind of stuff. I believe it but I haven't tried it first hand... I'm actually considering a macbook pro sooner or later

256 seems a bit small. Well I'll take your word for it, its usable, but don't expect to be working on any large resolution or large scale projects i assume

 

exactly. I have a friend who uses paint.net (and no im not critisizing it) and he creates better graphics than 90% of the people i know.
I too started out in GFX using MSPaint to make forum banners,icons,and layouts

 

shit i still use PS 7