Photoshop CS3 - is it time to upgrade?

[Henry Ambrose]

I've been waiting for the dust to settle on CS3. Given that I'm running an Intel Mac is there any reason NOT to upgrade from CS2? I played with CS3 the other day and it feels really fast. Is it time to upgrade?

[Scott Knowles]

If you have CS2 the cost to upgrade is a lot cheaper but they check your registration first. CS3 also won't overwrite anything, and is installed alongside CS2, so you still have the full use of CS2 if you want or uninstall it later. After ordering it mailed to me and installed, I have two notes with CS3. First, if you're like me and don't like Dreamweaver, GoLive still works. Second, Acrobat 8 has printing problems so you have to look up the tech sheets for the interim correction, but you can still use Acrobat 7. I noticed they already have a complete update, which I haven't done yet. I have to go to the Apple store with its high speed connection to write it to CD.

Good luck.

[Marko]

If you plan to upgrade at all, now is as good time as any. It's not going to get cheaper and new features are really good.

[Walter Calahan]

Yes

[Rider]

CS2 had some really essential featuers (shadow/highlight, for example).

What are the really cool new features in CS3? Browsing the adobe website, I didn't really see anything that grabbed me (I don't do RAW).

[Frank Petronio]

I haven't explored all the new stuff but it seems faster and that alone is worth it

[Rider]

Frank--what kind of machine are you using? Is it faster on both Macs and PCs?

How about smart filters...that could be cool.

[Henry Ambrose]

Its really fast for sure. What I don't want is some kind of odd trap to fall into and then have to re-install CS2 to get my work done. As long as its rock stable overall, color management and printing features especially then I'm ready.

Speaking for myself only I could care less about any new features pretty much since version 5.5. Feature wise PS is looking pretty bloaty these days. But thats another discussion.

[Frank Petronio]

The transistions is seamless, the interface is a little different but everything is in a logical place. I am only using a new 2.2 MacBook Pro 15 LED w 4gb RAM (the RAM is much less expensive if you don't buy it from Apple). Things like Smart Sharpen are pretty instantaneous 2-3 sec whereas they took 30 sec on the old G4 Powerbook.

How much is the new puter versus CS2/CS3 vs PC/MAC I have no idea but logic assumes the CS3 code is better for the Intel processor.

[Rory_5244]

Hi. I've had CS3 on demo for a week now on an ageing PowerBook G4 1.5GHz / 1.5GB RAM. It is much faster than the Photoshop Elements I was using before. My old version of Silverfast Pro (6.4.4r3b) causes CS3 to crash repeatedly after scanning a slide. So, I'm using Silverfast in stand-alone mode. Lasersoft has offered a fix, but I have to upgrade for $150. to get it. As I've already just spent $350 odd for Aperture and Neat Image, and it looks like I'll be getting CS3 soon, Lasersoft can keep their $150. fix.