Photoshop Mac CS6 for $196--worth it?

[Darin Boville]

I have CS 5 running on an early 2011 Macbook Pro 15" i7 with 16 gigs RAM--is CS6 worth $200 in terms of improving my life working with very large files? Does it do anything magical that is useful in the real world? Is $196 a good price?

--Darin

[Preston]

Darin,

Maybe this review at Arstechnica will help in your decision making process.

PS6 Review

--P

[Darin Boville]

Thanks for the link. I'm wondering, though, about opinions from users in a our rather specialized niche. We we (or pano guys) talk about "large files" we mean something very different from wedding photographers.

Does the background saves feature work well when the file sizes are two gigabytes? Does the increase in speed on certain function make any real difference at these sizes?

Just looking for some real world feedback from our specialized uses...

--Darin

[Ben Syverson]

With 16 GB of RAM, you can load a pretty huge scan into RAM. Most of the speed improvements are GPU-related, so you'll only see the benefit if you're working from RAM. Drive access is by far the biggest bottleneck in PS.

Background saving is nice, since it doesn't lock up the interface, but on the other hand, it doesn't make saving the file any faster.

The healing brush can now be set to content-aware, which you may like for dust spotting...

[Brian Ellis]

I haven't seen anything in CS6 that's tempted me to buy it. Most of the changes seemed to be aimed at graphic designers rather than photographers, at least not photographers like us who don't typically have the mass of images to evaluate and crank out under deadlines that wedding, sports, etc. photographers do. Increases in speed aren't a big deal to me, with 8 gigs of RAM things move along pretty quickly for me as it is. Someone who's struggling with two gigs might of course think differently about the importance of a speed upgrade.

I haven't spent much time studying all the features of CS6, maybe someone who has bought it or studied it more thoroughly would have different ideas.

Not to get too far OT but does anyone here know what Adobe's current policy on upgrades from older versions is, i.e. how many generations of PS one can go back and still qualify for an upgrade as opposed to a whole new version? I believe it used to be three generations back, then I heard some noise about a change by Adobe to only one generation back. There was a lot of screaming about that but I never saw how it was finally resolved. If it stayed at one generation I guess I'd have to buy CS6 even though I don't really want it.

[Darin Boville]

Just fyi, the $196 price is not the upgrade price--they are running a sale for the full version at that price--no upgrade issues.

--Darin

[Brian Ellis]

Just fyi, the $196 price is not the upgrade price--they are running a sale for the full version at that price--no upgrade issues.

--Darin

Thanks, I didn't realize that. I assumed it was an upgrade. I've never seen the full version selling for anything like that before.

[Darin Boville]

I've never seen the full version selling for anything like that before.

That's because you haven't seen the magic Amazon discount code! Here it is: KNRL-N4BYJU-RK7DJM

--Darin

[Lenny Eiger]

The truth is that if you want to use Photoshop next year and the year after, you will ultimately get a new computer. Your old Photoshop won't work in the new operating system. Computers are not like refrigerators, they have a 3-year limit. After that time, you are expected to buy a new one. Ok, maybe you get 4 years, but that's it. This is how computer companies, and software companies plan their lives.

Do we want them to stop? Of course we do. Are they going to? No.

If you don't buy one upgrade, they will get you on the next, or the one after. They might force you to buy it at full price again. They will get their money, or come to your house personally and disable their software. (I am kidding here, but it isn't far from the truth.)

I don't like half of this upgrade. It doesn't do anything for me. It took me two hours to get away from their stupid app frame, their stupid dark gray look, their stupid opening up everything in tabs. I am still pissed about the changes they made to the Curves dialog. I have noticed that the magic healing thing is better at spotting than it used to be. It might be a little easier than cloning these days, in some of those difficult areas.

Long and short of it is that they are going to get their money. I don't mean to be rude or insensitive to anyone here but the only thing I can say is get over it.

How long will it take to get our economy back? Will the real estate market ever get back to where it was? Will Americans ever learn to vote using their brains? Will I see post modernism die and disappear in my lifetime? There are plenty of things where I don't get to choose the outcome. Do I wish Adobe was a different company? You bet I do. But they aren't, they won't change, and I just have to get over it. Again and again.

Lenny

[Jim Andrada]

I use Photoshop and InDesign and After Effects, and plan to (Deo volente) for quite a while yet. So I usually upgrade every release or two. A lot of the software I use (like Cinema 4D and RealFlow fluid sim) has already gone to a subscription based system where by getting a "maintenance contract" you always get the next release for "free" so to speak. The advantage I see is that you know exactly how much to budget each month and you get better support. So I went for the new Adobe plan where you get everything for $39.99 a month (going to $59.99 a month someday though)

And they do mean just about everything including After Effects, Premier, Audition, Illustrator,r etc. The software apparently checks once a month to see if your subscription is current so it needs internet access once a month but outside of that it doesn't have to be connected.

Kind of a long winded way of saying that, if you use more than Photoshop and Lightroom, the new subscription plan looks pretty good, but if all I used were Photoshop I wouldn't be so enthused and I might just decide to run each version for three years or so and pay full price for the upgrade when I saw something I really wanted.

Oh yeah - the auto save/recover feature does seem to work on larger than 2GB files - I had a system freeze when I had an 8x10 with several adjustment layers open and it recovered flawlessly when I restarted PS.