CS2 or CS3

[atseeyob]

Almost all of my questions are purchasing advice. As you can guess I am investing on photography related items. My next one will be photoshop because I am about to take a class starting mid December.

The price of CS3 is almost twice of the price for CS2. Can anybody tell me what is the major advantage of CS3 over CS2? What is that you can do in CS3 that you can not do in CS2?

I truly appreciate your input as usual

 

[patrickt]

Once you find out what one can do the other can't do you really need to ask yourself if you want to do those things.

 

[Digital Matt]

I think I would buy the one that pertains to the class you are going to be taking.

 

[JerryPH]

I just picked up CS3, but I have had zero experience with Photoshop in the past so I cannot give you any kind of comparison.

Usually the manufacturer will give you a comparison or improvements list between products or versions. Have you visited the adobe site and checked there?

 

[Tolyk]

All you have to do is pick up a copy of Adobe Photoshop 7.0 from Ebay or wherever you can find it (1oo dollars) and then go to Adobe's website and use the "Upgrade" option, for 199 US. That makes the price about the same

 

[photogincollege]

Check your college campus (if thats where the class is ), many times they will have student versions of all of adobe software for $200.00 and the only thing is your agreeing to not use it to make money with.

 

[Reel1]

As well as the other responses, are you using a pc or a mac? If your using an intel based mac you will want CS3 as CS2 is not optimized for the intel mac.

 

[nossie]

I've used CS2 for years and now I'm on CS3 for a while. There are a lot of improvements but there isn't a whole lot to justify the price as far as user functions go, it's a big issue for a lot of people.
In the background there's a lot of optimisations for newer CPUs going on but who cares when CS2 fixes a foto for you just the same.

All you have to do is pick up a copy of Adobe Photoshop 7.0 from Ebay or wherever you can find it (1oo dollars) and then go to Adobe's website and use the "Upgrade" option, for 199 US. That makes the price about the same

I like this idea!

 

[JerryPH]

I did something similar... I found a copy of CS2 at a garage sale and upgraded to CS3. I paid $5 for the original CD and it even had the original bill of sale in it!

Short of getting it for free, I do not think you can do it any cheaper.

CS3 is remarkably easy for me to use for the basics. I am already doing things in it that NONE of the other programs could do and gives me superior results than any other program I have... and YES that includes Nikon's CaptureNX.

The only thing I did not see if it could do or if I can even do it, is batch processing.

For those interested, there are several tutorials on youtube.com to help you get started. CS3 basically rules in the world of photo editing software. I just never dreamed by how much more.