Topic awaiting preservation: is Adobe's PSCS worth the $? (Page 1 of 1)

I've been using Photoshop 7 for quite awhile and am quite pleased with it...I've looked at what Adobe says about CS and can't tell if it's really worth investing in...What do you all think of CS? What problems have you encountered with it? Have you noticed anything quirky about it? I'm fishing for real world feedback on this (not just Adobe's sales pitch)...

a few folks have gotten it and hopefully they'll pop in to comment but until they do there's this old thread plus a thread from the GN .

I'm going to go with the advice that I've heard from a few people, if you have PS 6 or less then upgrade, if you have 7 then it isn't worth it..

(Unless you get it for free... then go ahead and upgrade if you have 7.)

Well if you do a lot of color correction or use 16 bit, it's well worth it. the match color, shadow/higlight, color replace brush are very useful. The photo filter, similulates photographic filters intresting but mostly useless but could be a time saver. The new histogram is vary cool. The Filter gallery is fun but mostly useless, unless you use a lot of filters.

There is ofcource text on a path. But I do all my text in illustrator so I didn't realy care and how often does this really get done. I maybe do it one a month if I am lucky.

As one who likes to make textures for 3D I also like the fibers filter is works well as a base for filters. Its very similar to noise, with a motion blur applied through a clouds generated selection

Perhaps the coolest thing is the layer Comp pallete, a little tricky to get used to but very useful. In adobe's words. "Capture multiple design variations as individual Layer Comps in a single file; then quickly output them to provide alternates for client review." very useful if you need to produce alternet language versions.

The are also some web graphics additons that I have yet to use, and a few very useful scripting changes. Like dialog support. woohoo...

So far it's mostly bug free, I am missing a short cut that lets you switch to the subtract polygon lasso from the add lasso. But there are custom hot keys and I haven't tried them as a fix. I also incountered what maybe a bug yesterday but still have to experment. But I think it is a problem with Lightwave's Multi Pass PDF output Plug-in. I set a layer blend mode from Screen to Color, in photoshop. Photohshop then would not allow me to make any farther changes is if it was locked but, I could not unlock. THe lock Icon was not activeactivated. Simiply duplicating the layer solved the problem. I then could delete the old one.

I think it was well worth it, but I also bought the CS Pro Suite so I got a lot for the deal. It does seem a little slower, on load but then I have way to many fonts. Activation on the Windows XP with DSL, was easy and seamless.

The only draw back is with the Bank Note Security feature. In the past I have done a lot of sweepstakes and contest style work where I could see it becoming a problem. I once had to do a shoot of someone raking money in to a leaf baskets. It was shot on set with $5000 in $100 arranged on top of and some cut-up fake B&W Bills. This could have casued a few problems in post with CS. But then again if you follow the legal guide for us of US currency it shound not pose much of a problem. Luckly I no longer do much of such work and still have 7 just in case.

The only other thing that worries me is the non-square pixel support. I haven't played with it yet, so I don't know if there is an easy convertion. But I am sure I will see client supplied files in a odd aspect that should be in aa square aspect for print.

They still didn't add icons to the floating palletes so I still get lost with I have Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop up on dual monitors. You can't tell many of the palletes apart.

Overall I think it was worth it.

J. Stuart J.


[This message has been edited by jstuartj (edited 02-09-2004).]

From a photography standpoint there are a lot of great changes. Photoshop CS has native RAW capabilities which kicks ass. I've also started using the Shadows/Highlights command quite a bit, I like the results it gives.

One small thing that I really like is a "switch" button on the crop toolbar. It lets you quickly switch crop sizes when you accidentally type a 4 x 6 crop instead of a 6 x 4 crop. It's a little thing but I've already "tested" it several times.

The file browser is much much better. PS can now display meta data which means I can get rid of ACDSee now. It's still a little bit sluggish but not nearly as bad as it was in 7.0.

There's now a "Lens Blur" option under Filter > Blur. It creates a more realistic blurring for backgrounds and such.

I just bought the upgrade a few days ago after getting my hands on a fully functional but not quite legal copy. It's definitely worth it.

:::11oh1:::

I've heard a lot of photographers saying it's good stuff. I bought the upgrade as part of a package with Illustrator and I can't say it's changed my workflow much at all (95% web graphics).

Not bad tho, I do love the file browser and meta data.

Agreements all around. If you are a photographer (or do a significant amount of photography, especially in a production environment) it just plain makes life a LOT easier. On an average day at work I spend more time in the File Browser than in any other aspect of the app. The File Browser is much improved over v.7 (v.7's File Browser was not too shabby BTW - it definitely changed the way I worked for the better). That's a done deal for me. Being able to batch process images & make web galleries from the File Browser, being able to add credit/copyright notice to multiple files in one swoop, applying rotation to verticals ... not to mention making it MUCH easier to start a batch rename from a number other than 1 AND custom image sizes ... Oh yes, it's better for me.

Plus what ^they^ said too. Getting Camera Raw thrown in basically for free is stupendous. As usual, the new doodads that make the press releases (like panorama stitching) don't affect my work flow that much, but this really IS an upgrade for photographers. And scripting is poised for take off I think. Russell Brown's Image processor is an incredible example of what can be done with scripting. More to come I'm quite sure.

^^ Second what they say. If you pretty much stick to web graphics and stuff it might be a questionable expense. But if you're into photography, and especially digital photography, I think it's well worth the upgrade. It runs slower than 7 on my 3 year old G4 but it's not a hassle. Haven't found any bugs yet. The RAW support rocks!

edit: Nice link Steve.. bookmarked.

[This message has been edited by cyoung (edited 02-10-2004).]

I'm still finding new things in version 7...

I still use PS 4.0. I feel like I am using an old easle and paint brush with it.... but alas it works well when you have no money.


Sanity is optional... (and so is clothes!)

Wolfen's Sig Site

Speakin of oldschool PS - can anyone help me find a screenshot of v.1?

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"The Mystery of Life"
Vol. 841, Ch. 26
"All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my beleif! ...at least for now." - Chrono Trigger
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I don't have a shot of ImagePro, what photoshop was called before version 1, but I do have a shot of what was used before photoshop existed or at least one of the few aviable systems. What you don't see is the refridgerator sized CPU box and 3 dishwasher sided contol data disk drives in the next room. The disk packs weighed 35 pounds.




It was called a crosfield 895 or 890 in this shot I don't rember. This is just the digital tablet and monitors, most work was performed on the green screen, the color monitor was just for preview, and masking or retouchs to 1049X1024 px pixel slices of the images. The only retouch tools were a clone like tool. All color correction was applied by the numbers using two dialogs similer to Hue/Staturation or curves. There was no interactive preview. It took about 10 min to apply the corrections and rebuild the display.

Used one for 7 year, fun job. Apply correction go for coffee, check if it's done, go for more coffee, repeate. But sure beat doing color correction and retouch by hand. Now that realy sucks. Trust me.


[This message has been edited by jstuartj (edited 02-14-2004).]

sweeeeet ride there!

whah, it has a spell checker! I am in love! again!

edit: wull Dang! So does version 7. Its about time.


[antique sigs are us]

[This message has been edited by eyezaer (edited 02-20-2004).]

I'm beginning to wonder about a lot of the performance issues I've been having and think some are inherent to Photoshop CS on the Windows platform. If that turns out to be the case I would say hold off on the upgrade. Haven't heard anything bad about the Mac version tho.

I suspect the file browser and paging file.scratch disk useage to be a bit buggy and some newsgroup searching has confirmed that there's a lot of people whininh about these problems. So the almighty file browser is an almighty pain in the butt at times here...