 Jeff Dewey |
CS 3 Upgrade or Elements and Lightroom? I have a copy of CS2 of which I use about 2% of its functionality - on a good day! I'm now faced with the decision to upgrade to CS3 or just purchase Elements and possibly Lightroom. What's the difference? And am I just better off going with Elements? All I want to do is to enhance and correct some of my images shot RAW with a D80. Thank you!
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Richard Lynch |
Jeff, Generally, Elements will be all you need, especially if you only use 2% of Photoshop. A key here might be which 2%, though. Elements will have the image editing tools (even the ones that Adobe suggests it doesn't for the most part - they just need to be implemented differently). It is 1/10th the cost of Photoshop (though the upgrade is significantly less). You should check out the features in Elements by downloading the tryout ... see if you can work with it, and THEN decide.
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Jeff Dewey |
Richard - Thank you very much for your reply. When I make my decision, I had planned on taking one of your courses ... I would assume that they cover PS as well as Elements and that a lot of the commands are similar?
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Richard Lynch |
In my BetterPhoto Photoshop/Elements courses, you can use one of many versions of Photoshop (7, Cs, Cs2, Cs3) or Elements (3, 4, 5, 6). A lot of the commands are similar, and I can provide work-arounds in the form of add-ons for Elements that take care of functions the program is said not to have. I found Elements eye-opening, as the immediate limitations made me think about what I was really trying to accomplish, and I ended up learning a lot from using the program. Photoshop provides some additional tools, but the added functionality, I think, was blinding me to what was really happening. Either program is quite capable of editing images. If you have needs for scripting, CMYK manipulations, Web development, and full 16-bit (or higher) support, then you will need Photoshop. It has its advantages, but Elements often provides all you might need. I look forward to seeing you in class!
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W. |
CS2 is all you need, Jeff. So you now have a couple hundred bucks extra budget to spend on stuff that IS useful to you.
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Richard Lynch |
WS - good point as well! Jeff, why move from CS2 if you currently only use 2%? There is so much left to learn, and it isn't like a new version comes out and the whole previous version becomes obsolete! WS is right - your upgrade may be better done elsewhere. I have a blog on possibilities for just your computer system here: Building the Ultimate Image Editing Computer And there are even more options if you choose to use that budget for photography equipment!
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Jeff Dewey |
You guys rock! I knew I'd get the right answers by coming to BetterPhoto. Have a great holiday and thanks again!
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Marianne Fortin |
The other reason for upgrading would be if you have Vista. I believe that only CS3 and Elements 6 will work on Vista.
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Ron Burgis |
If you shoot RAW (or jpeg for that matter) there are many improvements over CS2, including a recovery slider (helps recover highlights), easier curves adjustments and a bunch of other things that give you finer control of colors and saturation. If you have ever tried to extract one object from an image you'll appreciate the "Quick Selection" tool in CS3(it's also in elements). I don't use extract anymore. There is a bunch of other features that will be there for you when you need them.
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