** A fully functional trial of CS3 Extended is available to download from Adobe now - be warned though - it's a biggie! **
Been using CS3 Extended for a few weeks now and thought I’d share a few conclusions so far for anyone interested in upgrading their Photoshop Apps. Feel free to add any additional comments you have after trying it out for yourself.
Own CS2 and looking at CS3 Standard? Don’t feel the need to upgrade unless you have a 64bit machine and want to make the most of it.
Own CS2 and looking at CS3 Extended? It’s quite a jump and the breadth of its extended abilities is very impressive. There are many simple additions that add to the whole as well as more complex improvements. It’s moved way beyond its previous remit but as a consequence can be a bit intimidating at first. It has definitely made sure it’s flag is much more firmly planted in the commercial users playing field a fact reflected by the computing power required to milk it of its full potential. Photoshop has never been shy about eating your computer’s memory resources and in the Extended variant, it positively savages it at times. The worst culprit is also one of CS3s best new features – the ability to apply filters as adjustment layers so that they can be adjusted/masked etc without destroying the original data. This works really, really well but can also increase your file size by more than a 1000%. Another big plus is the updated Camera Raw feature that all but negates the need for an expensive third party RAW processing solution. Is it worth the premium over the standard version? If you can in anyway justify the use of the additional features then yes – definitely. Is it worth the change from CS2? That’s kind of a tough one. Personally I wouldn’t be happy using it unless I could use it without the ‘puter struggling to cope otherwise there would be no point. If you already have or are planning on upgrading to a high spec multi core platform with lots of RAM then it’s a much easier decision – CS3 Extended would be a welcome upgrade.
If you aren’t in the market for such a machine then stick with CS2 until your needs change.
Been using CS3 Extended for a few weeks now and thought I’d share a few conclusions so far for anyone interested in upgrading their Photoshop Apps. Feel free to add any additional comments you have after trying it out for yourself.
Own CS2 and looking at CS3 Standard? Don’t feel the need to upgrade unless you have a 64bit machine and want to make the most of it.
Own CS2 and looking at CS3 Extended? It’s quite a jump and the breadth of its extended abilities is very impressive. There are many simple additions that add to the whole as well as more complex improvements. It’s moved way beyond its previous remit but as a consequence can be a bit intimidating at first. It has definitely made sure it’s flag is much more firmly planted in the commercial users playing field a fact reflected by the computing power required to milk it of its full potential. Photoshop has never been shy about eating your computer’s memory resources and in the Extended variant, it positively savages it at times. The worst culprit is also one of CS3s best new features – the ability to apply filters as adjustment layers so that they can be adjusted/masked etc without destroying the original data. This works really, really well but can also increase your file size by more than a 1000%. Another big plus is the updated Camera Raw feature that all but negates the need for an expensive third party RAW processing solution. Is it worth the premium over the standard version? If you can in anyway justify the use of the additional features then yes – definitely. Is it worth the change from CS2? That’s kind of a tough one. Personally I wouldn’t be happy using it unless I could use it without the ‘puter struggling to cope otherwise there would be no point. If you already have or are planning on upgrading to a high spec multi core platform with lots of RAM then it’s a much easier decision – CS3 Extended would be a welcome upgrade.
If you aren’t in the market for such a machine then stick with CS2 until your needs change.