Just a general statement that Adobe Photothsop never ceases to amaze me. Its features are endless. I am blown away.

Adobe are fully turning into the tightest software house ever though. their newly released upgrade for their excellent camera raw and digital negative import plug in is not compatible with earlier versions of photoshop so even if you have CS you either have to upgrade to CS2 or as a cheap alternative - buy Elements 3 (which IS compatible with it) to run alongside it just for importing your RAW format shots from newer model cameras. This has to be one of the most bizarre and mean spirited software updates I've seen in some time. But yes, fully agree with you on just how great a piece of software it is. god knows what Quark are thinking of trying to squeeze in on the action....

It’s a wonderful piece of software, but they want $1000 AU to upgrade from CS to CS2. Who’s the pirate?

To be fair Robert, CS2 is quite a major (more so than CS was) upgrade with a lot of new stuff in there and in relation to other 'all in one studio solution' products from people like Quark and Macromedia the whole package still makes for good value for money. Will be interesting to see what happens to Macromedia's product line now that Adobe have acquired them. My main beef is how they are twisting current users arms into upgrading by offering little or no support for older versions.

You can shop around as well if you buy from Adobe Australia direct they are selling the Photoshop CS2 upgrade for $339 or the CS2 STANDARD UPGRADE for $699. If you can wangle buying an educational license the upgrade is only $289 and the full CS2 is only $469. not much if you say it fast.

That’s useful information Phil. I was going on advertised local prices and choked on the price.

how much new stuff is there in CS2? i know in CS they added the shadow highlight thing which is simply amazing, is there anything like that new with CS2 or is everything just kinda made better, and works with newer cameras? (and probably has lots to do with web publishing which i couldnt care less about)

I still use PS 6. It does everything that I need, so I don't really have a need to upgrade. Just try to keep in mind which features are actually kind of gimmiky and which you'd actually use on a daily basis.

Did you mean it does everything you need?

uuhh... that's what I said. ;-)

Shadow highlighting thing Carl? Geez, now you've sent me back to my other computer to hunt it down. Why upgrade so soon, I'll never find everything thats included now. As soon as you get that one there will be another waiting in the wings anyway

I kinda wish Adobe would lower their upgrade prices. I can understand high prices for full versions, but give faithful customers a break!! Then again, they really don't need to from a business standpoint. It's not the the high price is going to make everyone switch to Fireworks (which probably won't be around much longer) and the GIMP (with just doesn't have the features and usability).

I'm assisting a beta tester with CS2. Keep you posted.

by newer cameras I was refering to Adobe's camera raw support. as far as the new features being just gimmicks - it really depends on what you use Photoshop for. As a commercial retoucher many of the new retouching features will im sure become essential tools so in that respect its a worthy upgrade.