Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Upgrade

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

The new features are worth the upgrade. I installed this on a Windows 32 bit XP system with 4GB memory and dual CPU's and the installation went on without a hitch. The Twain interface for my scanner was not installed by default and even when I downloaded the interface from Adobe and upgraded my Canon 8400 scanner drivers the interface does not work. Adobe does not recommend using the twain interface with CS5 and fortunately I still have a working twain interface on CS4 so I don't think I'll be spending any time making it work on the upgrade. Obviously Adobe does not plan on supporting this older technology in the future.

I really have not noticed any speed improvements with this upgrade over CS4 but there are definitely new features. Content aware fill itself is probably worth the upgrade as it allows one to eliminate items quickly without using the clone tool via either filling a selection or using the spot removal tool to draw in a fill area. Adobe Raw renders a bit better and there are improved sharpening and noise reductions in this plug-in which may be of value to some. The edge refinment changes for selections are also useful for getting quicker selections. I have not yet done much with puppet warp so I can't comment on this addition.

For someone who has CS2 or CS3 this upgrade will provide even more improvements and is even more compelling. If you upgrade from CS2 this is probably your last chance since it appears that upgrades are only allowed from the previous past two versions so next time you will have to purchase the full installation for triple the cost. And for CS3 users Camera RAW is becoming the defacto preprocessor, even for JPG images because it makes all adjustments non distructively and because it allows one to make local changes via the adjustment brush.

As anyone who uses Photoshop already knows, this is the photo improvement software that has the most books associated with it and is most discussed over the internet. Users are already starting to show photos that were dramatically improved/changed via Photoshop CS5. Now if only I could get the twain interface to work with my scanner...

I received the Photoshop CS5 upgrade today and found it won't upgrade Photoshop CS2 purchased as part of Creative Suite. Unfortunately, the Amazon.com product description regarding upgrade eligibility simply reads "Photoshop CS2, CS3, & CS4." Amazon says they are considering a clarification to the eligibility requirements on their product description. For others in the same situation, it appears the only upgrade path is the Creative Suite 5 upgrade ($580+ depending on version) or the Photoshop CS5 full product ($650 as of today).

 

I have the CS4 Master Collection. Part of the Collection is Photoshop CS4. I purchased the upgrade for Photoshop CS5. It wouldn't allow the installation. I contacted Adobe and found that just because you purchased a 2600.00 package, you can't just upgrade one of the products ithin that series. I was very disappointed and have purchased my last package of Adobe products. I will only purchase the Photoshop from now on and use other developers' products. By the way, most of the other developers' products have much better included instructions on use.

Mikehf

 

After several weeks of working with CS5 I find most of the new features work as advertised. Content aware fill works well, sometimes it misses the mark, but an undo and retrying with a smaller selection usually fixes the problem. The refine edge feature can take a few steps to really refine the selection but it's still faster than the old method of working with channels to refine selections. HRD Pro has a nice feature with removing ghosting, but I still like to do my tone compression in Photomatix. The new Camera Raw is a big help in the area of noise reduction and does a better job than Nik Define 2.0. I thought some of the older filters where to be upgraded to work with 16 bit images. Overall the work flow for portrait work is a great improvement. Now than LR 3 is out we can settle in and get back to work.

I have been using Photoshop full time now for over 5 years and the one thing that used to BUG me was the speed it processed RAW images and how it would never utilize my 12GB Ram on my Mac Pro.
This has all been sorted out.

Photoshop CS5 is Blazing FAST, the difference alone is worth the Upgrade.
Batch Process Raw images in no time at all.

Then there is the 3D processing, a whole new ball game with use of Light and shadows in 3D.
Also New to CS5 is the Content Aware Fill, you have to see this to believe it.

The people at Adobe have gone further this time with the latest CS and you have to watch the Photoshop Guys or become a NAPP Menber to find out all the latest on CS5.
[...]

Hope this helps make a decision.

The previous version of Photoshop that I owned is CS2. Photoshop CS2, at the time seemed over my head and so I did not use it much. Instead, I used Photoshop Elements. By using this program, I got used to the way the full Photoshop could be used. I found out about the new CS5 program with an Email from Adobe telling me that CS5 was coming out.

I scanned the internet for videos and reviews for CS5 and found a goodly number of them on the subject. The feature in CS5 I was most interested in was content aware fill. This feature helps you to remove unwanted objects in your images. The program looks for information surrounding the fill area to decide what should be used for the fill. I use this feature regularly, but my I do not consider this feature a cure all for editing out unwanted objects. I have found that this feature is best used in areas where there are not a lot of other objects nearby. I find that parts of the other objects usually end up in the filled area. More experienced users would probably have better success than I do with this feature. It still is a feature well worth having.

I am pleased with Photoshop CS5 and have been using it daily since I bought the program. It has a number of other improvements over previous versions that are also quite useful. It seems stable and I have had very few problems with it.

The minimum system requirements stated for this product say it will run on a machine with only 1GB of RAM. It may run very slowly with only that much RAM, but you will not be able to use some of the new features. One of the main reasons I upgraded to Photoshop CS5 was because I wanted to use the new Content Aware Fill feature. However, my machine which has a Core 2 Quad CPU running at 2.66GHz with 4GB of RAM and 32 bit Windows XP, can only use the Content Aware Fill on very small areas of my 21 megapixel TIFF files (about 150MB each). I have tried turning off startup items and unnecessary processes, but that did not do much good. If I shrink the files, then the feature works, but that is unaccepable to me. If you work on very large files of 150MB or so then you need a 64 bit machine with more than 4GB of memory (since a 32 bit machine cannot address more than 4 GB of RAM).

 

I had to return this product because, although I have a full version of CS3, it is included in my CS3 Suite and Adobe only allows upgrade from single product to single product. I feel they misrepresented what they had advertised. Also, when I contacted Adobe and tried to get help with installation, he spoke very bad English and was very rude. I'm hoping that they actually do monitor those calls. I'm giving 1 star because of this, not because of the product, I'm sure it's a fine product, most Adobe products are.

 

Be warned if your Photoshop was part of a Creative Suite bundle this will not upgrade it. IMHO this is not at all clear from the upgrade eligibility criteria, and I don't see what the point to not making it clear is.

 

There is a reason this product has half as many one star reviews as it does five star reviews.

New business model - Sell a product at a premium price, sell it to some people at 1/3 that price and offer customer support, but rather than provide the support tie up the customer for hours while you tease them by calling them back putting them on hold for minutes that turn into hours and never even let them talk to a person in the end.

Adobe's customer support is worse than no support at all. I got caught in the "prior product serial number not valid" scam. It's not that I am too stupid to be able to obtain illegal software but for ethical reasons I don't steal a car when I need one and I don't steal software for the same reason. I purchased Photoshop from Amazon several years ago and the CS5 upgrade a few weeks ago. On attempted installation I got the error message stating that I did not have a valid serial number for the prior product. Assuming that Amazon did not sell stolen software, an assumption that I still believe, I attempted to contact Adobe customer support, per their instruction on the website. When I requested a call back their system would call back, put me on hold for anywhere from seconds to almost an hour, then hang up on me. On two calls I was told the wait time was 19-24 minutes and not offered a call back. I was on hold for over an hour both those attempts without ever reaching a person. In lost billable time Adobe has stolen more from me than the full price of their software. Adobe will not see any money from me in the future.

I waited a few weeks to write this so I would cool off a little but hope this prevents somebody else from walking into the same problem.

Mr. Tranberry, Thank you for the offer of help but it is a little bit too little, too late. The real problem is that the only customers that can get support are the ones that complain on public forums. It ends up looking like a half hearted attempt at PR damage control. It would be better help to your customers if you put pressure on the customer service department to stop calling your customers back, putting them on hold for hours then hanging up. I offer this in the spirit of constructive criticism. . . H