Customer Reviews

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium Upgrade from CS2/CS3 [Mac][OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are design professional and you use CS3 or an older version, I highly recommend this upgrade; the advances in both CS4 and CS5, rolled into this CS5 package, are well worth the money if you make your living using Adobe software. However, it is well worth your time to explore all the new features; it always amazes me how many design professionals use only the most elementary features of the software, and do not really use even those to their potential. If you are a hobbyist or home user, without design training and with only basic design needs, any of the Adobe applications are probably overkill.

If you already have CS4, you should explore Adobe's website which describes the new features in detail, and decide for yourself if they are worth the upgrade price. For me, even a CS4 to CS5 upgrade is worthwhile; however, I would readily admit that for many basic to moderate users, the improvements would not justify the expense.

You will get the most bang using this software with OS X 10.6 on a somewhat newer machine, and I'd highly recommend at least 6GB RAM; 8GB or more wouldn't hurt.

If you don't need the 3D features or other advanced scientific features in Photoshop, etc., you should consider the Design Standard version instead.

I finally upgraded from CS2. Everything looks different but I'm excited to learn the new features. Two things concerned me about upgrading to CS5. One, I had CS2 Student Edition and didn't know if it was upgradable. It was! Second concern was the fact that I was purchasing from Amazon and not Adobe directly. But it was $50 cheaper and it's the exact same thing so I would buy software from Amazon directly again.

The interfaces have still not been standardized across the suite, Illustrator gradients are still clunky. Acrobat is super slow and un-intuitive, but Photoshop loads really quick. Adobe seems to have stopped innovating around CS1 and is just collecting money through forced upgrades (CS3 would crash on launch in snow leopard so I had to upgrade) Will not be buying another suite until they go through and clean up this mess.

CS5 is was a great upgrade. CS4 was a bit of a disappointment to me on several levels and CS5 has cleared up nearly every issue I disliked. I like having the box with the upgrade so I chose to purchase here instead of downloading from Apple. I even upgraded the shipping to get it sooner and still paid less than getting it at Apple.