Customer Reviews

Adobe Creative Suite Standard CS2 [Old Version]

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

 

 

I've used both Photoshop and Illustrator for many years now, and I've been continually impressed by the new features in each version that have made my design work easier. CS2 does deliver with a number of enhancements in both tools and interface for both products. The good you can read in the press-release info above, and yes the new features are great.

The unfortunate downside to CS2 is performance. If you do not have very good hardware, expect a performance decrease with CS2. For example my Quadro video card only has 64MB of memory, but Photoshop CS2 really needs 128MB or more to run smoothly. Without it, Photoshop will sometimes pause for a moment as it has to catch-up with your commands. Also expect 1GB of system memory as a real need, 2GB preferred. You can even run with up to 3GB in XP SP2 when the /3GB switch is set in the boot.ini, and PS will use it.

Photoshop used to run pretty well with one HD, but it was preferred to have two physical drives to separate the windows paging file and Photoshop scratch disk, where data files could share some space with scratch disk on the second hard drive. Now for better performance, you need three separate hard drives: one for windows and applications, one for documents/data and the paging file, and one just for the Photoshop scratch disk. If you only have two drives, you're still better off with everything on the first drive, and just the scratch disk on the second.

Illustrator CS2 is also nice, when it runs at all. Apparently there's a bit of a resource problem with it in that it will startup, load all the fonts and plugins, and then popup a can't continue message. When you get that and click OK, Illustrator closes back down. There are a number of community-documented workarounds, such as working with very few fonts, having more memory, never running any other applications at the same time, booting Windows fresh before each use, and even deleting specific configuration files so that Illustrator created them again on load. These fixes work for some people, but for others nothing has helped and they literally can't run the product. For me I usually just boot fresh and open nothing else.

I have not personally used the rest of the products much yet, but overall they are good. The new browser is a great improvement. InDesign is light-years better than PageMaker (but then anything would be). Acrobat seems a bit faster, etc.

So if you have serious graphics workstation or simply work in a high-end design house you need not worry (and are probably not likely to be reading this review anyhow). For the rest of the Adobe-using community, don't get CS2 without reading up a little on it. The user forums at [...] are a good start. It's overall a good product, but there are bugs and hardware is a real issue. I still give it 4 stars, because CS2 is overall a really, really amazing package. If it weren't for the problems, it would be 5 stars from me easily.

I've been a QuarkXpress user since 1990 and I thought i would never find an equal. Well I have....it's called InDesign. With a Visual Quick Start book in my lap, I learned InDesign in a weekend and over the next 2 months, I designed a 54 page magazine using the program. And one of the best things about InDesign is how easy it is to produce PDF files, which is a real pain using Quark.

Another plus is Adobe, a first-rate company. They let you try out any of their programs for a month. I did this with InDesign to see if my G4 running 10.28 could run the program and it did, with no problems. The new quark requires Tiger OS.

I'm glad I made the switch, I'm never going back!

I've been designing and retouching Photoshop heavily since version 4.0, Illustrator since 7.0. I demand a lot from both these products and have generally been more than satisfied with their performance.

In that time I've never encountered buggier, slower, less stable iteration of either application (barring perhaps Illustrator 9 which was a veritable carpet bombing of lousy quality control).

Bugs abound on Windows XP. I often lose functionality of tools in Illustrator (e.g. the H and B sliders in the HSB color palette becoming unmovable, while the rest of the program chugs along at a snail's pace for some inexplicable reason). There are abundant redraw and display glitches that I'm hesitant to chalk up to ATI's drivers.

Photoshop's interface is becoming less consistent and usable. The program is often uncertain how to handle the scroll-wheel and performs numerous actions at once, or in rapid-fire succession. Furthermore, making a selection in a drop-down menu (such as blending mode, or a tool option) leaves focus on that element, so efforts to use hotkeys are in vain until you remember to hit the escape key. Does Adobe really expect us to be this indecisive? Or did they just neglect to smooth rough edges to meet an unreasonable release cycle?

I won't even go into details with ImageReady. Suffice it to say that this program's extended functionality (what little there is) should have been part of Photoshop from its 5.5 debut. And it has all the hallmarks of a "complementary" product. It's a second-class, half-baked app, and I pray that its code won't taint Fireworks after the acquisition of Macromedia.

Overall, Adobe has dropped the ball once again. To resounding critical acclaim. Take it from someone whose day job is designing with these applications: Adobe apologists have gotten out of control and reviewers need to spend more than ten minutes with a new product before hoisting their opinions on an unsuspecting web.

But what valid alternatives do we have? Someone, please, educate me.

This is the update that the original CS series SHOULD have been. Lots of cool new features that should save you time...

Sidenote - I had the absolute worst experience in ordering my software through Amazon. I pre-ordered my copy and it was promptly delivered to me 7 weeks after the release date. Purchase this software from another vendor, Amazon's service has been awful as of late.