Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop CS2 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

My experience with Photoshop CS2 has been limited thus far, but it does appear to offer some nice new features, particularly to the enhancement in Adobe Camera Raw, the Spot Healing Tool, and possibly Adobe Bridge as I explore it more. A major drawback to me personally, is that changes have been made in the user interface that conflict with the old Extensis PhotoTools plug-in, namely in that the PhotoBars component which provides a customizable toolbar ehancement will no longer work. Although Extensis no longer supports PhotoTools and deleted the PhotoTools component when Photoshop 6 was issued, I have been involved in maintaining PhotoBars so that it would work on the PC platform in Photoshop versions 6, 7, and CS. The customizable toolbars added a wonderful extension of usability to the Photoshop interface, and the loss of that capability due to changes made in Photoshop CS2 is very unfortunate.

Of great interest to me was to see how Adobe has changed License Management, i.e., product activation in Photoshop CS2. While the license manager does appear greatly improved in terms of not being as likely to have errant reactivations arise due to use of the System Restore utility in Windows XP, hardware changes, etc., it still manifests the same critical flaw as existed in Photoshop CS. Namely, Adobe has not provided any grace period at all for the instances when reactivation is prompted. So, if you are someone perhaps travelling with a laptop computer and are ever at a remote location where telephone or internet access is not readily available, you are at risk of fully losing use of Photoshop CS2 in the event of an errant reactivation prompt arising. The odds of this occurring do appear greatly reduced due to changes made in the triggers affecting a reactivation, but the risk is there nonetheless. Adobe should have implemented a short-term grace period of continued use following a prompt for reactivation, so that a user would not unexpectedly be faced with denied access at a critical time. The only alternative in this situation is to have a backup copy of an earlier version of Photoshop installed for use until Photoshop CS2 can be reactivated or, to employ the use of software hacks that defeat the license manager. The preferred solution would be for Adobe to provide an update that incorporates a reactivation grace period, but they seem to be ignoring the problem. I had hoped that the new Transfer Activation process in Photoshop CS2 might allow a user to export activation state data to removable media which, if an errant reactivation prompt arose, could be used to re-establish the valid activation state on the PC. Unfortunately, the Tranfer Activation process requires an internet connection and thus is again useless if one is at a remote location.

With regard to the 1st review posted here, installation of Photoshop CS2 is permitted to two computers under the normal single-user license. The only restriction defined in the license is that these 2 installations cannot be used concurrently. The license specifically reads as follows:

"2.4 Portable or Home Computer Use. The primary user of the Computer on which the Software is installed may install a second copy of the Software for his or her exclusive use on either a portable Computer or a Computer located at his or her home, provided the Software on the portable or home Computer is not used at the same time as the Software on the primary Computer."

I won't include my website URL here, but I'm a professional photographer, who displays and sells his work at juried exhibitions. I've been using Photoshop since version 5.0, roughly 6-7 years.

Frankly, I'm surprised to see how many negative reviews there are here of Photoshop CS2, and that overall the product only gets three stars. I understand all the frustration, though. Even on a top-of-the-line machine, "PS CS2" can be slow at times. However, in my case, that's because I'm working on incredibly large files.

For example, my camera / scanner combination typically produces 50 megapixel images. By the time multiple layers are added in PS, one image file can be 500 MB - 1 GB in size. This is exactly why I have a dual-Opteron system with 4 GB of RAM: so I can work on these monster files in Photoshop!

For me, Photoshop is a must-have. There are *no* alternative programs for me to consider that can handle my files and do what I want to get done. I don't even want to mention all the advanced features that I use on a daily basis, frankly because that's part of my edge as a professional. I've spent over five years working in PS everyday, and have carefully studied several advanced books on PS. The learning curve is long, but the rewards are great if you have high goals and high standards.

Yeah, Adobe's got some major improvements to make, along the lines that other reviewers have mentioned. For me, the only real problem is poor and often wasteful use of system memory. And I would agree with other reviewers here that for most people, the full Photoshop CS2 is probably a waste of money. Photoshop Elements is probably a better way to go, though I haven't used it personally. I know a good web designer who uses Paint Shop Pro, and who seems to be happy.

IMHO, some people are probably drawn to Photoshop the way others are drawn to AutoCad or Solidworks or 3D Studio Max. All these programs are incredibly powerful tools that can support an entire career if one puts in the time and effort to become a true expert user. You can't make a career out of PS Elements, or Paint Shop Pro, or GIMP, or whatever else other reviewers may mention. PS CS2 is "the standard" for image manipulation.

Considering how much talent Adobe puts into product development, it amazes me how user-hostile their service is. I bought CS2 last week and cannot get Adobe Bridge to start. This is a critical problem since Canon RAW files (.CR2) from my 20D are not visible in the File/Open box. My fiancee spent three hours on the phone to Seattle today to try to get help, and when she finally got through, they wouldn't deal with her since she was not the registered user, even though she had the licence information. There is no information on Adobe's site regarding Bridge bugs. I don't know if this is also a problem on the Mac, but if you are an XP user, HOLD OFF ON CS2 until Adobe fixes the production bugs in its Bridge software, and gets a better handle on both its arrogance and quality control.

Adobe's insane pricing and licensing makes this product way too overpriced and inflexible for anyone except professionals. The laughable part is that you dont even get *reasonable* support for such premium pricing.

Every designer I know has at least 3 computers - work, laptop, and home desktop. The fact that Adobe insists that these people buy almost $2000 in licenses for one person to run this single application on all 3 is beyond arrogant. Even M$ Office lets you run on 3 PCs!

What is even more insulting then the price is the strategic deployment of features which are held back and then launched to incite almost annual upgrades, which cost more than the full versions of this product's competing products!

Additionally, the continuous lack of evolution in this product's UI (and lets be clear it is *POOR*) is amazing considering that so many of its users are UI professionals. When I fire it up it still smells like the version I ran on WFW 3.11.

The processing features are excellent, thats all that is keeping this product in position is its engineering team, because marketing, support, and UI are substandard.

As soon as Paint Shop Pro aquired layers it completely obliterated 95% of what Photoshop is used for daily in terms of productivity.

However, Corel has really taken the wheels off of Paint Shop Pro since its aquisition.

There is a lot of room in this space for competition to this product, M$ is looking to move into this market with Acrylic. Hopefully they will be successful and knock Adobe off its arcane high horse old-school marketing practices.

Its really sad when a company needs to be taught a lesson from M$ in humility!

I've been using Photoshop since version 3. No layers, lots of alpha channels and sweat. I use Photoshop for hours every day, for everything from retouching watercolor paintings, to creating textures for 3d models, to making original paintings. The Wacom pen is glued to my hand.

After spending some time with CS2, I can say this is the first time Adobe has gone one step forward, and four steps back on design, usability, speed and features.

The first issue is speed. CS2 takes a HUGE chunk of RAM, and leaves nothing of your CPUs for other applications. Working with several low-res files open, CS2 took 450+MB of physical memory, while CS1 took around 150MB. Moving sets or linked layers is clunky and slow. Painting is practically out of the question, as the brush lags far behind your Wacom pen, and often pauses for several seconds, leaving that sweet looking diagonal stroke across your screen that tells you "I can't keep up!" Switching from one application back to Photoshop takes anywhere up to a minute for the application to begin responding. Let's not even start talking about the Bridge. Seriously.

Some little things are nice. You can change the opacity of the current layer while you're in the middle of Free Transforming it. That's kinda nice. But if you're used to linking layers a lot, get ready for a shock. The link layers switch (formerly next to the layer visibility switch) is GONE. It's been replaced by a link button at the bottom of the layers palette. Linking layers requires you to ctrl-click the layers you want to link, and then click the link button. It's hard to see what's linked, because the little chain icon doesn't show up in a predictable and linear position -- they're all over the layers palette.

I'm anxious to see how HDRI works in comparison to Debevec's HDRShop, and I haven't tried the perspective feature, but honestly, I'm not interested. Adobe should include CS1 with the purchase of CS2, because there's just so much functionality missing. I need to get work done, I don't need to play with toys, so when it comes time to work in 2D, I'm clicking on Photoshop CS1.

I concur with the review that points up the problems with Adobe's new "license manager" method of activation. When you pay as much as you do for this app, or the entire suite, you should not be faced with complete lockup should you have hardware problems, or can't connect to the Internet from "location shooting." I took one star off for this egregious marketing tactic.

That said, this version of Photoshop is superb, an otherwise 5-star app. If you take the time to use the tutorials included in the help (used to be separate folders, with chapters 1 - 4 of the Classroom In A Book, but no more alas), or get one of Deke McClelland's fine tomes and do all the lessons, there is nothing in this app that the novice can't start to use from Day One. With today's point & shoot cameras packing more resolution, and more manual control, into their functions, use of Photoshop becomes more than just a hobby. You can really "rescue" photos that are too dark, too bright, exceedingly color-shifted, from the "cut" folder and still make prints. Further, the Camera RAW functionality allows anyone with a sufficiently functional digicam to touch up snapshots into fine photography.

A warning: you need the fastest processor you can afford (a Core Duo or Quatro will be superb), and as much RAM as your system can take. There is an optional performance plug-in which maximizes performance on systems with more than 1 Gigabyte of RAM. You need AT LEAST that much under Windows XP to get good performance out of PS CS2. If you can use 2GB or more dual-channel memory, that's even better (the dual-channel RAM adds a small boost when handling large file sizes, e.g. Camera RAW image sources). If you don't have these, don't expect Photoshop to act fast.

Adobe Bridge is a major improvement for this version. It offers superior file and image management functions, and can even do batch editing on images. You can even perform Camera RAW adjustments right from Bridge. Bridge can perform batch processes WHILE YOU EDIT IN PHOTOSHOP. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is. If you doubt me, check out Deke McClelland's PHOTOSHOP CS2 ONE-ON-ONE tutorial for his chapter on using Adobe Bridge. His video introduction (included on a DVD in the book), and chapter on using and customizing Bridge, are terrific introductions.

If you're a user of versions 5.x (as I was), 6, or 7, upgrading to CS2 is a no-brainer. Don't wait. Get it now before the Adobe License Manager gets worse in 2007.

Installed CS2 Premium, registered the product. Then I realized I had a DOS icon for Adobe Acrobat. Double clicked and it said it wasn't installed. Reinserted the cd, installed Acrobat, then it wanted to go through the activation process. Wouldn't activate because the other products were activated and it thought I was pirating the product. Called Adobe Help Desk. Ruthy was stumped and had me call a tech support number that I had to PAY for! He told me to uninstall the whole product and reinstall. Uninstall took 189 minutes. Then tried to reinstall. Said Adobe Acrobat was already installed, but when I went to add remove programs in Windows, it says it is not installed. Called the Help Desk again. They tried again, couldn't help. Told me I could PAY and call tech support again. I am now installing CS back on my machine. This is the worst upgrade Adobe has put out. I am frustrated because it never installed correctly in the first place, but to get help, it is going to cost me more money.

Or, find a copy of Photoshop 7, or maybe even the original CS before they added the number 2 (and I mean that both literally and figuratively). I've been using Photoshop since Photoshop 4. I spend hours each day glued to this chair in front of my computer hip deep in graphics, but since I upgraded from version 7 to CS2 I'm ready to throw my computer out the window. CS2 slows EVERYTHING down. I've been told it's the "CS2 Bridge" addition that is making my computer freeze, wheeze, and sneeze. Whatever Adobe did, I don't like it.

Now about the new "goodies", they haven't added anything that you couldn't do already (just took a few more steps to accomplish in 7). And. . .they've changed things like layers link in a way that isn't for the better.

My advice, read the other reviews, then go out and get yourself a copy of Photoshop 7 (or maybe give pre-version 2 CS a try). Just stay away from CS2.

PS CS2 is a pain in the behind to install and activate (which you have to do via the web or telephone).

But even beyond install & activate, it needs 222MB of hard drive space (versus the 136MB that PS7 uses), takes about a minute or so to open on my computer (Windows 2000, 260MB RAM, 18GB hard drive), and then uses a boatload of memory once it's running. Forget about trying to use another high-memory program at the same time you're using PS2.

I'm going back to using version 7. CS2 has a few more features than 7, but its memory usage is unacceptable for me.

And Photoshop CS2 literally took about TEN MINUTES to UNinstall.

Okay here is the lowdown on why you should get this product and why you should not get this product.

You should get this product if:
- You want to learn the #1 photo/paint package that is an industry standard.
- You do not mind the massive learning curve.
- If you do not want something that you pop out of the box and use right away without spending weeks learning it.
- If you want total control over every aspect of paint/photo manipulation.
- If you do not mind it being a bit slow on anything less than a cutting edge computer.
- If you do not mind it taking up a lot of hard disk space.

You should not get this product if:
- You do not need to learn an industry standard package.
- If you want to use something right away out of the box.
- If you do not need total control over every aspect of paint/photo manipulation.
- If you want a fast package.
- If you want to conserve hard drive space.

If you are looking for a paint/photo package that you can use out of the box and has lots of features then use Paint Shop Pro. If you are looking to learn the industry standard with the most features then learn and use Photoshop.

However I would like to finish this off by saying that I have worked for various multimedia groups that have demanded experience with this package and yet when it came to working for them they used 10% of this package and should have been using Paint Shop Pro instead. If you mention Paint Shop Pro in an interview then the interviewer will look at you sideways. What a load of mumbo-jumbo. They simply use this package because it is the "industry standard" instead of actually looking at a package that suites their needs. If you are an interviewer and someone says they also use Paint Shop Pro then you should actually listen to them for not toeing the official line. You might learn something there that will save you time, money and wasted space. Why bother training people for a couple of months to learn this package when they can do your intermediate tasks on a package they can use out of the box? That is the bottom line.