Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Upgrade [Mac] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a wonderful upgrade, especially for those of us with Intel Macs -- fast, tightly integrated, with a handful of new features. The easy-select tool has already made my life a joy when post processing. Comes with instructional/tutorial DVD -- watch it! It will get you going with this version within an hour and explains all the new features.

I am a long-time photoshop user and fan on both Mac and PC platforms. Recently I bought this upgrade for my Mac (from CS-2)and it rejected my serial numbers: it seems I had the CS-2 suite, and could not upgrade the photoshop segment alone. The reason I had the suite (which I did not want) is that Adobe sent it to me (without my realizing it) when I did a cross-platform upgrade from CS-2 on my PC. Now if I want CS-3 I have to buy it as a stand-alone. Also: be careful with other Adobe products, e.g. Lightroom conflicts with Bridge (at least in CS-2).

I did not want to upgrade because I was totally happy with Photoshop 7.0. Then I got OS X.5.1 and the old Photoshop didn't work anymore. I was truly miffed and thought that I would just abandon Adobe. After looking around for alternatives, I finally decided on CS3 anyway. Boy, am I glad I did! I am having a great time with it and I love the new features. Bridge is great.

I upgraded to this from version 7 of Photoshop and am very impressed with the improvements - especially in the Bridge application that came with the package. I especially like the ability to open even jpg files in the "raw" mode in order to do lens aberration corrections. The exposure controls it gives in the raw format are great! I The demonstration videos on a separate dvd are very helpful in giving an overview of key features of the software.

The first time I launched CS3 I was thrilled to see I could go through the menus and turn off the 75% of things I will never use. CMYK output, dopey filters and so on. What a pleasure to pull down a menu and see exactly what I use and nothing else. I even found myself turning some things on, like soft proofing.

Well, this would be enough for five stars. But where is the manual? Adobe manuals have consistently been excellent--and necessary. They are frequently better than the Classroom in a Book, Missing Manual, etc.

Photoshop CS3. It's the premiere photo editing software for your Intel-based Macintosh. Insanely powerful. Insanely difficult to use. Plan on spending some extra big bucks on training classes to really get the most out of it.

Why not five stars? Because "Bridge," the including photo-browsing/organizing software is just plain weak. Feeble, even. Awful. Might as well just use Mac Finder and save the installation space on your hard drive. Or better yet, use iPhoto '08 (free on your new Mac, or an eighty dollar upgrade with the rest of the excellent iLife suite) to organize your pictures, and Photoshop for your heavy editing needs.

But Photoshop is still the end-all be-all of editing programs. Just understand what it can and cannot do.

This product is a must have for any serious photographer. The new 'Quick Select' tool is worth the cost of the upgrade. Everything else is just added bonus. If you love photography you must have this upgrade.

I upgraded from Photoshop 7. So far so good, I like the new changes. Right now I am learning more about the Bridge and the Raw Camera. This program makes me want to shoot in RAW.

Photoshop just continues to prove that it is the best photo editing program in the world.

There were considerable problems involved in installing the new software since I had previously test-run the CS3 demo, downloaded from the Adobe website and, it seems, that if something is left behind, it can block the new installation. I was passed from person to person to person as I tried to get someone to help, each time having to tell my story over from the start each time and to provide all my personal details to each new consultant, despite assurances that I need give the information once. All very frustrating and time-wasting...it's up and working now, but....

I just got back from 7 weeks in Europe with my D200 Nikon and I have 4660 raw photos to ....do something with? Add to that that upon my return I switched over to Mac from PC, just to add to the challenge. My intent was to use either iPhoto or Nikon PicturePerfect to upload the photos, use Nikon Capture to do the raw photo editing, and then use Photoshop to finish off the editing. (trust me, I'm not editing all of them!) Turns out, that Photoshop CS3 can do it all!

I knew it could handle the rudimentary raw controls, but it goes way beyond that. In that respect, I think its more sophisticated than Nikon Capture (which I think is similar to Aperture, but I don't know that), for handling raw images. And it has an 'auto' button which gets me about 50% (I'm picky) of the way home. Very cool.

And, it comes with Bridge, a separate Adobe program which can do all the uploading, previewing, and organizational type stuff for me in a single program that flows seamlessly into the Camera Raw window within Photoshop. By itself, it has better organizational and preview capabilities than any of the freebie stuff I have looked at. I particularly like the batch renaming flexibility, and the keyword/rating/color-coding sort capabilities so I can pull out just the shots from St. Petersburg or those from Documenta, or just my "top 50".

Photoshop itself is well known as the gold standard against which all others are measured, so there's no need for me to reiterate that, but I was amazed at how quickly I could go from knowing nothing to using layers and some of the multitude of other selection and distortion tools. Really fun, and I have no idea how deep the list is, but I get the feeling that the possibilities are truly limited by your 'mind's eye'. I used the videos that came with the package and watched all the Bridge and Photoshop tutorials, whether they were relevant to what I wanted to do or not, and by the end of that (1 evening) and a little reading in the [what looks like a] bottomless help system, I was rockin and rollin!

One other pet peeve of mine involves color management. I've had a hard time with that in the past, and done my fair share of research trying to get a handle on it, how it works in my other programs and operating systems. Truth be told, Adobe leads the way here, period.

Finally, I am very impressed at how fast all the adjustments I make are completed and show up on-screen. I can't say whether its the new Mac or Photoshop that's on speed, but I'm thrilled that they are just happy together. I've got a long way to go in my task, but Photoshop is definitely the one stop place to rock!

plr