CS5 Anyone
 

My son is taking Media Studies at A level and says my version of Photshop (CS2) isn' t the same as they are using at college. He is going to check but my guess is they are on CS5.

So - who's using it, and is it worth the upgrade given I probably don't use half the capability of CS2 and do a lot of basic editing in Lightroom3. That said, if I buy it now on his behalf I can get the eductaion price of around £190 rather than the full £500.

All thoughts welcome.

Short answer, don't know. I would try asking at your Sons college about education price. They may be able to help.

Nigel, why not take advantage of Adobes one months free trial. Follow the link to see a list of differences of the various versions, unfortunately CS2 is not listed as the comparisons only go back as far as CS3.

http://www.photographyuncapped.com/c...hop-cool-tips/

You can upgrade from CS2 at a cost of £190.

CS5 certainly has more features than CS2, the most notable (imho) being content aware fill which is incredibly useful for getting rid of unwanted aspects to images.

Is it worth the money for the upgrade? For your son, probably yes just so he is using the same at home as at college. For you, probably not - if you are happy just using Lightroom you will probably not bother with most of the features in PS, and certainly not the full on power of CS5.

I have had every version of PS since PS6 and while with every new version they have added useful extra features, the bare bones of what I do most with it I could do with PS6. The extra features make working faster and more convenient but an awful lot is still pretty much the same.

Thanks for you input Snapy. I had done nothing about it whilst waiting to upgrade my PC as my Lightroom3 was struggling a bit, however that upgrade is now in place and my I5 processor with 6GB RAM is eating anything I throw at it so I might follow Wolfie's suggestion and give the month trial a go.

I agree with snappy, the biggest difference is content aware filling that works well mostly and saves a lot of time.

With 6GB of RAM you wont have any problems running it!

Your son would qualify for a full copy of any Adobe product as a student. it may be worth looking into that. I think CS5 is a good upgrade from CS2. Good luck to your son in his course

The student discount is also applicable to family members. Even so it's still enough money that I'm not jumping at it - I qualify due to a course my wife's on till next september.

I would agree with wolfie - try the free trial version. That said however, I use CS5 and have used all since Photoshop7 - CS5 is worthy of your upgraded computer and content aware fill is not the only bonus - 64bit use is also an advantage as is the increased speed you will now get. I used to do things in the old days where you could have a brew while letting Photoshop chug away at a simple action - now, 16Gb RAM and a multi core Mac Pro and I've scarcely pressed enter before several processes are complete. Good luck to your lad with his course.

:) :), My Quad core + 8Mb running on an SSdrive still chugs along when photo stacking using CS5.

Harry