It’s official: Adobe has announced CS3
A week or two ago, Adobe announced that they would be “announcing” the availability of it’s newest version of their graphics software: CS3. It seemed a litle strange that they were announcing the upcoming “announcement”, but there it was. Well, on March 27, 2007, Adobe officially unveiled plans for the upcoming CS3 suite. And it is looking good!
I’ve been using Photoshop 6 for several years, and have been mostly happy with it. I had been interested in getting Photoshop CS2 or the CS2 suite, but there were many reports of user having difficulty running the software and dealing with activation issues and such. So I held off. But CS3 is sounding like I should put it on my list.
Numerous improvements and useful additions have been made to the various components of the CS3 suite: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, and the new additions to the family, Dreameaver, Flash, and Fireworks. There are several more, but these are the ones that interest me.
In a surprising move, Adobe has set up two versions of Photoshop: Photoshop and Photoshop Extended. This was very strange to me initially, but it made sense when I read about the differences between the two. The former is fully capable of dong graphics, designs and manipulating photos and such, while the latter has some extra features geared towards more high-end users and requirements. Personally, the regular one would do for me.
In another surprising move, Adobe has split the product lineup in several ways. Each with their own price, upgrade requirements, and contents. Full details are available on the Adobe website, but the gist is that the different suites contain different subsets of the software to suit specific needs. The Web suite, for example, is geared more towards web developers. The Master suite, while shockingly expensive, is also the most heavily-laden: it has everything! This is the full suite! And I thought the six different versions of Microsoft Vista was bad…
You can of course buy the component packages (e.g. Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver) individually. Upgrades are available for all of these as well, and for the suite products.
I could get just the Photoshop upgrade, but I’d like to pick up Illustrator, as it could be useful for when I’m in an artistic mood. Adobe has made another change in that they no longer allow upgrades of software more than three versions back. Photoshop 7, CS, and CS2 can be directly upgraded to CS3. However, 6 cannot, which would require an upgrade to CS2, then another upgrade to CS3. I have Macromedia Studio 8, with the most recent versions of those products (Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks), so I don’t necessarily need to upgrade those, as they are still fairly current. However, Studio 8 can be used as a base to upgrade to Web Premium CS3, which looks like a nice, well-rounded package. It Includes Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop Extended, and Illustrator, all CS3.
I foun a pretty funny comic on Geek Culture, which pokes fun at the variety, and cost, of the suites to be available.
All the packages and components are expected to be available in late April, just over a month from now. Hmm, I should start saving my pennies!
I’ll certainly be watching the news for any new developments in this area. I haven’t decided for sure that I’ll buy into the suite, but I may be wanting to upgrade Photoshop at the least. Time will tell. I’m no early adopter, I’m quite happy to wait a while and let all the early adopters try it out and comment on it. Figure out all the issues and bugs and such 