Adobe photoshop investion?

[Ondrej Kapal]

Hi,
Id like to get one of the Adobe CS edition, but I cant decide which one - from money wise thinking to functions they have.. so, the new CS5 is good, but quite expensive and also it brakes the OS quite a lot (it is hardware demanding I found), is there any big gap between the CS5 and older CS2 or 3? I am talking about stuffs they can provide, such as plugins etc.
Thanks for any advice, I am not prof when it comes to Adobe PS

 

[Alexander Rhodes]

If your not experienced with PS, diving in at the deep end may not be the best idea. Download a trial version and have a play before you buy, there may be other programs more to your style.

As for the CS suites, CS5 is by far the best I've used, but I find PS Elements 2.0 has 80% of the features I use most on CS5 lol. CS2 isn't bad either.

As for OS problems, no, it doesn't really. If you buy your copy it'll always run fine if your system meets the minimum spec's. If you didn't buy it... well thats another story

 

[Ondrej Kapal]

I am used to the PS in more than amateur way... I tried the CS5 trial and it was slower than CS2 in my opinion, and if I listened to a music when doing some stuff it wasnt that smooth (I have recommended PC)... just deciding if the CS5 will give me the money back or I can save them on CS2 which is pretty cheap by the time

 

[Michael Vinall]

I have both CS4 and CS2, I used CS2 when I was around 11 and am more comfortable with CS2 in honesty just down to the extra time I've spent using the old version. I'm not sure on the difference between price as I've always been given the software from family members but I can say all of the extra features go unused and I don't feel like I'm missing anything with CS2.

Now on my new PC I do use the newer version as the CS2 I have is 32bit and is slower to start up and looks slightly outdated.
I would summarise by saying CS2 is almost simplified though there is little compromise, I'm not sure of the gap between CS5 and CS4 but just figure out if you need the extra features for what you'll be doing.

 

[Alexander Rhodes]

The more expensive version is basically down to plugins and editing features, plus CS5 comes with extra multi frame image enhancing, other than that, I never used a feature CS2 did not have lol.