Adobe Photoshop CS5, Upgrade Version from Photoshop CS2/CS3/CS4 (PC)

With experience of earlier additions I have yet to examine the advances over my CS3 but find a certain arrogance in changes made with little or no real need or explanation. One such is the rejection of my capable Canon scanner's inbuilt Twain file installed and working well with previous edition CS3. The need is described only when image import controls to scan films fail presuming users are familiar with how to find a new Twain file to download. That is not easy, will cost money and a good reason why my CS3 wdition will stay in an older PC to run the scanner and pass the results to my CS5 PC for working. There are other handling changes I don't agree with reflecting the programme designer's wish rather than user's efficient abilities. I have spent too much time running into new ways of doing old things, not as bad as say Visa versus XP but not disimilar in some ways. There is much more to find out but I need to do my work and not bump through the 'improvements' for a week or so.

Enough has been said in other lengthy reviews, so I'll just add a couple of points. The content-aware stuff alone is worth the price of the upgrade. It doesn't work every time, but when it does, it does as good a job of cloning out unwanted stuff as I do. It doesn't just come as an option in the fill command, the spot healing brush also has the option, & a few of the other tools too. You don't have to be a student/teacher to get this on the cheap. Buy a copy of CS2 if you can get it, or 3 if you can't (around £100.00, or less used), & get this upgrade version. Ok you still pay £280.00, but it's better than £650.00 for the full version. & it's a ligitimate route into CS5, since the upgrade does anything from CS2.

This latest version of CS is definitely worthwhile. There are a number of new features which are worth trying, though the new 'Mini Bridge' takes a bit of getting used to, and I'm not sure whether it was worth the software designers' effort. Doing a large part of one's edits in ACR (Raw), non-destructively, is definitely a good change. Thoroughly recommend it as an upgrade but, as an outright purchase, the cost would be prohibitive to all but the most dedicated and wealthy photographer.

I upgraded from Photoshop CS3 to Photoshop CS5 on Windows 7. Photoshop works fine, but I have had weeks of frustration due to Bridge constantly crashing. I have contacted Adobe who suggested conflict with my NVIDIA graphics card. This problem is still not resolved so please check that CS5 will work with everything on your computer before purchasing. Update: does not appear to be the graphics card - problem still arising - adobe is now looking into this. Update: Adobe have now found a bug which is causing Bridge to Crash and will correct on next update - i.e. if the Collections folder is opened Bridge will not crash. However, when images are placed into the Collections folder they are lost when Bridge is closed. Other people are also experiencing this problem - see Adobe help pages. I have reported this to Adobe.

I recommend that before you buy this you check first with Adobe that your existing software qualifies for upgrade. I purchased this to upgrade my copy of Photoshop CS3; the install procedure failed saying it could not find a qualifying product to upgrade, even though CS3 is listed as a qualifying product. Adobe support say the serial number is not listed in thier records (as my copy of CS3 was a gift I have no proof of purchase - so far I have been waiting 6 weeks for Adobe to sort this out). Worse still, I downloaded the free trial of CS5 before buying and now my copy of CS3 Bridge is no longer working (even after re-installing and trying all the fixes on various internet sites).

Probably the best photo editing package in the world. I use it with a 64 bit vista operating system and it is twice as fast as the CS2 version I was using previously. Only negative is that I also use Photoshop elements 9 for ease of tagging images and there does not seem to be any way of importing a keyword tags file from Elements, (it uses xml format)into CS5 which uses a text format for keywords.

Adobe release a new version of Photoshop far to frequently in my opinion. If you really want to see a significant difference it's best to upgrade two versions in one go such as CS3 to CS5, unless of course its essential to you or you have more money than sense. It remains the best product on the market. Lightroom really ought to be merged with Photoshop, but remains an excuse to make ever more money from the buying public.

Adobe Photoshop wiped the floor with the opposition years ago and is now the de facto industry standard image editing software. This latest version, Photoshop CS5, has proved to be a significant update, with some useful new features that save time and further boost productivity. Although Photoshop CS5's full retail price is steep, upgrade prices are more reasonable, and this version will upgrade CS2 or above. As usual there are significant Adobe software education discounts for students on a 2 year+ course, in school or work in education. Photoshop CS4 also had many useful interface improvements that carry over into CS5, so those on Photoshop CS2 or CS3 would particularly benefit from this CS5 upgrade. See Adobe's website for more details, where you can download a fully functional 30 day timed trial copy of Photoshop CS5 [or say Photoshop Elements 8] to see if it suites your needs. Major new features in CS5 include better intelligent edge detection for selecting, cutting out and pasting complex shapes [i.e. hair, and it blends the pasted bit in for you], the 'puppet warp tool' which imposes a mesh onto objects to do sophisticated transformations [to say curl up an elephants trunk], and 'content aware fill' added to the spot healing brush to greatly improve removal of dust/hairs, blemishes, unwanted objects etc from photos and replace them with colour and shade matched pixels derived from nearby regions of the image. You could do all of this manually with older versions of Photoshop, but it could take ages. Content aware fill doesn't always work perfectly, although retracing the object to be deleted often helps and the results with the likes of natural scenes with lakes, clouds and woodland are impressive. There's also a new `mixer' brush which mimics natural paint brush shapes and produces various `painting' effects (although it's still no match for Corel Painter 11). Black and white conversion from colour images is also 'improved'. Plus `Adobe bridge' media file management has been updated, and now allows a customizable panel within Photoshop. Those working with RAW images will benefit from better noise reduction and lens distortion correction algorithms, utilising the photos EXIF info and an internal database of various SLR lenses. There's also improved support for creating HDR images. Plus all the old Photoshop CS tools are present, such as layer masks that enable you to non-destructively partially visualize areas of your layers, and the ability to write macros [Actions] for automating repetitive tasks [important features lacking from Photoshop's cut-down Elements 8, and Photoshop CS5 is simply more responsive than Elements 8 in use]. Plus integration with Adobe Light-Room has apparently been made tighter. The CS5 grey interface is similar to CS4s. As with CS4, CS5 can use a [compatible] graphics card CPU to further boost processing speed, although with both my workstation NVidia graphics card Photoshop CS4/5 signals a problem and switches this feature off. Otherwise, so far CS5 has proved glitch free on my XP Pro workstation, but Adobe issue regular patches in any case. Photoshop can now be installed as 32-bit or 64-bit [Vista/Windows]. With the 64-bit versions you will need more system RAM above the 32-bit 3.2Gb limit to see any benefit. Those with 64-bit Windows 7 and 8Gb system RAM should see 40% performance [speed] improvements. Minimum system requirements are Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 processor, Windows XP [SP3], Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows 7, 1GB of RAM, 1 GB of hard-disk space, 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL 256Mb 16-bit colour graphics card, DVD-ROM drive, QuickTime 7.6.2 software, and Broadband Internet connection for online services. However for fluid image editing the more powerful the system the better [and adding more system RAM is generally the most cost effective way of boosting Photoshop responsiveness].