Photoshop CS4 – I Finally Broke Down and Gave Adobe My Money

Well I finally did it. After years of holding out on Adobe I finally broke down and upgraded my Adobe CS to CS4. Yep I have held out since upgrading to CS, not CS2, not CS3, plain old CS. I really was disappointed with CS, I really didn’t see the point after I upgraded from PS 7. I guess it was a little better but cost a lot of money. Then came C2. By the time I had time to even consider upgrading I had Intel based Macs. There was no way I was going to pay for and upgrade that ran in emulation mode on my new machines at the same speed that It ran on my old machines. No freaking way. By the time CS3 came around there was nothing in it compelling for me, I didn’t do nearly as much commercial work as I used to and had no personal projects that screamed for anything it did. I guess smart objects would have been a time and space saver IF I was jacking around making cartoons for public consumption but I wasn’t at the time.

Fast forward – I heard a bunch of places that CS4 was really really good. So what? Well I finally started working on something that screamed for features that were in CS3 but kind of clunky and came into their own in CS4 (more on those later). I guess that was the primary motivator. The distant secondary and subliminal motivator were the emails I receive every other day telling me the ticker is running out on my ability to ‘save money’ by upgrading soon.

Guess what. CS4 IS fantastic on new hardware. It is fast, most of the functionality for 16bit images actually is there and workable on 500 Megabyte Tiff files, Bridge is absolutely fantastic for a ‘free’ afterthought. Actually it is like Lightroom lite. Did I mention it is fast – like really fast. I cannot wait to see the Snow Leopard update (big assumption Adobe will give this away for free). The interface changes will probably bother a lot of long time users. They are taking me a bit to get used to but guess what – that is only due to habit. Finally this thing is actually getting UI changes that are good – it’s been since like the mid 90′s or something since anything real significant has been really improved.

Bottom line If you are on the fence this is one upgrade that is worth every penny. I usually get all of my stuff at Amazon. If you want to help offset my costs for running this mess please use the little Amazon or B+H links on the side or on the sponsors page.

2 Comments

RB says

06 June 09 at 11:36am

For what did I “need” Photoshop CS4 you ask.

Answer = some table top product shots. I have three choices:

1- by tilt-shift Nikon 45mm and 85mm lenses for like a million buck to use for this unless I think of what else I will do with them.

2- break out the 4×5 and spend a ton of money on some E100G film and scanning.

3- spend a tiny little bit of money and use CS4′s much much improved photomerge to simulate the only thing I really need camera movements for – depth of focus and maybe use the perspective improved perspective manipulation tools as well. Plus I get a version of photoshop that cooks on my new macs.

RB
Jason says

09 June 09 at 5:30pm

RB,

When Adobe comes out with a 64-bit version for Snow Leopard it will be a new version and not an upgrade. If I’m not mistaken, you can’t take a 32-bit program and make it a 64 bit program via an upgrade. You have to reinstall and start over.

If memory serves correct, Adobe already has a 64 bit version of CS3 or 4 that is/was designed to run on the 64 bit version of Windows XP. I don’t know if this is still the case.

Hopefully the transition will be quick and painless.

Don’t know if you followed the Apple Keynote on Monday, but the enhancements that Snow Leopard will bring (better processor utilization, able to address more memory) must be in place before a significant upgrade of Aperture can take place (at least performance wise). Any new version of Aperture (or any of Apple’s Pro Apps) will most certainly be written for 64-bit Snow Leopard, so I wouldn’t look for any new Aperture versions until at least December of this year after Snow Leopard comes out and gets established.

At this point, I think we’ll take any upgrade, significant or not.