Should I buy PS CS3? If so how much?

[Johnboy2011]

Hi,

I'm not all that excited about shelling out hundreds for the latest brand new CS6, Olly Penrice has said he uses CS3 so that is definaltey good enough for me!

If i buy it second hand and the owner transfers the licence to me I can't see a problem? The only thing I'm not sure about is the value of it, what do you think it would be worth?!

Regards,

John

[Bizibilder]

You can't legally transfer a PS licence - Adobe won't allow it and the software will fail when you activate it (for the same reason con't buy second hand!).

[swag72]

Isn't there a legimate CS2 download off the Adobe site for free?

[Johnboy2011]

Thanks for that, would CS2 do the job?

John

[Bizibilder]

I believe the CS2 download is now blocked / won't work without a key by Adobe.

[RikM]

CS3 is perfectly fine. I bought my copy from Amazon for about £130. I use CS6 at work and other than the 'vibrance' tool there is nothing extra that I wished CS3 had.

[Johnboy2011]

Hi Rik,

From what I can see on Amazon it shows CS3 as unavailable and CS4 is £360. I assume yours was a new copy?

John

[ollypenrice]

I think I paid about £200 for a legit new copy of CS3. It does work fine on WIn7. I'd say that about 50 percent of the quality, for better or worse, of my images comes from the software. Pixinsight, Ps and Registar after preprocessing in AstroArt. I know it's annoying to pay for 'insubstantial' stuff like software but the phenomenal power of the best graphics packages will make a mind blowing contribution to what you do. ED80/HEQ5/CCD plus Pixinsight and PS versus Takahashi FSQ/Mesu Mount 200/ CCD and a ban on Ps and Pixinsight? A total no brainer. Hand me the ED80 etc... Olly PS If you can cope with the difficult interface you could do it all in Pixinsight but don't get drawn into the horrible over processing that it brings out in people!!! Runs for cover.

[g0ibi]

I got a new copy of PS3 off Ebay with a key for £102, works great!

[RikM]

I assume yours was a new copy?

John

It was a new copy but I got it a couple of years ago.

[Freddie]

Any school kids in the family? You can get a CS5 student version (full functionality) for ~£180

[JacobvonChorus]

Just to give you something to consider (adding to Olly), it might be worth it to try the Pixinsight trial license. The interface is difficult at first (like any powerful software package) but I got used to it fairly quickly and quite like it. I have just started doing all my processing in it and have gotten great results. It is very easy, as Olly mentioned, to go crazy and over-process. Just in case, it has a project mode that basically saves the editor state so that over-processing can be undone at a later date. I've only used up to Photoshop 7 so I can't add much there. PS 7 did a great job, though was somewhat limited being kind of old (ie. very little 16-bit support).

Jacob

[billhinge]

Ditto for what Jacob says, I have CS3 but rarely use it. I use Pixinsight which apart from the learning curve is great. (I use the individual processes and the ever developing and ingenious scripts).

There are somethings that Pixinsight doesn't have that PS does, however PI has a lot of stuff that PS doesn't

As a bonus it also works as a very good terrestrial image editor as well ! (better than lightroom etc IMHO)

[Mr Spock]

I have CS2 and Paintshop Pro X2 - I still prefer to use Paintshop Pro 7, it's so much more user friendly.

[r3i]

Like RikM I got a copy of CS3 off Amazon a year or two ago - think it was around £120.

If you do see a copy at a good price try to double check it is a legal copy. See here for an account of when things aren't quite what they seem: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/84537-photoshop-cs4-extended-99-from-amazon/page__hl__%20photoshop%20%20£99%20%20amazon

[Spikey]

There's always GIMP as an alternative, it's free and downloadable and is used pretty successfully by quite a number of astro imagers.

[opticalpath]

The download of CS2 (in fact the whole Creative Suite) still seems to be available on the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

They also provide working serial numbers on the web page - activation is not required.

Adrian

[Sam]

It's worth giving PixInsight a go, the trial is good and lasts for 30 days so there's plenty of opportunity to get your head around the interface to see if you can get used to it. Like Olly mentioned some folks go a bit overboard on the processing with PixInsight, especially the HDR tool which ends up giving a very false looking result. Like any of the tools the better the input data the less work the post processing requires. One of the mental hurdles that you have to get over is that paying for good software is just as important as paying for astro equipment, they all contribute to the final result. It took me a while to get my head around that before shelling out for PixInsight, but well worth it.

[Merlin66]

The problem over here in Oz is the pricing....$1000 for the latest CS version and no "legit" copies of earlier stuff.

I NEVER trust eBay etc to supply absolutely new and properly sourced software - I've been caught before.

I'll just stick with AA5 and PaintShop Pro X........

[Astrokev]

Adobe CS2 download. I'm checking Adobe download page for CS2.

The table of downloads includes a long list of files for "Creative Suite 2" at the top of the table, but only a single file for "Photoshop CS2" at the bottom of the table. I'm a little confused by this. It may be a stupid question, but if all I want is the photoshop editor, do I need only the single PS CS2 file, or do I need to install the Creative Suite list of files?

Thanks

[Psychobilly]

Will people please stop perpetuating the myth that CS2 is a FREE and LEGAL download from Adobe - It isn't...

It is only legal to download and use it is you are a previous licensed user of the product. Adobe removed their online activation servers for the older products.

The information is on the website but I guess people chose to ignore it...

Here's a link to the "official" Adobe statement ....

^{http://blogs.adobe.c...on-servers.html}

^{And just in case you don't want to foillow it...}

^{Adobe has disabled the activation server for CS2 products, including Acrobat 7, because of a technical issue.}

^{These products were released more than seven years ago, do not run on many modern operating systems, and are no longer supported.}

^{Adobe strongly advises against running unsupported and outdated software.}

^{The serial numbers provided as a part of the download may only be used by customers who legitimately purchased CS2 or Acrobat 7 and need to maintain their current use of these products.}

Peter...