Photoshop seems to be everyone's preferred image editing package (there's a revelation!)

What I want to know is, given that a recent poll suggests the majority of Retouch Pro members class themselves as 'amateurs' and 'enthusiasts', what drives them to use the most expensive package? In the UK, Photoshop CS retails at between £450 and £650 (880 to 1200 $us).

So.. Which are you?

1. I make money from retouching, so use 'the best'
2. I am a committed enthusiast
3. I use an older version other than the current one
4. Other (eg, I use the package bundled on my work PC!)

I'm between 1 and 2 however doing odd jobs usually generates enough cash to buy Photoshop. However I certainly wouldn't buy it in the UK.

Hi Chris,

I've seen the websites advertising imports, but have heard so many horror stories (unable to register, as it has been registered by another user in country of origin, extortionate shipping costs, import taxes etc..) that I've avoided going down that route. Ebay also advertises 'genuine' software that looks too good to be true too!

Have you had any experiences (good or bad) of importing or downloading?

Darren :D

I'm a committed amateur. :)

I started with Photoshop 5.5, skipped 6, presently have 7, will not upgrade to 8 (CS) and will most likely upgrade to IX (or CS 2.0 or whatever they call it) when it comes out in 2005.

Once you make the extremely painful outlay for your first base edition, the upgrade costs are fairly tame by comparison.

A very cost effective way for getting CS for much less than the retail price is to acquire an older version of Photoshop, e.g., PS4 or PS5 from a source like eBay-UK, then purchase and install the CS upgrade.

I'm a committed enthusiast... but I might, maybe, someday, do something connected to the photography field semi-professionally -- which was my excuse for justifying investing in Photoshop to myself. Plus when you add together all the stuff I do in it, it's a significant hobby which probably justifies the investment.

I'm still using v6 and intend to upgrade in the spring when the next version is released.

I also use PhotoShop Elements 2 - I bought Photoshop 3 and installed it, but haven't had time to work with it yet so don't know what it's capable of.

There are enough differences between the two programs that I justify having both of them.

My computer is my constant companion and I do so many things with it that having the best applications is important to me. I have the best computer - a Mac PowerBook G4 so why not use the best apps :grin:

I tried using my Photoshop knowledge to earn a bit of extra cash, but hated the long hours working on what other people wanted me to do - yet I would have happily done the same thing for nothing - I think that tells me I need my head examined :lol:

Take care, Margaret

I use it professionally, probably average five hours with it a day but I still use PS7. I'm a commercial photographer and, working with graphic designer, do most of my own post-production. I also do a fair amount of photo restoration.

I should state that many of the 'committed enthusiasts' in this forum are far more knowledgeable and skillful than myself. I learn something just about every time I log on here.

chip

Almost 1-3 im using difrent versions at school than at home. Im making a little money on Photoshop work, but im planing to make som restorration and more photography work soon. So i need to use ps. I work with both ps 6 and ps cs. And i can see nothing but good reasons to pay the ekstra to get to the cs version. Ofcause it depends on your level of work (and how much time you have to make the longer work arounds). A lot of the things cs i better for is timesaving features.

/Lasse

Didn't know how to answer that...I have photoshop 7, painter9, psp7 & psp9 do i really need photoshop cs?

...do i really need photoshop cs?If you have to ask, then probably not.:) Seriously, what are you not able to do with PS7? If you can't think of any serious limitations, that's an indication an upgrade may not be in your best interests.

When CS3 comes out in about a year and a half, consider upgrading to that.

Thanks Danny...And congratulations i hear your having a new addition to the family <wink>

I'm both a committed enthusiast and a sometime retoucher and teacher, meaning, I guess, that I make a little but not enough to warrant buying CS2 when it comes out.

Janet

Thanks Danny...And congratulations i hear your having a new addition to the family <wink>
I'm happy to report my newest addition, a Wacom tablet, won't require diapers (I might, however) nor a college education. :cool:

I voted for 'other' (i.e. seldom use it) and have managed to get thus far without it. A rarity no doubt :) If I had no other choice but Photoshop, then I'd use it.

I'm still discovering how awesome this program is, I love Painter too but for different reasons, they are great great programs that are worth the money, sure they look expensive but the depth of them and the possibilities they give you, I think they are worth the cash. I now live and breath art daily cause of these programs.

I'll call myself a "pro", because I use Photoshop everyday. As an "ad agency", it's what I do to pay the bills. I've got the CS2 upgrade, but haven't installed it yet. Waiting for a few issues with fonts in OSX Tiger to be resolved before I install and do the registration/activation thing so I'm still at CS1. There is still so much I want to learn about PhotoShop!! It is just totally awesome.

The ad below recently appeared in National Geographic Traveler Magazine, so I guess for a gal from the "swamps", I've made the big time. The ad was done completely in Photoshop.

I think I would consider myself somewhere between the first three, as I used Photoshop extensively while in college, here at home, and now back at the college. Of all the possible students and soon to be graduates in a computer art and design degree program, I was approached by the college marketing department (just before graduation, two weeks ago) to do some scanning and restoration work on photos and newspaper articles that will be appearing in the college's 90th anniversary, happening later this year.

At the college, I use CS2 and what limited plugins that come standard with the program. At home, I use PS7 for both the PC and Mac platforms as well as a rather large host of plugins and brushes to accomplish different tasks in graphics creation and animation.

Also, depending on what "look" I am trying to achieve, I will sometimes find myself reverting back to some older versions of other software. So, I guess you "could" say that I am a semi-professional enthusiast that uses the tools available to get the desired results.

Donald P

Waiting for a few issues with fonts in OSX Tiger to be resolved before I install and do the registration/activation thing so I'm still at CS1.

I get my new Dual 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 with 20-inch Apple Cinema Display Hopefully this Saturday, Yeehaar. I have PSCS Academec version. I was looking to upgrade to CS2 later this year. What are the font issues? Something minor I hope.

Deadants

There are a number of discussions on the Adobe forums regarding font issues with Adobe products under Tiger and both CS1 & CS2 seem to be affected. Most who are having success are those on a single user platform using a minimal number of fonts and either FontBook or Font Agent Pro.

Apparently Apple made extensive changes to the font routines in Tiger (Adobe seems to keep tweaking font routines as well) and I think many "pros" were hoping that FontBook (Tiger's native font handling module) would be sufficient to handle their diverse font needs, but most are very disappointed and still find a need to use a third party font manager such as Extensis Suitcase, or Font Agent Pro. Font Agent Pro has been updated to work with Tiger, but Suitcase has not released a stable and reliable version for Tiger and CS2.

The biggest need for the "pros" (especially those in "bureau service" type environments) to be able to load customer fonts on the fly have auto activation of fonts and deal with active duplicates, corrupt fonts etc. Suitcase is said to handle these needs better than FAP, especially fonts delivered from a server.

I'm a Suitcase user and am waiting for the Tiger update which is "very close" according to Extensis. I did try FontBook under Tiger and it was very unstable. Fonts would show up fine in InDesign and not at all in Illustrator or PhotoShop. Or fonts might show up in Indesign and then when trying to export a print resolution PDF I'd get a dialog box saying the font(s) were not available for inclusion. (All problems were with CS1)

I think it will all work itself out in the next couple weeks, but I'm still working under OSX 10.3 Panther and have 10.4 Tiger loaded on a separate partition to "play" with it and all the neat new features.

Thanks for all the info Swampy, I wonder if the new update 10.4.1 was an improvement on the problem? Lets hope so. Anyway, roll on Saturday. I can't wait. It's just like being a kid again at Christmas time, 3 more sleeps :) :)

I am both one and two. I use it on the job, but I use it more for my personal projects and art.

Cathy :bigthmb:

First Congratulations "Swampy" that cover is beautiful, can you visit places like in the photo of the main background ? I mean are you relatively close to them?

On the subject of this thread I am definitely a Committed Enthusiast - currently using CS2 and there is sooo much still to be learnt ! Though since I became a member of RetouchPRO I made great progress reading tips and tutorials available here.

I used to use almost exclusively Fireworks since 4.0 all through MX2004. The first Photoshop version I used was 5.0, quite a long time ago, then had to sell my PC with all the programs. :depressed The next PC had Fireworks 4 installed, and the Photoshop CS2 I am using now is a sort of giveaway present from my Daughter who had it installed in her last PC. Complicated I know, but that's how it is ;)

The switch to Photoshop CS2 from FW I made was on account of a Photoshop battle I entered at another forum, which forced me to re-learn Photoshop and regretfully have to admit that for creating graphics and image retouching it is far more powerful than FW.

Well regards to all those who managed to read up to here :lol:

Martha - :wavey:

Martha, thank you for the comments on the magazine cover. Yes, you can get right in the middle of a scene like the background of the piece. Just visit our state park or take one of the environmental tours. As for me, my house is surrounded on three sides by native scrub. The fourth side is lakefront - best of both worlds :-)

On the issue of Apple/Adobe/Fonts...I bit the bullet and purchased Font Agent Pro and switched from Extensis Suitcase. Extensis STILL (4 months after the release of Tiger) has not updated their font utility! With the purchase of FAP, I was able to install CS2, but I still haven't migrated from Panther to Tiger.

I've got a copy of Tiger 10.4.2 installed on a backup internal drive, but strange thing whenever I boot into it, I lose all my external firewire devices. Neither my 160g nor 250g external firewire drives will mount. Not good!!!

dee dee

Things have a tendancy to perpetuate themselves.

In the 80's there was betamax vs vhs. There were more movies to rent in vhs so more people bought vhs players, which caused more video rental stores to stock more vhs tapes etc. etc.

I thinks it's like that. If you look in the newspaper, and you want to be a graphic artist you will constantly see photoshop as the required software to know. So, you go buy photoshop, you take photoshop classes and buy photoshop books. When employers open new businesses, they look to see the kinds of professionals that are available and they see a lot of photoshop pros so that's what they hire.

The poll originator should have given a category for using multiple editors. I am a basic beginner (hopefully graduating soon) and I have and use PS7 and PSPx on various tuts and tasks and it seems to me (and others) that there are strengths and weaknesses with both of these tools.

Ken

At $650 US I won't be buying it any time soon. Another learner here. I've had photoshop for a very long time but only recently had the guts to try to learn it, its been in the too-hard basket for a long time.

Mine is PS7, a gift from my father who uses it himself and swears there is no need for CS/CS2 at this point, and 7 is plenty. Considering where I am - and the wealth of info out there for previous versions (tutorials and so on) there isn't really any great need to upgrade at this point for me.