Hello all.

I'm having a little crisis over here and hoping for some advice. My computer had a mini "crash" last night. I was able to get everything up and working except photoshop CS. It's telling me I need to reactivate it. But it turns out I can't because Adobe is telling me my serial number is invalid. (I bought the program over Ebay, and it worked fine the first time I activated it about a year ago, but now it just won't activate.)

Anyway, I have photo-editing jobs I need to complete (and I'm going through some kind of weird photoshop withdrawal...). I can't afford to buy a whole new version of CS, so I'm considering moving to Elements3 (which I can just go out and buy today at the store, for under $100).

Any advice on what I can expect to lose by going this route? In CS, I make heavy use of the healing brush, selective color, levels, fading out the effects of filters and brushes, and the art history brush. I have LOTS of plugins, and I have a bunch of presets from Trimoon tutorials that I'd like to be able to continue to use.

I don't use paths too much, nor channels or curves, nor actions.

I'm hoping someone is out there who is familiar enough with the 2 programs -- and can tell me whether or not I'll be able to cope with Elements 3...


Thanks for any help you can provide!

bigkidjr

If you don't need CMYK or advanced color management it sounds like the full version of PS would be a waste of your money.

Of course, my next question is why don't you use paths, channels, curves, etc. :)

you know, I'm really not sure why I don't use paths, channels, etc. probably because i am completely self-taught on this program and found "easier" ways around it, e.g., using "save selection", selective color and variations, etc. I know I'm missing something by not using channels, but for some reason I have a hard time understanding how to use them.

The good news is that when I sent out my SOS earlier today about CS crashing, I had completely forgotten about the fact that I have photoshop 7 on disk. I had removed it from my computer when I installed CS, and then totally forgot about it. I just reinstalled and everything is working fine! I feel like an idiot :ditsy: , mind you, but am glad I got the situation pretty much resolved....

bkid