Adobe Creative Suite Upgrade
February 16, 2009 11:46 AM   Subscribe

We want to upgrade from Adobe Creative suite 1 to at least CS 3 at our office. We use mostly Illustrator and Photoshop. But the upgrade seems to be more important for Illustrator than photoshop. -It needs to be relatively cheap to get approved so I am wondering the following: a) Would it make sense to just upgrade illustrator or would that cause compatibility issues with the older version of photoshop? b) We need to upgrade on 4 machines? How many upgrades would we need to buy. c) What are the benefits of CS 4 vs CS 3? d) Sicne CS4 is out does that mean CS 3 is cheaper?
posted by ChloeMills to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)
 
a) The biggest difference between Illustrator CS1 and CS3, functionally, is the changes made to the type engine. CS4 has brought a lot changes to Illustrator, so, barring financial constraints, I'd take the dive and go straight from 1 to 4. I haven't seen any real compatibility issues between Illustrator and Photoshop that can't be resolved with a simple workaround.

c) Frankly, I'm unimpressed with Photoshop and Illustrator CS4 so far; it's a resource hog, and most of the "updates" for Photoshop and Illustrator are minimal. I wouldn't have gotten it if I didn't have to open and modify client files that had been created in CS4. In my opinion, Adobe's gotten addicted to the yearly influx of cash that the upgrades bring, and focus more on marketing than they do on coding or polishing workflows. That said, I'm a one-man band, so I don't use any of the bundled groupware. I suspect that Bridge and screen sharing and other group-workflow utilities would be a serious boon to a four-person shop.

Theoretically, yes, CS3 should be cheaper. But since Adobe no longer offers CS3 as an option, you'll likely be dealing with the shadier side of software sales. I'd say either stay with CS1 if you're comfortable with it or go whole-hog and move to CS4.
posted by lekvar at 1:34 PM on February 16, 2009


b. You need 4 upgrade copies.
posted by SirStan at 1:37 PM on February 16, 2009


The only stock out there is just unsold old stock. I am sure that CS3 is no longer sold through distribution to resellers, so if you're seeing it online somewhere or at a store they're just clearing old stock out.
posted by Kellydamnit at 2:16 PM on February 16, 2009


also, if you upgrade before 3/1 it will be cheaper. The cost to upgrade from cs1 or cs2 goes up after the first of the month, when they will start offering tiered upgrades discounting for people who have kept their cs current.
posted by Kellydamnit at 2:17 PM on February 16, 2009


Response by poster: "b. You need 4 upgrade copies."

For some reason - I thought you got two machines per license? that is not true?



posted by ChloeMills at 2:40 PM on February 16, 2009


Response by poster: I have CS3 at home and there are just a few little things in Illustrator that would make life much easier at work compared to CS1. Such as group select, auto trace, opening multiple files at once.

I actually usually hate upgrades, b/c I get so used to how things are. But then sometimes a few new things end up being better. That's part of the reason I just want CS3 vs CS4 - I am afraid of what annoying things they may have done to CS4.
posted by ChloeMills at 2:41 PM on February 16, 2009


I was told at one time that Adobe licenses allowed for one work license and one home license - that they couldn't both run at the same time. I never tested this, though. More from Adobe:

The activation process for individual products purchased at retail outlets supports installation on up to two computers. The Adobe product license agreement allows the primary user to install the product on a primary computer and also on a home or laptop computer for his or her use, provided that the two copies are not used simultaneously. While the activation process supports installing and activating Adobe software on two computers, use of the product on the second computer is restricted to the user who licensed the software. Allowing others to use a second copy of the software violates the product license agreement.

I'd buy four.
posted by bristolcat at 3:04 PM on February 16, 2009


I'll stay out of the upgrade/economic part but from a feature perspective Illustrator CS4 is pretty sweet. The multiple artboards alone are *huge*, will totally change your workflow (for the better) and are not in CS3.

Here's a list of the top CS4 Illustrator features.

Photoshop is another story, I've gone back and forth on how significant the CS4 upgrade is (I should mention that it's part of my job to stay on top of the Adobe upgrades.)

At first I thought it offered tremendous benefits, but over the last few months I've realized that I wasn't really using any of the new features on a daily basis except the unavoidable UI changes. So I'd say going from CS1 to CS4 doesn't provide huge benefits unless you happen to be doing 3D work.
posted by jeremias at 4:37 PM on February 16, 2009


Of course, what YOU do in PS is the critical thing, but if it's mostly polishing up pix, I'd say that having access to Camera Raw for jpegs and tiffs was huge, as is the refine-selection panel and the quick selection tool, all of which I believe appeared in 3. The new things in 4 do seem minor, but the preview in the cloning brush, the clean image at any zoom, and the new brush scaling make it painful going back to 3. And I personally have loved Bridge from day one; it changed most of what I do on the computer for the better.

But IL cs4's artboards ARE the deal maker, along with lots of other great stuff (new clipping masks, isolation mode, smart guides…); it'd be foolish to only bump to 3 at this point if you use IL, imo.
posted by dpcoffin at 5:33 PM on February 16, 2009


a) Unless things have changed, I was told the Creative Suites must be upgraded as a bundle; in other words, you can't just order an upgrade to Illustrator CS4 from Illustrator CS. Compatibility may or may not be a problem; Adobe products often let you save back to earlier versions, but that doesn't always work out as smoothly as one would like in real life.

b) Depends on your circumstances. You might want to look into Volume Licensing.

c) I think Dave Girard at arstechnica did the most thorough reviews on both Photoshop CS4 Extended and Illustrator CS4.

d) What Kellydamnit said; any "new" CS3 versions you'll see for sale are probably old stock, or worse, not legit. If you have to upgrade, you might as well dive right in and get the latest version available.
posted by LuckySeven~ at 8:25 PM on February 16, 2009


*Grr! That should read "you can't qualify for upgrade pricing for just Illustrator CS4 from your old Creative Suite licensing info; you'll have to upgrade the whole bundle or start fresh with a single purchase of Illustrator, minus the Suite.
posted by LuckySeven~ at 8:30 PM on February 16, 2009


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