9 replies to this topic

[merft]

Hi All,

End of year is rolling around, we are looking for places to spend money to reach maximum deductions. Anyone have thoughts on Adobe's CS3. We have CS2, can't say anything really jumps out to me on CS3 right now. Am I missing anything really neat?

Thanks,
-Tom

[Jimbo]

I'm new to the field so CS3 is my first weapon of choice for a graphics package. All I know from CS3 is that tools from Freehand are part of the package because Adobe has no plans to continue that product.

[ELeFevre]

Tom,
I'd probably spend the money on hardware or Mapublisher 7.5 if you use it and wait for the next release from Adobe. Some of the new features are impressive (I've been using CS3 for several months), but there's nothing in there that has really changed my day. Adobe claims CS3 is faster, so if your experiencing sluggish files then it might help. I upgraded to 4gb of RAM at about the same time I went with CS3 so I can't really say if it's faster or not. The new Live Color feature, document profiles and multiple crop features are great, but not enough to justify an upgrade IMO. If you're creating content for Flash then you'll like the enhanced integration, if your not, then you'll never use it. Beyond that there's a new vector eraser tool I never use and of course the groovy new palette system I find somewhat convenient, but still not worth the price of an upgrade. I would spend elsewhere and wait for the next release. CS2 is solid.

If you download the trial they have a nice little introduction that goes over all of the new enhancements.

[Sky Schemer]

CS3 works a lot better under Vista than CS2. If you are planning to move to Vista then you should do the upgrade.

I think the palette management is also a lot better in CS3, but I've only had it for a few weeks so I can't offer much else in the way of incentives.

[merft]

Thanks for the input. We plan on sticking with XP for the foreseeable future (run too many legacy applications). I've been pretty happy with CS2. Seems to run fine, except during deadlines. But that's true with nearly all hardware and software.

How's the backwards compatibility? I have very few clients that run CS2, none that I know of on CS3. I regularly have to save projects as far back as AI8.

-Tom

[Unit Seven]

CS3 gives the option to save back to 3, 8, 9 and 10 (an the CS versions) in the dialogue box—I'm not vouching for how well they save though. Not sure what happens backwards with the text engine imagine it's lots of broken text similar to opening older versions in CS2 and 3.

[Andrew Patterson]

End of year is rolling around, we are looking for places to spend money to reach maximum deductions. Anyone have thoughts on Adobe's CS3. We have CS2, can't say anything really jumps out to me on CS3 right now. Am I missing anything really neat?

I can vouch for the fact that CS3 is faster than CS2 since I spent most of a year knee-deep in one or the other trying to get MAPublisher up & running in both simultaneously. Even though the next couple of versions of MAPublisher still work in CS2, I only boot that fellow up when I absolutely have to! (I let others fix bugs on CS2 whenever possible )

The palette management is, as was pointed out, much improved in CS3 -- I love the new tray approach. I always felt compelled to have a dozen palettes at the ready but hated losing all that real estate -- collapsing them against the side is simply wonderful.

There are other features -- like Live Colour -- but I can't say much about them because, frankly, beyond MAPublisher functionality I don't use much other than the basics in Illustrator.

I can't say whether you should spend on upgrading to it though. CS2 does work, and is compatible with all the latest versions (and next couple at least as well) of MAPublisher. I can't say at what point we're going to cut CS2 loose -- though it's a safe bet that we won't be supporting CS2, CS3 and CS4 simultaneously!

As for backwards compatibility, I can't contribute much there. I wouldn't be surprised to find out text can get mangled going back anywhere from CS on to anything pre-CS -- the engines are just too different to have a perfect mapping.

[BEAVER]

Andrew

Any idea when the 8.0 coming out?

[Hans van der Maarel]

FWIW... I occasionally save files back to CS2 or CS1 format and have never had anybody complain about text issues.

[Andrew Patterson]

Andrew

Any idea when the 8.0 coming out?

Couple of point releases first, but we've got some good stuff in both of them!