Adobe Photoshop CS3 [OLD VERSION]
by Adobe
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Software Reviews of Adobe Photoshop CS3 [OLD VERSION]
Customer Review: Photoshop CS3
Summary: 5 Stars
The product is great, but the official Adobe customer service is lacking. It is based in India. I like the new fiber filter and brushes.Customer Review: No Significant reasons to upgrade
Summary: 3 Stars
I am a professional Graphic Designer, with a degree in Fine Arts & Graphic Design. I am sure most people who would pay for Adobe Photoshop (or any of the Adobe Suite Programs) are designers/artists.
I have been using Adobe CS3 (mostly Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign) for the past 4 months or so. I have been using Photoshop itself, since version 4.
In a sentence, Photoshop CS3 is good, but if you already are using CS2, there is no real reason to upgrade.
The added features are OK, but not worth paying for really and I have had stability issues with this newer version of Photoshop that I have not had in CS2. The two most annoying problems are: If I have a non-postscript printer set as a default, Photoshop will ALWAYS crash when I open a 2nd document (blank or otherwise). The other issue (which is also shared with InDesign) is that if I have been using Photoshop for a few hours, and switching between programs, Photoshop will vanish. It will not show up in my taskbar (WinXP SP2) nor in the running apps list in Task Manager. I need to terminate the process from the Task Manager process window, and then restart of course losing all unsaved edits.
I do not have these issues with Photoshop CS2.
Also the installation process was a real pain in the neck. It was much longer (about 25 minutes) than previous versions of Photoshop. It took me 4 days (almost 30 hours altogether) to get the suite installed on my laptop due to the activation process freezing after I entered my software key. I also had to uninstall all of my CS2 programs before I could get CS3 installed. I also needed to download Adobe's CS3 "Cleaner" utility and run it several times. It was not worth the trouble, especially considering how much I paid for the software.
Once I got it installed it worked fine (aside from the two bugs listed above). I was able to reinstall CS2 as well.
Like I said earlier the new features are just OK, not worth the trouble I went through with installation. Also the new palette system is kind of annoying. When I work I am constantly going back and forth between palettes making adjustments. The new palette dock minimizes them to a button, but you cannot have 2 open at the same time using this system. When you open one palette, the one you were previously working on closes. You can float them, but then that doesn't take advantage of the improvements of CS3. In my case I just ended up using the "legacy" pallette set up, which made my palettes work the way they did in CS2.
Adobe Photoshop is the "standard" for photo editing software, but the hard install, high price and lack of any really useful new features makes it hard to recommend this version of Photoshop over previous versions which installed easier and work faster with less resources.
Customer Review: Great product, nightmarish activation system
Summary: 3 Stars
It's pretty simple: if you're serious about photo editing, Photoshop is by far the best and most capable product out there. There are plenty of products that are good enough for casual use, but nothing matches Photoshop for raw power.
Be aware, however, of the baggage that Adobe forces on you when you buy one of their products. They use an online activation system to prevent you from installing on too many computers at once, which is eminently reasonable. The activation system, however, is buggy and temperamental. For example, when I installed the SP1 upgrade to Vista (which every Vista user will need to do), the activation system thought I had moved Photoshop to a new computer, and locked up the software. I eventually ended up on the phone with customer support, who finally agreed to re-activate my software (but only after chastising me for not de-activating Photoshop before installing SP1 and re-activating it afterward).
Customer Review: I'd stick with CS or CS2
Summary: 3 Stars
I use PhotoShop for various types of image manipulation for purposes of biological image analysis. PhotoShop CS3 is great, almost perfect, for any user who is not going to composite images. If photo merging was not considered, I'd give CS3 5 stars. Other reviewers have listed the positive points about CS3, so I will only expand on my caveat. Previous versions of PhotoShop worked wonderfully at stitching images, compositing 50-60 images momentarily. I currently have a 75% failure rate when attempting to composite even 2 or 3 images with CS3. Adobe forums have revealed that I am not the only person with this issue and that Adobe is in no apparent rush to solve the problem. I am not your typical PhotoShop user; I do a lot of macro creation and some programming because I will often work on thousands of images for a single study. I, like many other CS3 users who rely on the photo merge feature, will be re-installing CS or CS2. For those of you who want the upgraded bells and whistles of CS3 but don't need to composite images, go ahead and buy CS3. Customer Review: For anyone wondering and not experianced.
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this program and am finding it EXTREMELY difficult to use. It has helpful tutorials in the accompanying CD, if only you could follow step by step in the program itself... I am sure this is a great editing tool for those who know what they are doing or have large amounts of free time to spend teaching themselves. For me with three kids and little time it has been very difficult.