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Photoshop CS5


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The new features in Photoshop since CS2 or CS3 are numerous and nice to have but in no way essential. As far as I am concerned, I could still do with CS2 easily. However the vast improvements in Camera Raw and also in Bridge definitely are worth the upgrade. Think of it this way: Upgrade to Bridge 4 and Camera Raw 6, get Photoshop 12 thrown in for free.

 

And oh—those still using Photoshop CS4, check out Adobe's website! There's a brand-new security update available for download; it also fixes a few minor bugs (Photoshop CS4 11.0.2).

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If you upgrade to CS5 and upgrade your brain to actually use the new features then I think it is worth it. There are several new/improved features related to photography and while you could probably do without, they do make life easier. I would reserve the overused "essential" for things like opening and saving files, cropping etc. things that have been around forever...

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I think if you are going from CS3 to CS5 you'll notice a vast difference. Speed for one, much better ACR for another, slicker tools and some great actions, and Bridge is very good. But, you will need the machine to get the best out of it, ideally running 64 bit and with a full compliment of RAM.

 

Steve

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Thanks all for your comments.

 

I think if you are going from CS3 to CS5 you'll notice a vast difference. Speed for one, much better ACR for another, slicker tools and some great actions, and Bridge is very good. But, you will need the machine to get the best out of it, ideally running 64 bit and with a full compliment of RAM.

 

Steve

 

Steve - I have a 2 yr. old Mac Pro (single quad-core processor, 12 Gb RAM, 3 hard drives) - so I should have plenty of computer horsepower. Am only running 32-bit - waiting for Nik plug-ins to become 64-bit compatible.

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I think if you are going from CS3 to CS5 you'll notice a vast difference.

 

Or not, as the case may be... See my post above. I went from CS3 to CS5.

 

I upgraded my Mac at the same time as buying CS5 and I attribute any speed increase more on the faster chip and 6x RAM than on the software.

 

The vast majority of the tools are the same, or very similar, as before. Many STILL don't work in 16 bit mode (what is THAT all about?!) and as someone who doesn't use ACR or Bridge, this is £200 I really should have kept in my pocket.

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Yes the vast majority of the tools are the same or similar (or much improved), but do you think Adobe would be onto a winner if they'd changed them all around? I think a lot of people upgrade exactly because its a progression and not a revolution.

 

Steve

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Adobe were very clever when they introduced the not more than 3 previous versions can be upgraded policy, otherwise I think a lot of people would still be with CS and CS2 or even ver 7. I have CS3 but did not bother with CS4 and probably wont with CS5. I'll be forced to do something with CS6 I suppose. In the meantime there is Lightroom.

 

Jeff

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Adobe were very clever when they introduced the not more than 3 previous versions can be upgraded policy, otherwise I think a lot of people would still be with CS and CS2 or even ver 7. I have CS3 but did not bother with CS4 and probably wont with CS5. I'll be forced to do something with CS6 I suppose. In the meantime there is Lightroom.

 

Jeff

 

I've been using CS5 for a good while now, and there are a few excellent features in there. Context-Aware Fill is pretty magical, so folks that do active retouching on their photos need to run, not walk, to adobe.com and upgrade themselves. Active brush resizing and soften/harden is much better now: left-right for resize, up-down for hardness, so your painting workflow is much more fluid. Plus better OGL support, and a non-modal color palette.

 

If you've missed CS4, the clone stamp palette is a thing of beauty.

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If you are on a Mac, Steve Jobs tells us that CS 5 is the first CS to use the OSX software in Native mode: that probably accounts for the increase in speed I've seen in the few days I've had CS5 over my old CS3. Bridge looks interesting again, but I"m not a power user.

 

The pano stitching and clone tools in 5 are a huge advance on 3 to my eyes and I cannot comment on the rest of it: too new ;-)

 

Cheers

 

Alastair

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re: nik plug-ins - for those interested, I contacted nik Technical Support and they said that 64-bit versions of their plug-ins should be released between the middle and end of this year; the upgrades will be available at no cost to registered owners of nik software. They also describe how to open CS5 in 32-bit mode - apparently the default opening mode is 64-bit.

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  • 5 months later...

If your MacBook is capable of running 64bit software, then your version of CS5 will run 64bit by default, as will your plug-ins.

 

You will need to actually do something (I know not what) to force the Mac to run in 32bit mode, so if yours is capable of running 64bit, then it most likely is.

 

As an aside, I have a 3 year old HP Laptop provided by the office. I was amazed to learn this afternoon that it can only address 3.5 gig RAM as an absolute maximum. I can forget 64bit or anything modern, like >4gig RAM. Unbelievable.

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If your MacBook is capable of running 64bit software, then your version of CS5 will run 64bit by default, as will your plug-ins.

 

You will need to actually do something (I know not what) to force the Mac to run in 32bit mode, so if yours is capable of running 64bit, then it most likely is.

 

As an aside, I have a 3 year old HP Laptop provided by the office. I was amazed to learn this afternoon that it can only address 3.5 gig RAM as an absolute maximum. I can forget 64bit or anything modern, like >4gig RAM. Unbelievable.

 

Are you sure about that? win 32 bit OS can only address 3.5GB's but if the processor can do 64bit then a 64bit OS should be able to see more RAM. Vista was out 3 years ago with native 64bit.

 

Now you might top out at 4GB's just because most notebooks only have 2 RAM slot and those RAM slot may only be able to handle 2GB sticks.

To my knowledge there is no way to install 3.5GB's of RAM. It comes in 512, 1GB, 2GB and so on but not 1.75GB.

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I doubt it's a 64 bit chip, so we are stuck with no more than 3.5 gig RAM whatever flavour of Windows we put on it. Regardless of how much RAM could physically be installed, only 3.5 gig could be addressed due to the limitations of the OS.

 

And I know that it's not possible to install 3.5 gig...

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  • 2 weeks later...
If your MacBook is capable of running 64bit software, then your version of CS5 will run 64bit by default, as will your plug-ins.

 

You will need to actually do something (I know not what) to force the Mac to run in 32bit mode, so if yours is capable of running 64bit, then it most likely is.

 

As an aside, I have a 3 year old HP Laptop provided by the office. I was amazed to learn this afternoon that it can only address 3.5 gig RAM as an absolute maximum. I can forget 64bit or anything modern, like >4gig RAM. Unbelievable.

 

Just for the record, a 32-bit Windows OS (desktop use, such as Windows XP) is limited to 4GB (as designed), of which it reserves close to 0,5 for its own use (It always reserves some memory of itself, regardless of the total amount of ram installed, only when 4GB is installed it actually shows you this). Most applications(practically all actually) for Windows are compiled such that they can use max 2GB of memory. In such a case, when the application comes with an error like out of memory, it has hit its 2GB limit.

So basically you can run 2 memory hungry applications at the same time without much memory issues, provided you have installed 4GB. (provided that nothing else is also reserving some memory, like some video-cards)

 

So if you have been using a 32-bit OS without (much) problems coming from lack of memory, it is not an issue at all.

 

Adobe Photoshop CS 3 , 4 , 5 may be one of those few applications that does not have this 2GB limit. I do not know as i am not a photoshop user. I do know that LR 2 is limited to 2GB, which by the way never caused a problem for me.

 

I do not know if the above also holds for MacOS, but i doubt that it is significantly different.

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Jan R. Smit

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It is significantly different. You have been able to assign programs such as Photoshop up to around 80% of RAM for years, and Macs have been able to support 10s of gig of RAM for as long as I can remember.

 

The amount of RAM that you can assign to PS is, within reason, limited to the amount of RAM that you have.

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