CS2 v CS5 and Nikon silver efex pro 2

[ian moore]

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I currently use CS2,bought it when it was launched,and am very happy with it. I mainly shoot architecture,city scenes,rarely landscapes or portraits. Serious amateur,not professional but do display occasionally when asked.

 

Is it worth upgrading to CS5? Is there a significant learning curve? Also,I like dabbling in b & w conversions and would like to explore this aspect more (suits all these old churches I photograph!).

 

Does Nikon silver efex work with CS2 or would I have to upgrade to CS5 anyway to use silver efex?

 

Thanks,

 

Ian.

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[HeinzX]

I use CS 5 since app. one year, it´s great. CS 2 I don´t know, but even against CS 4 there are some very useful new possibilities in CS 5. As far as I know, there is a free trial version on the Adobe home page - may be useful for you to have a look at it. The NIK PlugIn Silver Efex Pro (has nothing to do with Nikon) works together with CS 5 and Photoshop Elements 7.0 and later (actual version is 9.0 - this program is much cheaper than CS 5 an has a lot of possibilities too ). Up to my knowledge there is a free trial version of Silver Efex Pro available on the NIK home page. It ist an excellent PlugIn for conversion of color images to b&w and has a lot of different options. I would load down the trial version, so you can try, if it works together with CS 2.

I still work with Silver Efex Version 1, which is sufficient for me - the actual version is 2.

 

P.S. The NIK PlugIn works together with the actual Lightroom too.

 

Regards

Heinz

[stunsworth]

One thing to consider is that Adobe only allows upgrades from the previous 3 generations of the software.

 

That means that you can upgrade from CS2 to CS5. However what it also means is that if you stay with CS2 and at some future point decide to upgrade to CS6 or CS7 you will need to pay the full price for the software, not the upgrade price. So it may be worthwhile upgrading just to keep in the upgrade 'loop'.

[jaapv]

I can only confirm Heinz' post. CS5 is vastly improved over CS 2. However the learning curve is only for the new features, you will be quite comfortable with the program as such. The healing brush, dodging and burning tool and automatic adjustment layers alone are worth more than the price of the upgrade, not to mention the curves adjustment on the image itself and many other features.

[delander †]

I have worked with CS2, CS3 and now CS5. I agree with Jaap. More adjustments in CS5 are allowed on 16 bit files and of course you get Adobe Camera Raw version 6 and the latest version of Bridge. As Steve says if you dont upgrade to CS5 then you will be faced with starting again at a much higher cost. There are lots of new features in CS5 versus CS2 and improvements on existing features.

 

You could wait until CS6 is announced but not available and then upgrade to CS5 and get a virtually free upgrade to CS6 when it ships, but you have to be careful and do it within the timescale. There is however no guarantee that Adobe will continue that practice.

 

Jeff

[250swb]

Buying Photoshop is painful for many photographers for the first time because they would rather buy a new camera body or lens. But unlike camera bodies the upgrade path to the next version is relatively painless from then on. So you have left it a long time if you are still using CS2. CS5 is a world away, but not a high learning curve away. It can do many things that previously you would have needed specialist software for, it now has top quality noise reduction tools, can do excellent panorama's, HDR, focus stacking etc. And all the other tools are much more refined and easier to use compared with CS2.

 

To get the most from it though you do need a lot of RAM, and work preferably in 64 bit. Adding Nik Silver Efex as a plugin is an excellent idea for your B&W work, it is a top quality piece of software that makes an already great Photoshop even more like a darkroom, but without the smells and angst.

 

Steve

[Jase]

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The real advantages of CS5 over every previous release is content aware fill / heal and the improved noise reduction. Nik's Silver Efex Pro is a nice add-on.

 

Photoshop CS5 is wasted and a waste of time on anyone that doesn't use it for work. My advice would be to get Lightroom and or Elements as Elements 9 has Content Aware Fill. Woohoo!

[stunsworth]

Photoshop CS5 is wasted and a waste of time on anyone that doesn't use it for work!

 

A bit of a generalisation don't you think?

[Swanny66]

The Camera RAW converter has a ton more options in it compared to CS2. You can process many images almost strictly through the RAW converter. I have no experience with Silver Efex Pro 2 as of yet. But I am looking forward to purchasing it in the near future.

[250swb]

Photoshop CS5 is wasted and a waste of time on anyone that doesn't use it for work. My advice would be to get Lightroom and or Elements as Elements 9 has Content Aware Fill. Woohoo!

 

 

Even for work nobody ever uses all the things Photoshop can do unless they are a Photoshop demonstrator, so presumably its wasted on them as well? Of course the reason to have Photoshop over Elements as an amateur is the vast amount of additional control available when you want it, and much of that can be needed on a daily basis just by working with all the usual tools in 16 bit mode. But if it is Content Aware Fill that impresses you, well, what does it say(?).......yes, Elements is all you need....

 

Steve