Comments on: Photoshop CS4 – Is It Worth It To Upgrade?

By: larry

larry — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:06:12 +0000

John- Yes, if you have a suite license, the only upgrade you can do is to upgrade the suite, not just one component.

I purchased a Photoshop license because that’s because that’s all I’ve ever used in the past. Since I also use Dreamweaver and now do my books in Indesign and am starting to do more and more video and am looking at Premier, the whole suite is looking better and better. Next year I may just purchase a Suite license.

By: John

John — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:39:47 +0000

Larry,
If you only have photoshop you can indeed upgrade for $199
but if you have the suite which includes illustrator, indesign and photoshop — you must upgrade the whole suite — you cannot just upgrade the photoshop part. I spent over an hour on the phone trying to convince the adobe sales rep to let me just upgrade the photoshop part and he never budged from the “adobe policy”. He freely admitted it was all about the money, and that they had to make money too. I told him I never use the illustrator or indesign but no amount of persuasion had any effect.

By: larry

larry — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:34:15 +0000

Phil- Not true. I only have Photoshop, not the whole suite. I upgraded from PS CS3 to CS4 for $199. Here are the details:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/upgrade/?promoid=DRHXB

By: Phil Scott

Phil Scott — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:58:16 +0000

I was surprised too that I coudn’t just upgrade Photoshop- that I had to buy a whole Suite upgrade. Bummer. I may put those dollars towards 24-70 Nikkor instead.

By: Brent

Brent — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:07:52 +0000

As Alan pointed out, if you have purchased Photoshop in a bundle it will cost $600 to upgrade and you can NOT just upgrade Photoshop. That’s Adobe’s “unfair” upgrade policy.

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:38:21 +0000

The only thing that tempted me was the 64-bit Vista support but at $599 for the Creative Suite 4 Web Premium upgrade I think I’ll sit this one out and put the money towards a new lens.

By: larry

larry — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:37:53 +0000

Chester- If you are just stitching rectangular panoramas from a few shots Photomerge in Photoshop is just fine but Photomerge is not intended for 360s. If you are shooting 360s, PTgui is the only way to go (see: http://www.ptgui.com/).

By: Chester Bullock

Chester Bullock — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:13:30 +0000

Gotcha. Not sure if the Mac had install issues or not, but Windows sure did.

Of all the stitching tools out there, would you say that you like the Photomerge in Photoshop the best? Or at least for the price (given that it is included with a program you already own)?

By: larry

larry — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:55:05 +0000

Chester- The online install process went smoothly for me (I don’t have the install DVD yet). They have a new Adobe Air based install process and the download and install when very well in the background while I was doing something else. I can’t compare it to the upgrade from CS2 to CS3 because CS3 was a new install for me since I’d just moved to the Mac when CS3 came out.

By: Chester Bullock

Chester Bullock — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:42:22 +0000

Did the install/upgrade process improve at all? I spent 3 days trying to figure out why my upgrade to CS3 from CS2 didn’t work right. Ended up having to remove every Adobe program from my system, then install CS3, then install the ancilliiary stuff. It was a nightmare…