CS7 Announced for May release, will you upgrade?

<p>More a discussion really, but especially for those that have been using the Beta, are the upgrades worthwhile? And what do you like/not like about the new suite.</p>

<p>As an aside I don't do Betas but am running CS5.5. </p>

<p>I suspect you meant to say, "CS6".</p>

<p>WRT upgrading, I don't know. I'll wait a few months for it to become stable, check out the free trial and play with it before making any decision. </p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>The InDesign upgrade is really good for people who work with multiple outputs (i.e. print, mobile, web) with the new liquid layout feature. Other small significant updates too. Been playing with the CS6 beta for Photoshop, which is pretty stable actually. It does look a lot more like Lightroom. Pretty soon they'll probably merge them together. They put basic video editing in Photoshop, which seems kind of crazy up front, but it does work pretty well. Since my job pays for all the upgrades, I'm sure I will be upgrading. I'm sure there will be some things I don't like, just like some things they changed from CS4 to CS5 I didn't like. </p>

<p>You might want to check out http://www.photoshopuser.com/cs6 and http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html and decide if the new features fit your work style and flow. If you're a member of NAPP you save 15% on the price, and you can upgrade from 5.5 for $299, I think (minus any discounts). When you consider that Adobe's new upgrade scheme will only allow previous-version upgrades (again, my understanding), it's a pretty inexpensive purchase if you're a pro, and if you're not, it's something worth considering based on your style of photography.</p>

<p>Tom,</p>

<p>Yes I did, sorry :-).</p>

<p>Rich,</p>

<p>That is interesting, I don't use In Design but am now working to different outputs via Dreamweaver, the necessity to incorporate mobile browser functionality into sites, and the different resources that are optimal for them, make multiple copies of any image a necessity.</p>

<p>Peter,</p>

<p>I am not a Kelby/NAPP fan, I find Lynda.com a far better resource for both Photoshop and indeed all other Adobe software. But they are both very good learning tools. At this point I believe Adobe are still offering a one time two generation upgrade, but they have said in the future it will become just the one generation that qualifies for the upgrade price as opposed to the full price.</p>

<p>At this point all those new 'cute' CS6 Photoshop features are not worth the $399 upgrade cost for me.</p>

<p>If I had a digital camera, and didn't have InDesign it might be another story.</p>

<p><<At this point all those new 'cute' CS6 Photoshop features are not worth the $399 upgrade cost for me.>></p>

<p>My upgrade from CS3 was $199 (plus tax). I upgraded to get (a) 64-bit [MAC] and (b) full compatibility with LR4.1. </p>

<p>I hope this will be the last time...</p>

<p>Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it appears that the price is $199 for the Photoshop upgrade. It also says that you can upgrade from CS3 and higher at this price until the end of the year, at which point the upgrade is only good from CS5 to CS6. That doesn't address whether people should upgrade, of course.<br>

We will probably end up upgrading. We use it a lot with our older scanned photos and some of the features look like they would be useful.</p>

<p>The pricing depends really on what version of Photoshop you are upgrading, and how well their website works. By default it may appear to only be $199 but if you click a different set of links, I see this which makes more sense to me:</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>If you're "stuck" with Extended (i.e. didn't buy it for the analytics features), Adobe does now allow you to move back down to standard by just buying a standard upgrade.</p>

<p>In CS5 the HDR tools only came with Extended, but in CS6 they have moved those into the base version, so there's less need for Extended, except for the 3d tools.<br>

<a href="https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopfamily/buying-guide-version-comparison.html">https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopfamily/buying-guide-version-comparison.html</a></p>

<p>While I picked up CS5 because I thought the Content Aware Fill would be useful for correcting the defects in my b&w scans, I found that feature to be less useful in actual practice for solving my problems.</p>

<p>So I still tend to think looking at the summary of new features that CS6 doesn't offer enough for me to upgrade from CS5, if I was on an earlier version I'd likely think differently:</p>

<p>Photoshop CS6 : What’s in it for photographers?<br /><a href="http://scottkelby.com/2012/its-guest-blog-wednesday-featuring-bryan-oneil-hughes-4/">http://scottkelby.com/2012/its-guest-blog-wednesday-featuring-bryan-oneil-hughes-4/</a><br /><br /><br /></p>

<p>The inability to drop from Extended to Standard needs to be looked into, because I was allowed to go from CS4 Extended to CS5 via upgrade.<br>

I have been using the CS6 beta since it was released, and for me, the changes to ACR,HDR Tools and the cropping tool alone are worth the price of the upgrade, which will run meabout $170 with my NAPP membership.</p>