CS4 or Elements

[ryanyboy]

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago Adobe sent an offer to upgrade from Elements to CS4 for half the retail price.

Now, the big question is - will it benefit me? The one thing that appeals is the ACR part of the package. In Elements you get a far fewer options of things you can change whereas with CS4 there are several tabs worth of sliders and options to help you tweak the RAW before opening it in the main editor.

I have until tomorrow (Saturday) to decide, so any opinions in the next 36 hours will be most gratefully received.

Cheers

Ryan

[dazza74]

I'd upgrade personally, I started with Elements 5 and upgraded to CS3 and then to CS4 when it came out. I recently downloaded the latest elements on trial to have a look at it and soon realised how limiting it is compared to CS4, it's little things like not being able to create duplicate layers with 16 bit files. ACR in CS4 is frankly in a different league to the elements offering, you can tweak every colour and some of the new stuff like adjustment brush etc my only issue with ACR is that I do prefer using Capture NX 2 so doesn't get used much personally.

[johnaalex]

Originally Posted by ryanyboy

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago Adobe sent an offer to upgrade from Elements to CS4 for half the retail price.

Now, the big question is - will it benefit me? The one thing that appeals is the ACR part of the package. In Elements you get a far fewer options of things you can change whereas with CS4 there are several tabs worth of sliders and options to help you tweak the RAW before opening it in the main editor.

I have until tomorrow (Saturday) to decide, so any opinions in the next 36 hours will be most gratefully received.

Cheers

Ryan

Ryan - sorry if this is going over old ground, but if you want to work on your RAW files, why not use Capture NX2?

[Valleyman]

ryanyboy... I guess the most important question I'd ask is what do you currently use to process your RAW files?

If you have NX2 and are happy with it, the price of addmission may not be worth it.

Only reason I really have photoshop was that many moons ago, elements didn't exist and I've just been buying the upgrades (One thing to point out if you go the upgrade route is that elements upgrades are yearly, photoshop upgrades are approximatly every 2 years - so once you've paid the initial price of admission it almost becomes worth it). I've tried elements though and if it did exist I would have been tempted, although I find workflow in CS4 much faster due to it's new interface, tabs etc (CS4 also uses your graphics card to produce accurate images at all zoom levels without aliasing and speeds up photoshop considerably - This is a MASSIVE positive in my book).

Another biggie for photoshop is the capability to record your own actions which is a lifesaver when doing batch processing. This may or may not be an issue to you.

Some fun and useful tools which I don't think are in Elements include:
Layer masks
CAS (Content aware scaling)
HDR
Clone and healing tools invclude a preview which prevent most bad cloning decisions
Dodge and burn have additional settings

... am sure there are many many more, but these are the primary ones I use. If they sound interesting to you then go ahead. Half price sounds like a good offer to me.

[py6km]

I think if you've not found that you currently need it, then it's not worth it.

It does integrate with LR2 nicely, and there are a lot of cool time-saving features, although not having used Elements I can't say if cut down versions of those are present in that program.

[ryanyboy]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I decided to give NX 2 a whirl this evening. First impressions - yuk! As in - "I don't feel at home with this therefore I don't like it"

I'm sure I could get used to it and there were some things I liked but I think the positives that Valleyman outlined (speed and graphics to name two) have really spiked my interest.

One thing - will 2 gig of RAM be enough (I only had 1 gig until a few months ago)?

Ryan

[paulyoung666]

how much is the upgrade price , i am using cs4 and it is a monster of a program , mind you it is the first version i have used so anything would take getting used to

[johnaalex]

Originally Posted by ryanyboy

Thanks for the replies guys.

I decided to give NX 2 a whirl this evening. First impressions - yuk! As in - "I don't feel at home with this therefore I don't like it"

I'm sure I could get used to it and there were some things I liked but I think the positives that Valleyman outlined (speed and graphics to name two) have really spiked my interest.

One thing - will 2 gig of RAM be enough (I only had 1 gig until a few months ago)?

Ryan

I agree with your initial impressions of NX2, but I do like the control points and the D lighting option. I still do use PSE 6 for most of my editing and organising my files.

I am only using 2 gig as well.

[ryanyboy]

Originally Posted by paulyoung666

how much is the upgrade price , i am using cs4 and it is a monster of a program , mind you it is the first version i have used so anything would take getting used to

It works out at £278. Not cheap but better than £500+

[lonny]

Doesn't Lightroom offer all the ACR adjustment functions and then drop into photoshop when you need it?

[senu]

I think the combo of Elements and LR is pretty powerful ( and cheaper) . A lot of the features CS has not present in Elements , a lot of folk dont miss
However if you dont like ( or have) LR , CS4 is really better as Valleyman as pointed out.

Personally I cannot justify £300, let alone £500 though as my use is only "loosely" revenue bearing but YMMV and it might turn out to be money well spent
Im not sure if yo can upgrade later from an existing upgrade though
Another thing to bear in mind is that Adobe seem to typically price unfairly for the UK market compared to North America so this maybe going a little way to ( transiently) address that and make a sale in the bargain
Is it a download of a physical box disc ? ( not that it matters much these days)

[jomike]

Originally Posted by lonny

Doesn't Lightroom offer all the ACR adjustment functions and then drop into photoshop when you need it?

Both Lightroom and PS(Elements) use ACR when developing raws, in Lightroom it is more tightly integrated so you do not notice it. You can drop straight into PS from Lightroom if both are installed.

I have been playing with Capture NX2 lately, and it does offer some nice functions as John said. I like the automatic CA correction. The work flow is not as flexible as Lightroom, so for processing large quantities of images the "Sync" button in Lightroom is a real boon. You just tweak one image to how you want it, then select a range of images and hit sync and the settings are applied to all the images you selected. A real time saver.

I am also running 2G RAM on a dual core under Vista and both LR and NX2 run fairly fast, and I never have lockups etc.

[ryanyboy]

I accidently posted this reply in another thread I started - sorry.

Anyway, after playing with LR2 this evening I've decided to stick with that and Elements. Plus I;ve always got NX2 if I need it.

I guess I don't do enough manipulating to warrant CS4 for now. And after forking out for a new crappy Canon 70-200L lens for Sarah I could do without the expenditure for now .

A big thanks for all the input. Your opinions did help. And I'm reminded why I like this forum so much - decent people. Shame the new format has driven away a few and reduced the input of others. But that's another topic.......