Is Photoshop CS4 that much different than it's predecessor? I'm planning to get CS4 soon, and want to know what the major differences are between the two, perks, cons, that sort of thing. Opinions are welcome. Thanks.
CS4 has some really cool new features, things that make your job a little easier but it is fundamentally the same. Something I have found useful with CS4 is the content aware scale, say you have a pic with a person on it but you want to make the background of the photo higher to reach the top of the canvas but you dont want to make the person look really tall,use this and it will scale the background but automatically detect the person and keep them proportional.
One BIG plus of CS4 (if you are on a 64-bit system with 4 GB+ memory) is that there is a 64-bit version of Photoshop which includes video card acceleration. Being 64-bit also means that the program WILL take advantage of ALL your CPU's memory, not just the first 4GB. This feature can greatly improve performance on complicated projects with several layers.
Yeah, I made the mistake of upgrading to CS4 without upgrading my hardware. Big mistake. It slowed down my system so much that I had to revert back to CS3 for a while. But there are some nice goodies in CS4 that I like. It's a nice evolution of the product.
I use CS3, i could get CS4 if i wanted to, but i choose not to, why? I find it much slower than CS3, because of some of the new features, features i wont even use, so i dont think its worth slowing the program down just for some additonal features that i wont use. But tats just me, you might fidn use for those features
I am using CS3 and am planning to upgrade to CS4. In CS4, there is a feature to rotate images and work on them (not really rotating the image, just in photoshop while editing). Personally, I would love that feature as its more convenient to work in that way. It also has some awesome 3D filters that are really worth it!