I'm still on CS, should I bother upgrading to CS3? whats the general consensus, are the improvements significant? (I'm not on and intel mac so there won't be a speed increase I guess). Does it integrate with Lightroom in any significantly improved way (which I have recently become addicted to.)
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It really depends on how much you use photoshop. Features that I find useful in CS3 compared with CS:
1...Significantly improved functionality in Adobe Camera RAW - though if you have lightroom you get access to these features and more at a fraction of the cost.
2...Adobe Bridge works a lot better than the file browser provided with CS there is a great deal more flexibility in positioning panes, tools for rating images and adding metadata. The slide show functionality is useful for reviewing pictures whilst having a cup of coffee.
3...Selection tools in CS3 are a significant leap forward. If you need to do masking then this is a big improvement.
4...Memory management seems to be better. I can now handle stitched and high dynamic range documents that were not possible in versions of CS or CS2. I can't make this a quantifiable statement but I have a 24,188 x 6,133 (approx 150Mpix) x 16-bit stitched image created by CS3 which I am sure would have caused CS or CS2 to choke. The only thing limiting the size of the file at the moment is scratch disk space.
5...There are other photographer oriented tools such as Black & White conversion adjustment layers, lens correction, spot healing, perspective cloning, exposure adjustment layers which I use from time to time.
From a functional point of view there are good reasons to upgrade to CS3 from CS.
But....
....the software is a stinking pile of crap and often bombs out in the middle of editing images or when using bridge. There have been some changes to the print dialogue box that make printing from CS3 a real pain in Windows, there are features that don't seem to work correctly and bugs hiding in several places.
I would at this stage strongly recommend that you wait until 2008 and see if Adobe can actually make the software stable. If your income depends on CS3 then I would not risk the loss of work and time caused when Photoshop bums out - and yes, I have lost a reasonable number of images/ hours of work due to Photoshop quitting on me.