Adobe Creative Suite 4

I'm still using simple Photoshop Elements and find there's little more I need. Amazing, I've played with CS but find you can get lost for hours or days in endless possiblities.

From a value prespective you can't go wrong.

x2

If you need the tools, it's worth the money.

CS comes as individual programs, or packaged in groups for your choice of design, web, or video work.  You can also buy a master suite with all the programs. Each of those three smaller packages comes with Photoshop.

I haven't upgraded from CS3 yet, but will be. For myself, the main reason is some upgrades to Adobe Camera Raw, the program attached to Photoshop that opens RAW photo files. There are some nice new features in the Adobe Camera Raw update. Basically, Adobe Camera Raw lets you make edits to a RAW file without changing the original data. You can then go back and make changes to the image while still working on the original file. You can do that in CS3 now, but CS4 adds some new capability.

If you are primarily editing photos, I would take a look at Adobe Lightroom 2 first. It's a completely different program than Photoshop. It lets you create libraries of photos, and most importantly allows you to do non destructive editing to RAW files. If you have a camera that shoots RAW files, I highly recommend doing so.

Lightroom also works well with Photoshop when you need more of the layered type of editing that Photoshop is so good for. I'm now using Adobe Lightroom for probably 80 or 90% of my still photo work right now. I'm sort of using Photoshop now as a plug in for Lightroom.

Lightroom is not included in any of the CS packages.

I'd suggest downloading a trial of the programs you're interested in. Lightroom is here . Photoshop is here .

I think Adobe's pricing policy is such that you're not going to find deals. I just buy upgrades directly from the Adobe site now. But you may want to try B&H Photo .

 What do you plan to use it for? I was wondering what new goodies CS4 has. I found an incredible deal on CS3 when Compusa closed their doors. 300 bucks!! It was a Mac version, but Adobe did a platform switch for me and sent me the PC version. You might keep an eye on what Circuit City does, not sure if they are closing their doors or going to continue to operate under bankruptcy protection.

 Photoshop is an awesome program that never ceases to amaze me. I think I have a handle on it and I continue to learn new things everytime I open it and try something new. Type "photoshop tuts" in the google search box. You can get an idea of what it can do for you. You can reproduce any printed image effect or advertisement you have ever seen with Photoshop. Elements is definitely no slouch and is a pretty powerful prgram in it's own right and worth every penny, 100-149 bucks last I looked. Both have a pretty steep learning curve and you won't be able to just open the program and start working right away without some help from a book or online tutorials.

I am running Dreamweaver CS3 on a Mac. I have been trying to rebuild our work web site (we run a sawmill), but there is a lot to learn in Dreamweaver. My wife also wants me to build her a web site (she is a writer). I was just going to use iWeb for my wife, but Dreamweaver can do so much.

I found an online training program for Dreamweaver that I am going through now. They were using Flash and Photoshop, so I didn't know if it would be cheaper to buy just thoes programs or buy the whole suite. I saw the suite on sale on EBay for around $400.

So I would be using the programs for web building.

I have the web suite. It has PS, DW, Flash, Illustrator, Fireworks and some others.

Here's the Adobe upgrade path tool . Plug in what you already own and it will show you your upgrade options. 

From what I can tell, the biggest enhancements are in Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge. Photoshop itself has improved smart object capability and an improved interface.

Adobe Camera Raw 5 now has the ability to make local non destructive edits using the improved paint brush and gradient filter. Basically, that means that you can use the paint brush in ACR to paint in changes in color, density, ect and not have those changes affect the entire image. And since you're editing in a non destructive workflow in ACR, you can go back and change those edits by working on the original file data.

And ACR and Bridge are now better integrated with PS, as well as with Lightroom.

That's a pretty big improvement if you're working with lots of layers in an image and utilizing smart objects. Not such a big deal if you don't do that.

With the improvements that I saw in Adobe Camera Raw 5 as it was demoed at the PhotoPlus Show in NY last month, I'd say that you could do the majority of your retouching and enhancements to an image in ACR and never need to open Photoshop in the first place. At least that's true with my workflow. Someone who does a lot of photo illustration working with masks and layers is still going to be on Photoshop a lot. For myself, the improvements in ACR, as well as Lightroom, means that I can make edits directly in those programs, rather than going through the mask and layer route in PS to get some of the effects that I normally need to do.

I'd also really recommend that photographers take a look at Adobe Lightroom. That program is just amazing, and is roughly half the price of Photoshop.

It depends on what you need to do.

If you wanted just one more program to handle photo editing, as well as creating some graphics, then Photoshop is probably the way to go. If you just needed to work with photos, and don't need to do any photo illustration that involves lots of retouching, then I'd consider Adobe Lightroom. If you need to build a Flash based site, then you'll need Flash.

Just to throw another solution out there. You may want to look at some of the content management systems out there for building a site, such as joomla , wordpress , and moveable type . They give you the capability of adding to your site through a web browser interface. They're installed on the server. After setup, updating your site can be as easy as posting a forum message.