I have an opportunity to by the Creative Suite Premium for Students for $200.00 from the University I attend. I think this suite cost over $1,000.00 retail.

This suite includes:

1 Photoshop CS2,
2 Illustrator CS2,
3 InDesign CS2,
4 GoLive CS2,
5 Acrobat Pro 7.0,
6 Version Cue CS2,
7 Adobe Bridge, &
8 Adobe Stock Photos.

My question is. Would I be better off just buying the $84.00 Photoshop Elements?

I'm at a amature stage in dealing with Photoshop, and I have no idea what any of the programs do besides Photoshop CS2. I'm just wondering if I should take advantage of this great deal or if it's a little overboard.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Also if you have personal experience with Photoshop CS2 or any other programs listed, I'd like to know how you'd rate these programs.

Thanks,

Bryan

I have elements and can do most of the "basic technical" stuff that CS can do. I personally think one would get lost in CS unless you used it for a living. Buy a couple fo good books on color management, and editing.

Adobe Bridge is basically a photo browser for PS. Illustrator is the counterpart to PS designed to edit photos for the web. GoLive is a nice app for web creation, full-featured, but not my favorite. InDesign is a page layout app I have not used.

I have some experience with most of those apps but don't find any of them indispensible except Photoshop. If you are planning on putting a lot of time into learning to get the most out of your photos, I would recommend paying the extra $$ to get Photoshop. However, PS is a monster. Elements does most of what most people need out of PS, and is much simpler to use. Still, I'm happy I took the time to learn PS basics and that I spent the extra $$ for PS (also with student/faculty discount).

I am a big fan of Photoshop Elements. (Using version 2.0 on both my Mac and my Windows desktop.) It allows you to do most of the important stuff from the expensive versions of Photoshop, including using layers. But it's smaller, less expensive, and less taxing on your computer's resources, (not an issue if you have a fast computer.)

To get good results with any photo editing program takes time, study and practice. If it were me, I'd save the money, buy a good how-to book and use that extra $100 for another nice pen.

TMann

Another vote for The Gimp!

You will certainly get more than what you pay for it!

Alejandro

Another vote for Gimp. Well worth a try at least... considering the price.

Bar none, I don't know what I'd do without my Photoshop CS... Elements just didn't cut it for me...

Given the fact the CS to a normal consumer costs ~$700.00, I'd think you'd be foolish not to move forward with that deal. PSCS is difficult to use, but if your serious about photography and editing, then go for it. You will learn.

Adobe's bridge is ok, but there is better out there that you can download for free. Their browser is usable. The contact sheet II function is nice, too.

Adobe Acrobat 7 would be nice to have to as most of todays digital documents are in PDF format. I have a version of this software and have used it quite a bit.

One more consideration. Can you, later, upgrade to newer versions from these platforms? That might equate to big savings in the future. Especially at the rate Adobe brings out newer versions of these titles.

As for basic photo editing, Photoshop Elements is a really good program and a big bang for the buck!! I happen to use Photoshop 7 at home and 6 at work. I used CS for a while but I found it to be a system resource hog and few differences that are not worth shelling out the big bucks for!!!

The full photoshop I like because there are options that the Elements dont have. But for just the normal photo editing and and what not, I wouldnt spend the extra cash on the full blown photoshop because the Elements have all the basic tools that you would need to get the job done.

For web building, I used flash, swish, Dream weaver and fireworks. They are great programs but unfortunatly I do not have the time to build webpages anymore.

Acrobat pro is a great tool especially if you want to make PDF files. There are web sites that I would like to keep for future off line refrences and Acrobat pro is wonderful in converting web pages to pdf. Also creating documents from word files are also useful with acrobat. I tend to use Acrobat a lot and it is a breeze to use too.

As far as GIMP, I have heard great things about it and the best thing is that it is free if my mind serves me correctly. It is worth a try to see how you like it before shelling out the money. Since I have been using photoshop for a while and I get a free copy from work, there really isnt a need for me to use GIMP.