... i need photoshop for my photography class and we are being taught on cs3. i know that CS3 costa like 700$ so its out of my range. i was just wondering what the difference is between Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4 and CS3?
I have both program installed on my mac right now. Here are some observations...
1) CS3 is a universal binary while PSE 4 is still a PPC only program that runs in Rosetta. CS3 is faster but PSE 4 is still usable on my 2.16Ghz Intel iMac even for 100MB tiff files. CS3 is faster but I don't think 2X faster.
2) The basic concepts and the interfaces are similar. PS CS3 has many features not aimed at photography.
3) You can do most every normal kind of correction with PSE 4 but CS3 has even more options in it's menus. Many of these don't effct the final result but make life easier. Like CS3's abilty to turn a filer into an adjustment layer. That's neat. But the PSE4 user can simply save his work and use the "un-do" or "back" button, Having a live adjustment layer s just nice to have. there are hundred os things like this.
4) In PS CS3 all the tools work in 16-bit per channel color mode in PSE 4 many of the tools only work in 8-bit color een though the program can handle "high color"
While PSE4 has only about 20% or PS CS3's features, it has the 20% that most people need. A lot of people would never miss wha't missing. But if you are going to take a CS3 class you will likey need CS3 to follow along