We’ve known that the new CS4 suite was coming for a while, but they just released a few details about the new pack of software. Set to come out in October, the prices are quite close to what they were just 17 months ago when the CS3 suite came out. There’s tons of information to read about the new suite (I’ll link as much as I can below), so I’ll just give you my own perspective on this. First, the cost:
Here’s the deal:
Photoshop CS4 Standalone: $349 / $999
Design Standard: $499 Upgrade / $1399 Purchase
Design Premium: $599 Upgrade / $1799 Purchase
ProductionPremium: $599 Upgrade / $1699 Purchase
Web Standard: $499 Upgrade / $1399 Purchase
Web Premium: $499 / $1599
Master Collection: $899 Upgrade / $2499 Purchase
To Upgrade, or Not to Upgrade:
While I usually allow a good 9-12 months before I upgrade, this time say I’m going to be an early adopter of at least Photoshop CS4… here’s why:
This is the first time that PS will utilize the graphics card and run at 64bit (on Windows*). Being a PC guy (yeah, I know, one of the few), I happen to benefit from the strife between Adobe and Apple, and you know what? I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it. While upgrading to Vista 64 with 8GB of RAM (which I did about 6 weeks ago), I saw the biggest boost to my Photoshop performance that I’ve ever seen – this counts several new computers, the advent of multi-core processing, and tons of time spent trying to tweak the most performance that I could get out of it. But I’m still power hungry, and this new upgrade boasts some of the biggest gains to computing power that we’ve ever heard of from the Adobe team.
Sadly, these benefits will likely take a while to hit Macs, but for the creatives that are have a comfy Windows rig, you’re essentially being promised speeds that will leave you wondering why it took Adobe so long to figure this out.
Time = Money
So what it comes down to for me is a strictly business decision. I’ll wait and see after a month or so how the super early adoptions go. During this process my key questions will be :
Will it crash?
Are the promises of speed true?
How backwards compatible is it?
If those check out, I’ll be gladly upgrading to one of the new suites. I haven’t read enough to speak on the improvements to the other programs that I use (Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc.), but for the price of an upgrade, I’m quite certain that I’ll be saving enough in design time in Photoshop alone that will justify the cost; meaning that I get to spend less time crunching on Sun Chips while working on a poster, and more time designing it.
So what about you? Are you planning on upgrading, or are you going to wait a bit?
P.S. – That header graphic was designed & composed by me, but it’s actually a sneak peak at the new packaging 
Links to more information:
Check out the US Store
Read the CNET article
Link to Photoshop CS4 performance information
Watch video of the new suite in action.
CNET link to the Apple/Adobe story
Thanks for the heads up I may choose to upgrade but I will have to wait for those delightful miscreants they call crackers to allow me to lol.
Andrew
I was under the impression that CS utilized the GPU before CS4. Then again, I believe I heard that from a Mac-aroni guy. Glad to hear my gaming rig will utilize its power for other things besides games.
Yeah I’m in.
But I’m still power hungry, and this new upgrade boasts some of the biggest gains to computing power that we’ve ever heard of from the Adobe team.Sadly, these benefits will likely take a while to hit Macs, but for the creatives that are have a comfy thrift savings plan Windows rig, you’re essentially being promised speeds that will leave you wondering why it took Adobe so long to figure this out.
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