CS4

Well, time for my review on CS4! =D

Firstly, I'd like to say that I'm SO impressed with how small the installation for CS4 was. I don't know if it's because I just downloaded a trial disk image, but I also didn't install the content for After Effects and Premiere Pro; Simply because I didn't need them.

It installed fairly quickly; The installer GUI was pretty nice, but it didn't quite tell me what some of the applications actually did; and I'm still peeved about having to close Firefox in the middle of it.

I had tried out the Photoshop CS4 beta and was greatly impressed on the features it had over CS3; It acted much more like a canvas with its rotational tools, and the 3D feature would have been cool had I had a more advanced video card (it doesn't work with integrated ones, like I have). It also performed WAY better with my Bamboo tablet, in terms of speed and reliability. I'm also fond of the refined Mac interface, since it's an actual window, just as in Windows, instead of it surrounding the screen, though that was a feature, but I wasn't too fond of it.

The rest of the applications seemed to have retained this for the Mac version, but there may be some preference to change that somewhere in the preferences.

They also load _WAY_ faster. I'm very impressed with it, it seems that Adobe worked on performance as well, though the performance gains may only be for Dual Core processors.

If you own CS3, I wouldn't recommend an upgrade just yet; you'll be fine with what you have =]

If you own CS2 or CS1, and you can afford it, _AND_ you have a somewhat high end computer (or at least have a Dual Core processor) I would definently recommend this to you. If you need ImageReady, though, you might not want it; ImageReady was discontinued when CS3 came out, though Fireworks is a GREAT substitute for it.