After just doing programming for a while I want to take the plunge into trying my hand at graphic design. I’ve used GIMP for a while but really want to become adept at using Photoshop.
From the point of view of creating web designs, do I need the basic version of Photoshop or the Extended version?
My understanding was that the only difference between these versions was 3D and animation tools in the Extended version, which I don’t have any use for at the moment.
Can I create and export slices and optimise web graphics in the basic version of Photoshop?
Personally, I’d say even the basic versions of Ps has way more features than I’ll ever use as a web designer, so I’d say save your money. When you think about it, you don’t need many tools for doing web graphics—unless you are doing really fancy stuff, but even then I’d doubt the extra features are really likely to be used much… though I’d be interested to know what others say.
I’m a web designer for a small london design agency and I do everything in photoshop cs3 basic, all mocks/concepts and final designs.
Photoshop however has nothing to do with your design skill. You still need to learn about design, and in my opinion that takes more time than just learning photoshop.
Photoshop is just the tool of choice and anyone can learn that.
Sorry to bring this up guys - whenever I see ads for Photoshop Extended it says ‘For Web Developers’ whereas for basic Photoshop it says ‘For Printers’ (or something to that extent).
Can someone confirm that the basic slice tool and ‘save for web and devices’ features is available in the basic version of Photoshop? there’s quite a price difference so I don’t want to spend more than I need to …
As far as I am aware, the only difference between Photoshop and Photoshop extended are related to animation / video and 3D editing, Adobe’s website isn’t very clear as it’s full of woolly marketing talk (like them putting 64bit support in the “web professional” bit). I would give them a ring and ask as clearly their website has absolutely nothing relative to a comparison. Probably not very helpful in respect to what you were looking for but there’s not really much info internally about CS5 yet.
If that is your primary goal, then I would recommend purchasing Fireworks instead as the optimisation features for web graphics are much better, PNG compression in particular. And the latter is much better than any of the PNG compression tools you can find on the net.
I used Photoshop elements for years before taking the plunge and getting CS4 … Have to say that elements does most everything I need. Doesn’t have the pen tool tho, which is useful sometimes. I’d check if basic has the pen tool . . .
