CS4 vs Elements 6 on Macintosh

Hey all:

While I have the latest version of Mac's OS, my computer is still a bit too slow to run CS4 well.

I'm using CS2 now.

My assumption is that Elements 6 (Elements 7 appears to be PC-only) will run faster than the bloated CS4, and the fact is that even though I've been shooting professionally for five years and do all my own PP, I've only ever used probably 4 percent, at the most, of CS2's capability. That's not surprising, since it's really a tool meant more for graphic designers than photographers.

My question is whether I can get the same features I need in Elements 6 as I use in CS2, and also whether the RAW preview screen in 6 takes jpegs. One of the reasons I'd most like to upgrade my CS is that, starting with CS3, the preview screen accepts jpeg images instead of just RAW, and since I do a lot of work, particularly wedding and sports work, in jpeg, it's a nice tool to have in the box.

So, aside from that question, do you "6" users know whether Adobe Bridge comes with 6? I use Bridge a lot to stitch multiple image panoramics in CS2 and wonder if that capability is there in 6. I also would like to know whether the extensive gamut of filtering, layers and effective noise reduction is available in 6.

Thoughts?

No idea on Elements. Got it with my printer but never used it. There are these comparisons however:

Link1 and Link2

I've used PSCS2 on my old Powerbook G4 and now have PSCS4 on it. I'd say PSCS4 is slightly faster if anything.

Yep, Bridge CS3 comes with Elements 6 on the Mac so that's easy.

Elements can also be augmented with certain free add ons to allow the likes of layer masks, curves and channel mixer actions that are absent/obscured in Elements to bring it closer to a CS product.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by whether the RAW preview screen in 6 takes jpegs. Do you mean can Adobe Camera Raw in Elements 6 be used to edit Jpegs? If so, the answer is yes; press CMD-O from Elements [you can't CMD-R from Bridge though] then select Open As and select Camera Raw.

Other than that only you know which tools you use in CS2 and how deeply, so it's slightly hard to say what you might miss, but all the basics are amply catered for in Elements. The only bugbear IMHO is the limited support for 16 bit images, but since you shoot Jpeg a lot anyway that's probably not a big issue.

Forgot to add that most of the big players have noise reduction plugins for Elements - I use Noise Ninja principally. I also have the PTLens plugin to allow for lens distortion correction for lenses not covered by DPP.

René Damkot wrote in post #8158234
I've used PSCS2 on my old Powerbook G4 and now have PSCS4 on it. I'd say PSCS4 is slightly faster if anything.

Agreed.

Not sure on the comparison between Elements 6 and CS2, but in my experience, CS4 runs a bit faster than CS2. Have used both versions on both a Mac and a PC and get better performance out of CS4.

Thanks for the replies, folks. I'm purchasing a used (unregistered and deactivated by the previous owner) upgrade to CS3, which will get me the features I need at well below the price of buying PSE6 outright.

I've also downloaded Lightroom 2.3 in the trial version, and I like it so much I may buy that too. When I photograph weddings or sporting events and bring home 1,000 to 5,000 jpegs from a shoot that need limited PP at best, LIghtroom appears to be a VERY muscular tool, and it runs faster on my older G4 laptop than even CS2 does.

We'll see.

Thanks again for the perspectives.