Adobe CS3

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Excuse my ignorance, but what is the difference between Photoshop, and Illustrator. I realise that Photoshop is more powerful, but what can Illustrator do that Photoshop cannot? Is Illustrator exclusively for drawing pictures, and Photoshop for photo editing AND drawing pictures? I'm really not sure.


Also, whats all this CS3 business? I used to use Photoshop back in the days of 6.0 - 8.0 (when I say use I mean mess around). Now I want to have a go at it, but I dont understand all this CS3 nonsense. Are there different versions of Photoshop available?

Sorry but can someone fill me in?
 
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Excuse my ignorance, but what is the difference between Photoshop, and Illustrator. I realise that Photoshop is more powerful, but what can Illustrator do that Photoshop cannot? Is Illustrator exclusively for drawing pictures, and Photoshop for photo editing AND drawing pictures? I'm really not sure.
IMO, neither one is "more powerful" than the other.
Quite simply put, Photoshop is an image editor and Illustrator is a drawing application (image creator). Photoshop was created as a tool for photographers, so they could perform "darkroom" tasks to their photos in a quicker and more efficient manner. Many of the tools in Photoshop (Color Dodge, Color Burn, Smudge, Sponge, etc) still carry the name of the "ancient" darkroom method used by photographers in the past.
Yes, Photoshop has some drawing tools and you technically can create things, but this is done at a fault. Not only are the drawing tools a little clunky (at least to me they are), your end result is a bitmap image.

Bitmaps are made up of pixels and can only be resized up or down to a certain extent before they lose quality.

Illustrator, on the other hand, uses vector imaging. This is the biggest difference. Vectors can be scaled up or down infinitely, with no loss of quality or integrity. This is much better for designing things. Illustrator also has an infinite "Undo" feature, if you make a mistake or want to go back a step or so. Photoshop has a limited number of History items you can cycle back.

I usually use a combination of the two. I create my work in Illustrator, then size it accordingly to whatever my final piece requires.
Once it is sized properly, I might then take it over and add some effect or details using Photoshop.

So to sum up:

If you want to create an image, then the best tool would be Illustrator.
If you want to edit a pre-existing image, then Photoshop will do the job.
 

rman


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And to add, CS3 is the current version of Photoshop.
 
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Oh right, I see, I get it now. Thanks very much. Which tool would be better for creating web-designs, and then slicing them up?
 
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I would say photoshop. But you really dont need the CS3 to do that. U can use CS2, as itll probably be a heck of alot cheaper ;)
 
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Yes there are technicaly different versions of photoshop. photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS3 extended, and Photoshop Lightroom which is new and not the same thing as the traditional Photoshop.

Then there's elements which they should have called photoshop light.

SLC
 

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