Hi! I'm a newbie at this... I have PSE 2- is it worth it to upgrade at this time to version 3? I thought maybe I should stick with version 2 for a while since I'm probably not using it to full capacity anyway... I was just curious if version 3 is a lot better or has improved usability or anything.

Thanks!

The biggest difference with PSE3 is that PS Album is integrated into it. So if you're dieing to organize your photos and elements it could be worth it to upgrade. With PSE2 you will NOT be able to use brushes created in PSCS, but most brushes created for scrappers come in a PNG format so that you can create bruses from them anyway. There are some new and different ways to adjust photos (smart fix, shadows/highlights). You can also adjust leading on text (the spacing between lines of text).

Overall I would NOT say that there is an overwhelming reason to upgrade, but I'm not one to discourage others from buying new toys!

HTH! And if you have more questions about the differences between versions 2 & 3 ask away.

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Stacy
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avatar photo by Marja Flick-Buijs downloaded at sxc.hu

I upgraded and am so glad I did. I use the album feature all the time and it's expanded my scrapping so that I'm using more things by more designers. I also use the text leading feature constantly!

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I use PSE2 and I've started using Album to organize my heritage photos. It's nice because it sorts the pictures into chronological order. It doesn't really matter to me at this point if they are integrated into PSE, but I'll eventually want to upgrade (right now I'd rather spend that money buying kits ). Will I be able to use what I've already created in older release of Photoshop Album?

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Karen Maggie


My Teams:

You can save your tags to the files, so you should be able to keep your tags even when you've upgraded. The only problem I've heard with doing it your way is that the separate Album program has trouble with large .jpg files (such as backgrounds). If you're just doing photos, however, it should be fine.

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Kim, when you mention "text leading" being a feature in PSE3. What exactly is that? One of the most frustrating things I find about PSE2 is creating paragraph/journalling text that will not allow me to wrap it. Does "text leading" have anything to do with that?

Not Kim but I'll pop in with the answer anyway. Text Leading is the spacing between lines of text (i.e. single spacing, double spacing). So Adobe added a little better handling of text in PSE3 but not Text Box... which I would LOVE to have.

To deal with the non-wraping text in PSE, I usually write up my journaling in Word and then adjust the margins so that I have a similar area for text. Next I add carriage returns at the end of each line. Finally I copy and paste it all into PSE. I often have to adjust the margins again and redo do the carriage returns, but this way is easier FOR ME then trying to deal with the text directly in PSE. The text never seems to update quickling in PSE for me. I'm not sure if that's my issue or the computer's. LOL

HTH!

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Stacy
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avatar photo by Marja Flick-Buijs downloaded at sxc.hu