Photoshop Elements is a great start, there are some great student discounts through Adobe.

^ +1... the only reason I use the full version of PS is because I can and because its actions make life easier/quicker.

I hear that you can make actions for Elements, though, it's just a little trickier.

Definitely look into a student discount. Perhaps download the trial versions of the adobe softwares to get a feel for what's what.

No way to know what your student pricing on Photoshop will be, but I would recommend trying to get the full version because while it might be more than you need now or for a while, you can grow in to it over time as you learn to use it and do more advanced things with it.

Regular pricing for Photoshop alone is about $650, or $300 for the standard educational pricing. If your university has a deal with Adobe you may have the whole creative suites for a discount as well, but they'll cost more than that. The CS3 packs go for around $500-600 I think (educational pricing) and they include Acrobat Pro, Illustrator, Photoshop and a bunch of other expensive programs.

At my university we get half off the regular educational pricing, so the CS3 pack sells for $300 making it a really good deal.

If you can't get any good pricing on Photoshop CS3, then Photoshop elements is probably a good choice.

I'd go with the cheapest solution. In October they'll be releasing CS4 and you'll likely be looking at spending ~$100 at an upgrade for it from any version you do get.

That's your decision, I wouldn't wait that long, as that's a lot of shots to go unprocessed between now and then.

Have you looked at lightroom at all?

I"m thinking that I'm going to stick with lightroom until CS4. There might be some times when something more advanced would be helpful, but I use Lightroom the most even when I've had trial versions available.

CS3 for sure. CS4 will be faster only on wicked machines IMHO, so stick with CS3. DL it and try it for 30 days for free. You can do that with all adobe options, so you may want to try it as well as elements, but honestly, if you're going to be at all serious about this, I'd say CS3. Reason being is more of us use it and can help down the road.

I'm sure CS4 will be offering a lot more features than only GPU support.

usually it's only 1 or 2 "nice things" that are added.

Originally Posted by winkie

I haven't used lightroom at all, but I have seen it...do some of you use it instead of CS3, or do most of you that have it use it in addition to CS3?

I have lightroom and it works great for basic stuff. I like it a lot and will probably continue to use it for most of my PPing even after I get a copy of CS3. What it won't do is let you get into you photographs and really work with them the way that CS3 or Elements will. I would say that 90-95% of the time I'm ok with just using Lightroom but there are some times that CS3 would be really nice to have.

Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Web Standard, Production Premium, and Master Collection. Wow.

Those are all software collections which include either Photoshop or Photoshop Extended. I have Design Premium which comes with Photoshop Extended. I can't say you'll need the Extended version so I'd say that normal would be plenty if you're going to go for a full version of PS.

Originally Posted by winkie

Any folks with CS3 feel as though they wished they had lightroom, or in your opinion does CS3 do enough that you don't really need lightroom? (sorry, i know these are very general questions)

As far as I understand, lightroom is built off ACR which I'm not hugely fond of. I prefer to stick with CaptureOne 4.

Originally Posted by winkie

Thanks, that's what I was thinking...but I guess I wanted some reassurance. I'm guessing you can upgrade later to premium if needs be?

I'm sure you can upgrade any individual component, but unless you need things like Acrobat Pro, Illustrator CS3 etc the whole pack isn't a big deal and a lot of people I know bought it because it was one of the cheapest ways to get Photoshop CS2 or CS3 since our campus had special pricing. Adobe should have a listing of the differences between regular and extended, pretty sure most of them you'd never need. I don't think Extended really adds anything a photographer needs.

Originally Posted by winkie

Any folks with CS3 feel as though they wished they had lightroom, or in your opinion does CS3 do enough that you don't really need lightroom? (sorry, i know these are very general questions)

They are totally different animals. I would like to have lightroom for when I need to do a lot of basic PP, like after the wedding I am shooting this coming weekend .

Lightroom is designed for going through a lot of photos quickly and correcting them/batch processing them as needed.

Photoshop is really meant for more intensive massaging/processing of images. It can do some automated batching/processing, but not in the same way as Lightroom.

I would go into more detail about LR, but I don't have it, and have only used a trial version, and its predecessor, Rawshooter.

I like lightroom, but as was prviously stated it is different from CS3. They are designed for different tasks. It is designed to sort and batch process large amounts of files. It works great for what it is designed to do and I use it most because I don't necessarily need to d much more than what lightroom can do. That being said, CS3 is a much more powerful tool. If you don't need all the other things like Acrobat, Illiustrator and so on, I agree that you should go with CS3. Don't get the packages that include all those other Adobe programs unless you need them. If you are looking for strictly photo editing software, just buy Photoshop.

Echo the above comments, Photoshop CS3 for the RAW editor alone is worth it.

It all depends on what your use is. I've used CS3 on 10-15 pics in about 6 months i've had it installed. I average about 2k shots processed thru lightroom a week

Originally Posted by purd002

It all depends on what your use is. I've used CS3 on 10-15 pics in about 6 months i've had it installed. I average about 2k shots processed thru lightroom a week

You shooting a wedding a week?

first wedding was this weekend, but i started shooting for a daily paper and have been getting a couple sports assignments a week on top of anything else I shoot. I have 7 weddings to shoot (second shooter) in june so I don't see it getting any better. I'm actually starting to figure how long until I have to replace my main body at this pace