Should I Buy New CS3 Books? Or Used CS2 Books?
Now that I am all pumped up to start learning the Adobe Creative Suite 3 products, the question becomes: Do I wait for CS3 books to come out and learn the new products from the new books? Or do I get cheap, roughed up, used CS2 books and start getting a primer for Creative Suite line in general. As I type that it makes even less sense :) I guess I should just wait. No need to learn stuff that I don't have to.
Reader Comments
Most Adobe CS products are very mature, and changes to existing functionality are rare and generally tiny. It wouldn't hurt to pick up CS2 books for learning. You should be able to transfer 99.999% of the skills to the new versions of these products.
Josh,
Thanks for the information. That is good to know. I figure now, I will go to Barnes and Noble, check out some books, see which ones are good, then check out half.com or Amazon.com or something.
Do you have any suggestions in books that are worthwhile?
FWIW, there are a dozen or so photoshop cs3 books on amazon now.
@Mark,
That's really good to know. I can't believe they already have books... Didn't this stuff just come out?
Regardless, its also good to know that CS2 books would still be applicable. Of course, I want AS3 books for Flash / Flex, no AS2.
Photoshop CS3 has been available as Beta on the labs for CS2 owners for some time.
Also I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe sent special versions of their software to book makers, specifically so that they could have books released close to the release date.
It depends on what you mean by "new" applications. If you're just now getting into photoshop or illustrator, and money is an object, you might want to look for really cheap books on half.com for CS1. All the important points of photoshop and illustrator -- layers, channels, curves, etc -- haven't changed in years and years, and learning them pays off.
You might also want to consider a brief subscription to Oreilly's Safari service. $20/month gets you 10 online books a month, from Oreilly, Peachpit, Microsoft, etc. If you have time for online reading, that's 10 CS2 books you can read this month to get up to speed.
Finally, you might want to look into Layers Magazine (layersmag.com). It's great for picking up tips on the applications you don't use on a day-to-day basis.
@Larry,
I have used both Photoshop and Illustrator in the past. In fact, pre-Fireworks, Photoshop was all I used. So, I am not completely new to these products.
I think we are going to get an application server here at work, so I will wait to see what apps we get. Probably the new PS, AI, and FW. Once I know what toys I have to play with, I can go from there and figure out which books to get.