Many here have posted that they use especially AE & PS to complement Vegas.
Many also expressed that they skipped CS4 because of price and quality concerns.
Adobe recently announced the 64-bit CS5 series tools, but looking at the prices of upgrades for "skippers," i.e. those who didn't get CS4, you'll find much higher prices for upgrading from CS3 to CS5 than from CS4 to CS5.
For the Master Collection, the cost to upgrade from CS4 to CS5 is $899.00, but upgrading from CS3 you'll be out $1,199.00, i.e. a $300.00 penalty for not being a <insert your favorite term here> last year.
The cure: buy a CS3 to CS4 upgrade now (while the boxes are still warming shelves at resellers), then claim a free upgrade to CS5 directly from Adobe.
You have to buy from an authorized reseller, not "on eBay or second hand" per Adobe.
I got mine from VideoGuys, because they have a good reputation and have a 5% discount code advertised on a certain bovine forum (I don't think it would be fair for me to post the code here).
The product listings for the Adobe products there have links to the horse's mouth web pages with the full upgrade rules. Be forewarned that the text reads like it was put together by a congress critter. Really an exercise in obfuscation, but in the end it looked like it should be OK.
The time window is narrow though, and today MAY be the last day you can do this, assuming the products ship tomorrow, and my overcaffeinated brain understood the complexities of their weasel wording correctly, which I do not guarantee.
And several of the CS5 applications can only be installed on 64-bit OSes, so keep that in mind.
The good news with that is that if you have enough RAM, it helps AE do far longer RAM previews for example, and it boosts Photoshop processing of very large images significantly, on top of a more modest general performance boost.
(I have no connection with either VideoGuys, Adobe, or the bovine forum, other than as a customer of the first two and an occasional user of the latter.)
Many also expressed that they skipped CS4 because of price and quality concerns.
Adobe recently announced the 64-bit CS5 series tools, but looking at the prices of upgrades for "skippers," i.e. those who didn't get CS4, you'll find much higher prices for upgrading from CS3 to CS5 than from CS4 to CS5.
For the Master Collection, the cost to upgrade from CS4 to CS5 is $899.00, but upgrading from CS3 you'll be out $1,199.00, i.e. a $300.00 penalty for not being a <insert your favorite term here> last year.
The cure: buy a CS3 to CS4 upgrade now (while the boxes are still warming shelves at resellers), then claim a free upgrade to CS5 directly from Adobe.
You have to buy from an authorized reseller, not "on eBay or second hand" per Adobe.
I got mine from VideoGuys, because they have a good reputation and have a 5% discount code advertised on a certain bovine forum (I don't think it would be fair for me to post the code here).
The product listings for the Adobe products there have links to the horse's mouth web pages with the full upgrade rules. Be forewarned that the text reads like it was put together by a congress critter. Really an exercise in obfuscation, but in the end it looked like it should be OK.
The time window is narrow though, and today MAY be the last day you can do this, assuming the products ship tomorrow, and my overcaffeinated brain understood the complexities of their weasel wording correctly, which I do not guarantee.
And several of the CS5 applications can only be installed on 64-bit OSes, so keep that in mind.
The good news with that is that if you have enough RAM, it helps AE do far longer RAM previews for example, and it boosts Photoshop processing of very large images significantly, on top of a more modest general performance boost.
(I have no connection with either VideoGuys, Adobe, or the bovine forum, other than as a customer of the first two and an occasional user of the latter.)