Photoshop installation

[shashin]

Hello! I'm thinking of buying Photoshop on an Education ticket - 80% discount opens new horizons for the husband of a poor teacher. Currently I use Gimp... I have a couple of questions:
1. Does Photoshop (CS5 Extended) alllow you to choose the language when you install it or has the language been pre-defined on the installation DVD? I live in France, see, and I want the menus and everything to be in English. I think that the language is pre-defined but I want to be sure!
2. Does moving away from free Gimp to horribly expensive Photoshop make sense for an amateur photographer taking amateur photos who usually manipulates photos in fairly basic ways (cropping, parallax and colour adjustments, sharpness, contrast control,...)? I do remove elements, and stack up layers and so on, but I'm not sure that even with a 80% discount Photoshop is going to change my life! Will it?
Your comments are, of course, most welcome. Thanks!

[jamesev]

2) I supose its similar to saying will I get any benefit from moving from a consumer camera to a semi pro / pro.

When you grow beyond the capability of the software (hardware) then its time to step up (not that I'm categorically saying CS5 is a step up from GIMP as I don't use GIMP)

A little like MS products, Adobe products are intuative for those that know how adobe lay things out and therefore makes the workflow easier as everything is where you expect it, though I guess with sufficient usage this will become second nature with CS5.

The more "features" that image edit packages contain, the more "toys" you get to add into your repatoire and the more versatile I suppose you become...

[vsa]

1. Yes. You can have it in any language that is available. You just have to choose it in the installation.

2. It probably won't change your life.
And yes Photoshop is step up from GIMP. I try not to be anti-GIMP but when I tried it the user experience was horrid after years using Photoshop. I'd assume there's similar shock the other way too. But Photoshop isn't the industry standard for nothing. Once you get the hang of Photoshop it will be very hard if not impossible to go back. But consider Lightroom if you're leaning more towards photography than photomanipulation. You should definitely download free trials of both before buying.

[shashin]

Yes, thanks! I've tried out CS5 and Lightroom.. Although I'm a bit lost with the former I decided to buy it. I'll have a lot of catching up to do before I can get up to the dizzy heights where I was with Gimp (a few centimetres really), but it will be worth it, I feel. Especially so if I can improve my photography skills. Still a long way to go then!

[RecurrentNerve]

If you're familiar with GIMP you should be fairly comfortable with Photoshop; they're really quite similar, except that Ps does things a little more intuitively. You can always ask us veterans for assistance, our fees are reasonable

[vsa]

Originally Posted by RecurrentNerve

If you're familiar with GIMP you should be fairly comfortable with Photoshop; they're really quite similar, ...

When I tried Gimp I though they were worlds apart. I had hard time even finding the most basic tools and whatnot.

[wulf]

I got hands on experience with Gimp and Photoshop about the same time and, to be honest, I preferred the Gimp. Mind you, this was about twelve years ago and both have moved on a bit since that.

I would think the main argument for Photoshop, if your present needs cluster around digital darkroom development of photos and / or design for the web, would be if you want to develop skills that might set you up for a professional career in graphics where (a) PS is an (almost) universal standard and (b) where you might be dealing with CMYK colourspaces for print which I think The Gimp still doesn't do.

Set against that, don't forget to figure in upgrade costs in the future. When you get a version or two behind it can start to feel frustrating when you see extra plugins you want and realise you have to upgrade (even apart from the fact that many of the plugins will cost money).

Wulf