im currentley using cs2 on my intel mac and will be upgrading soon so we can use lightroom again. i loved lightroom which is included in cs3 so it is worth it to us since my wife is a photographer.
Ligthroom does not come bundled with Photoshop... they are two separate products.
Worth it, but here is the dirty little secret. While CS3 is Universal, OS X 10.4 really isn't. When 10.5 comes out in October (supposed to be May) your mac, and photoshop along with it, will find a new top gear because 10.4 doesn't really support 64-bit processing so we are all kind of running in "limp mode".
Photoshop is not a 64-bit application, so I'm sure getting the OS to be true 64-bit will be helpful overall, but I don't see how it will change Photoshop all that much.
Photoshop CS3 has many features that make the upgrade worth it for most people... my favorites include:
1) Awesome panorama stitching that blows away the old stuff
2) It's now much easier to make selection with the Quick Selection tool
3) Smart Filters can be nice so you can sharpen an image without having to flatten it
4) A new much more intuitive way to convert from color to B&W
5) Much better retouching features with the new Clone Source palette
6) Runs much faster than CS2 if you own an Intel Mac
BUT, the new palette interface take a while to get used to and they really need to work on the integration between Photoshop and Lightroom. AND, watch out if you have old 3rd party filters on an Intel Mac since they won't fun unless you run Photoshop through Rosetta, which will slow the whole thing down... you have to update those plug-ins to get intel native ones to have them all work at full speed.
I use the combination of Lightroom and Photoshop for all my images and if you ever need to do any localized adjustments or complex retouching, then Photoshop is essential... having said that... if all you need to do is very basic adjustments, then Lightroom might be enough.
-Ben
The Digital Nomad at
www.WhereIsBen.com
Photoshop Hall of Famer
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