Adobe put out a public beta of Photoshop CS3 yesterday. It's free to try until sometime in the spring if you already own CS2. Big news for Mac people: it runs natively on the Intel Macs.
I've been playing with it all morning. Quick Selection tool is nice, the new panels collapse into icons, and it starts up a lot faster than CS2 on my machine.
Finally. CS2 under Rosetta on my MacBook is painful.
Is it stable enough to do real pages in?
Crashed on me once. I wouldn't use it for anything with a deadline, keep CS2 around.
The new Black & White adjustment is great for greytones, way better than desaturate.
Does it still need a serial from CS2? I only have Elements.
Yeah, you need a CS2 serial for the beta.
Adobe just announced CS3 for real today. Photoshop should ship in April.
Prices are out: Photoshop CS3 is $649, $199 to upgrade from CS2. There's also a new Photoshop CS3 Extended for $999 with 3D and video stuff none of us need.
The beta runs out once the real one ships, so plan accordingly.
$199 isn't terrible. Still running CS on a Windows 2000 box over here, so maybe it's time.