Following on from my recent post of acquiring new art tools, I've been looking into getting the educational version of one of the Adobe CS3 software packages out there. Adobe appears to have a very liberal licensing scheme which appears to mean I can use their software for commercial as well as educational purposes, which is great, and an impetus for me to get a copy before I finish up my studies. The educational suites aren't cheap at about A$800 each, but since every profession swears by Adobe it appears to be worth it (and it's a lot cheaper than the thousands for a full commercial version). My question now is which Adobe package is the best one to get. I'm only vaguely familiar with the full range of Adobe's products so I'm not sure which is the best for me. Absolute must haves for me are Illustrator, as I love working with vector art primarily, and Flash, since that's a very useful tool for a vector artist who loves to work on games. Photoshop is another tool I think I should get, given it's so widely used by so many people. However every Adobe CS3 premium pack has those tools, so it's a question of whether I'd prefer the Design pack, Web pack, or Production pack (or shell out a fair bit more cash for the Master collection). Pretty much all the premium suites save Master are of a similar price (A$800 for education version), so it's not a question of price. Another question is whether I should get the Windows or Mac version. I currently have a desktop running Win XP, and a MacBook Pro laptop. I currently use both for development and artwork, but I'd have to choose one over the other. I don't know if there's any functional difference between the two. I'm currently leaning toward getting the Mac version, as my laptop is slightly newer and is portable, but I'm still mostly undecided. I apologise if this sounds a bit vague, but there's a bewildering array of choices from Adobe, and the price is significant that I'd like to get feedback before making a decision on what to get.

"You are able to continue to use your Education version serial number when you leave school to upgrade to future commercially priced versions if you want to,"

That means that you pay an additional fee to have your student version upgraded to commercial, not that you can use the student version for commercial work after graduation. Adobes pricing has always been disgusting. (IMO)

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
"You are able to continue to use your Education version serial number when you leave school to upgrade to future commercially priced versions if you want to,"

That means that you pay an additional fee to have your student version upgraded to commercial, not that you can use the student version for commercial work after graduation. Adobes pricing has always been disgusting. (IMO)

Adobe has three different versions of their software; student, education and commercial. The student version is stripped down and cannot be used for commercial work. But the first question in that FAQ states the education version can be used that way.

The question you are quoting from asks whether you can use your education version to upgrade to the next version, such as when CS4 comes along. The answer says that you can use your education copy does qualify as a prerequisite for the upgrade, although you'll have to pay the commercial upgrade price (which is probably three times the price of the education version, from the looks of things).

The education resellers I've contacted have at least confirmed that that's the case already, but I'm still waiting for a response from my email to Adobe to confirm it; they're not that easy to figure out how to contact for pre-sales questions.

I'm still not 100% decided whether I'll buy the software or not, but I'd really like to spend some time learning Flash and Illustrator, and I'm willing to consider paying A$800 if it allows me to continue using it after I graduate (I agree that the full price of A$2400 for a suite is hard to justify unless you're already a professional graphic artist).

Continuing on from my initial post, I'm thinking it might be best to get the Web Suite for the Mac, since that's probably the closest to the domain I'm most likely to use the tools for, and I'm moving more towards Macs as work machines.