A bit disappointed

The main problem I found with this product was the constant need to switch cd's (it comes with 4), why it couldn't all have been put on a dvd I don't know. The user interface is not particularly easy on the eye and any exported images are fairly small, trying to make them larger causes them to lose definition. I suppose you get what you pay for, it's a fair price for what they give you, possibly my expectations were too high.

It's Expensive but your paying for the Best!

Photoshop is expensive, I will agree. And most probably well out of the budget range of most people. However lets be honest it is the best. You don't pay Rolls Royce money for Lada accessories. It is the product of choice for the Photographic & Graphic Design industries.

You're not going to go ahead & buy Photoshop CS3 if you don't take Graphic Design or Photography seriously.

Just about every book you'll buy on Photoshop will tell you, they can't go into every aspect of the program. Why? Because quite simply it's so comprehensive. There are many other systems on the market which will all do what Photoshop CS3 does. But each of these programs only does part of what the whole of Photoshop CS3. So you'd actually have to buy three or four programs to do what this one program does. Which means spending basically the same amount of money for less comprehensive systems! Even then you will find you won't actually get the same professional results.

It's not the easiest thing to learn at all. It really is a steep learning curve, and I'll agree that Adobe could do an awful lot more to help. They do have great little"How To" videos on their site. But I personally would be willing to pay a little extra for a comprehensive set of"How To" videos on the whole system. However that would probably mean a good 30 hours worth of videos (or even more!).

It really is a case of you get what you pay for. You're paying big money for a MASSIVE program. In fact it's so comprehensive I think I'm personally only going to scrape the surface. But the results I've already had with just tinkering are amazing! I've created seriously professional results that have impressed friends & family. When I actually learn how to do what I want I'm going to be deliriously happy. I honestly think 5 stars are not enough for Photoshop CS3.

There are many ways to buy Photoshop CS3 much cheaper than the £800 quoted. If you read Keith Josephs review he gives a few examples. I honestly don't think it's over rated, and this seriously is a product that you pay more & get an awful lot more. If you take your photography, or graphic design seriously. Then really there is no substitute. And if you want to do Photography or Graphic Design as a career then there is no other system.

Unbelivable PRICE!!!

I just brought Xpress and I still can't believe the price. I have seen the new graphic features in Xpress and I can't wait to start creating my own work. Great price!!!

First time Corel has worked for me

I've had this trial program sitting on my hard drive for ages. Never bothered to install it since downloading it from Corels website. The pain and anguish of their Paint Shop Pro since taking it from JASC stopped me using it. However in the past two hours I've really enjoyed using it. Very easy to get on with and has none of the symtoms of using processor power that PSP currently has. I got this as a bundle with Corel Draw - I won't bother registering it as I'm happy with Photoshop and Illustrator so pointless paying for this. But I would recommend it as a cheaper vector graphics program. Oh that's only for Corel Draw - Painter is a Bitmap program.

worthwhile upgrade for MAc users

CS3 is blazingly fast compared with CS2 even on a relatively modest Intel Mac. So far it is rock solid, with none of the problems users are reporting on Windows - Adobe seems to have worked hard on getting it right for the Mac customer base. New features are fairly modest as far as straight forward photography is concerned, but even so it is a worthwhile upgrade.

Declutter your desk!

The CardScan is one of those products that you wonder why people buy until you get one and can see the advantages. I keep all of my contacts in outlook but that means having to read the small print on business cards and the type the information accurately in. Like most people I just end up with a pile of cards not entered into Outlook. After loading the software just plug in the card scan devise. It's solid, well made and does not slip on the desk. You can feed cards in at about the rate of one a second and it takes a copy of the scanned image and uses OCR software to populate the fields in its own contact manager software. Its accuracy rate is very high except on business cards that have fancy shapes that cover text. Hardly the fault of Cardscan. Just one tip with the Cardscan. Use the device at a height of about three inches so that the cards fall flat onto the desk. If you don't do this and scan a lot of cards they can slip underneath previous cards and be difficult to find if you need to review or rescan cards.

Once the image is captured you can review and edit the fields on the card. Underneath content fields is the card of the card and one click zooms the card to check details. A great feature. Once you have verified the cards I transfer them to Outlook automatically via the synchronize feature which works well. You end up with two databases but they are both in sync. The great thing about the CardScan database is that you have the image of the card plus anything that you wrote on it. It's much easier to remember people when you can see their card than just seeing the raw list in Outlook. Overall the CardScan database is better than Outlook in terms of easy of use but lacks some of the integration features.

I now have no piles of business cards at all and can access my card database over the internet from anywhere using Cardscans free service. A nice feature. It just needs a bit more work on being able to select all information on the database and the card feed issue then it would be perfect.

Good selection of cards but

I bought this thinking it looked a great replacement for an older card making program I had but no. The selection of cards and projects was brilliant but when I came to use the wizard I had a problem in that it asked me to specify the brand and number of the card I was using fom a list. Mine was not in the list and there was no A4 half fold or quarter fold choice like in most programs I have used so I had problems getting my design to fit my card. This ruined the program for me totally.

No change

To be perfectly honest there is nothing wrong at all with this software, easy to use and every tool you are likely to need. However if you are thinking of upgrading from the last version, forget about it. I am still trying to find out what is different from the earlier version. The latest upgrade looks identical in every way and I can see no new templates. Save your money this time.

Fugawi UK - Version 4

This package contains the standard ordanance survey maps and covers a good area for the price but it crashed several times when I used it with Vista and I failed to get any response when I contacted Fugawi customer service.

Review of Reeny Review

I do not have this product but have heard generally poor reviews of it. The Reeny review sounds like it was written by a Quark employee. There are no other reviews of anything from the reviewer. To descride yourself asa Creative Tools fan and then be very excited about transparency is laughable. On Amazon.com it gets 2 stars.

KnockOut has incompatibilities with Tiger

I've tried to use KnockOut 2 as a PS CS plugin, but find it won't add to selection beyond a certain point - which is INCREDIBLY frustrating, and a total waste of time. I asked for support on several occasions, and after waiting a week (as opposed to their 1 business day claim), got this response, and they marked my support issue as 'Solved'. I'm now after a refund as it's not fit for the purpose it was sold.

"Corel has received sporadic reports of a functionality issue with KnockOut 2.0 while running on MAC OS 10.4. Our investigation indicates that the issue may be specific to certain hardware/software configurations, however the problem is not reproducible in testing. There is currently no technical workaround to resolve this issue, however our technical support department continues to investigate the phenomenon. When a resolution becomes available, Corel will publish a relevant document in our online knowledgebase (http://support.corel.com)."

Please note that Corel will only refund if you bought the software directly from them. If you buy it here from Amazon and it doesn't work for you, you'd have to get a refund through Amazon.