Adobe CS3 Master Collection Questions

[m4a2000]

My work was just donated 10 copies of CS3 from a local company who went to CS4. I have some questions:

Will installing this on our VT5 computer cause any problems?

What are the best formats to use between Adobe, Final Cut, and VT5?

Are there any add-ons/updates I should be looking at?

Is there a place I can get a free downloadable manual of CS3?

Where is the best place to get tutorials and templates?

What should be the first thing I do with After Effects, Photo Shop, LightWave (8.6), and VTSpeedEdit?

Thank you.

[biliousfrog]

Best format is always uncompressed frames, I use EXR and TIFF, anything else will degrade the final footage.

You should be able to get manuals from Adobe, check your registration page.

Get all of the latest updates, there are quite a few.

The tutorials at: http://www.videocopilot.net/ are the best way to learn After Effects. I've been using it since 5.5 and I still visit VC most days to pick up new tricks or just to kill some time with a great host.

I've not used SpeedEdit or Video Toaster but everything is included in the master collection. Personally, I find it easier to keep within the Adobe apps as the interface's are quite similar and they work together quite well.

There are a selection of tutorials on Video Copilot that cover 3d and After Effects together, they might give you some ideas of what to play with.

[CC Rider]

Great advice from biliousfrog
Video Copilot is awesome and very entertaining!
I disagree slightly on the formats though...I use png for most of my work and it works like a champ. I uses lossless compression and file sizes are very small and managable.
I work mostly in NTSC and smaller resolutions and never have any problems.

Also, the CS3 package will install a very complete searchable help system that will cover all applications...can't read it while sitting on the can, but it helps answer most any question you can think of. Also, the Adobe forums are just as helpful as the folks here.
I use Production Premium CS3 (been using most of these apps for about 7 or 8 years...) so I have most of the apps you'll be using.
Let me know if I can help if you get stuck.
:D

[adrian]

Sorry to hijack the thread a little, but with regards to CS3 (AE, photoshop or whatever) is there anyway you can get around not installing that damn Adobe Bridge software? It seems huge and I don't want it.

[biliousfrog]

Sorry to hijack the thread a little, but with regards to CS3 (AE, photoshop or whatever) is there anyway you can get around not installing that damn Adobe Bridge software? It seems huge and I don't want it.

I expect that you can choose custom install and deselect it.

I've actually become quite fond of it in CS3. I didn't like it in previous versions but it's extremely useful for browsing and viewing camera RAW and HDR formats, it's batch renaming is quite handy too. I guess it depends on what you use but I render to HDR formats almost exclusively now and always shoot in RAW so having that capability is good. I also like the integration with Photoshop and After Effects and the metadata, again because of the info captured with camera RAW.

I agree with CC, PNG's are a great format for 8bit, I use them all the time for textures. I like to use HDR formats because of the response and range available. If you've never tried Magic Bullet's Look's, I'd recommend it...works great with 8bit but even better with 16/32bit, same with glows and DoF.

[CC Rider]

I expect that you can choose custom install and deselect it.

I've actually become quite fond of it in CS3. I didn't like it in previous versions but it's extremely useful for browsing and viewing camera RAW and HDR formats, it's batch renaming is quite handy too. I guess it depends on what you use but I render to HDR formats almost exclusively now and always shoot in RAW so having that capability is good. I also like the integration with Photoshop and After Effects and the metadata, again because of the info captured with camera RAW.

I agree with CC, PNG's are a great format for 8bit, I use them all the time for textures. I like to use HDR formats because of the response and range available. If you've never tried Magic Bullet's Look's, I'd recommend it...works great with 8bit but even better with 16/32bit, same with glows and DoF.


All true!
Give Bridge a try, you may actually learn to like it...I use it all the time. In fact, I wish NT would come up with something similar to be able to view thumbnails of objects and scenes.
That would be awesome!

[accom]

@Adrian: yes, of course. During the instalation process you get a few of dialog windows... in one of them you can select the items you'd like to install.

[Mr_Bester]

Just a bit of a warning, even if they donated you the original disks, if they upgraded to CS4, then they still own the license on CS3. You would only get the license if they bought full versions of CS4. Hopefully, that's what happened and you got a great deal.

Hopefully I'm not a downer.

[adrian]

@Adrian: yes, of course. During the instalation process you get a few of dialog windows... in one of them you can select the items you'd like to install.

Hmmm, that's funny because when I installed AE CS3 (a standalone version BTW, not in a bundle) I don't seem to remember getting the option not to install it.

The only reason I was asking was because the install took/takes 40 minutes on my computer & it seems it was all the extra stuff that was taking the time!!!! That said I pick up my new system tomorrow together with Premiere CS3 so hopefully that'll play nicely with AE.

Back on topic, I also use PNG and TIFF a lot of the time. I used to use TGA files as well but I guess the other two are better especially as 32-bit PNG can contain transparency info.

[m4a2000]

Yup. If they upgraded to CS4, they can't simply give the CS3 packages away as the CS4 upgrades still require the CS3 packages to be licensed to the CS4 upgrade owner.

If they bought entirely new CS4 licenses, I guess they could give away/transfer the old CS3 licenses.
They bought new CS4 licenses... We (my boss, my boss' boss, and I) made sure to ask.

[CC Rider]

Are there any add-ons/updates I should be looking at?




CS3 installs with adobe updater which you can configure to automatically check for updates at intervals you see fit, or you can open any of the apps and go to the help menu and choose "updates" to get all the latest.
You won't really need to worry about keeping up with it yourself...

:D

[ted]

A side note about the Adobe updater.
We used the updater shortly after installing CS3. It TOTALLY made the suite useless with all sorts of errors.
Adobe tech support told us....yeh, get this...."I don't recommend using the updater. I suggest you go to the website and manually install the updates".
He said the updater isn't very good! Yeh he honestly told us that.

I'm not saying it doesn't usually work, but when the tech support guy told us that it stopped us from using the updater.
We had to un-install the entire suite and re-install it again.
Just our experience. :(

[CC Rider]

A side note about the Adobe updater.
We used the updater shortly after installing CS3. It TOTALLY made the suite useless with all sorts of errors.
Adobe tech support told us....yeh, get this...."I don't recommend using the updater. I suggest you go to the website and manually install the updates".
He said the updater isn't very good! Yeh he honestly told us that.

I'm not saying it doesn't usually work, but when the tech support guy told us that it stopped us from using the updater.
We had to un-install the entire suite and re-install it again.
Just our experience. :(

Wow, that's not too cool...
Never had any problems myself but maybe I've just been lucky...

[adrian]

I've found the updater to be totally annoying so thankfully I've always cancelled it when it's tried to download something.

[biliousfrog]

I've not had any problems with the updater, in fact a lot of niggling issues have been fixed thanks to it.

[CC Rider]

I've not had any problems with the updater, in fact a lot of niggling issues have been fixed thanks to it.

Same here...works great for me.
Even if you don't want to use it, at the very least it can be a handy tool to alert you when there are available updates. You can always cancel the installation and go download them yourself if you prefer.

[Mr_Bester]

A side note about the Adobe updater.
We used the updater shortly after installing CS3. It TOTALLY made the suite useless with all sorts of errors.
Adobe tech support told us....yeh, get this...."I don't recommend using the updater. I suggest you go to the website and manually install the updates".
He said the updater isn't very good! Yeh he honestly told us that.

I'm not saying it doesn't usually work, but when the tech support guy told us that it stopped us from using the updater.
We had to un-install the entire suite and re-install it again.
Just our experience. :(

I had the same problem. I was on a mac. I ended up doing the download individual updates and after a while would still have problems.

I never called adobe, but I found out the problem was with caches that adobe uses. After clearing all of my caches using Cocktail, I didn't get the "could not complete because of program error" message. That would show up after launch, open jpg, open image and would just loop. Any time I get that error, I run cocktail and it goes away for several months.