We’ve been getting a lot of calls and questions this last week about Creativetechs’ “official” recommendation to wait until June 2007 before upgrading to Adobe CS3. This recommendation was part of our presentation on March 28, 2007: Getting Ready for Leopard, CS3 and New Macs!

Now that Adobe CS3 has actually started arriving at many design studios, we’ve begun relaxing our initial cautious recommendations. As with all major new software releases, we’ve seen a number of odd bugs and issues that need to be addressed. However we underestimated the pressure in many studios to upgrade to CS3. Especially in studios struggling with the stability of InDesign CS2 or Illustrator CS2 on new Intel Macs.

In general, we’re still holding to our original recommendations. We will be running a special June 4th tip titled “Can I upgrade to Adobe CS3 yet?” which will cover our experiences supporting CS3 in live production enviroments. Until then, here is our conservative rule-of-thumb schedule for adopting CS3:

Upgrade to Adobe CS3 in April 2007 If You…

…have an Intel Mac.
…need speed in Photoshop.
…love learning/troubleshooting new stuff.
…are already using the Photoshop Beta.

Upgrade to Adobe CS3 in May 2007 If You…

…have an Intel Mac.
…need speed in Photoshop.
…like learning new things.

Upgrade to Adobe CS3 in June 2007 If You…

…have an Intel Mac.
…need greater stability and speed in InDesign or Illustrator.
…have read our June 4th tip.

Early-Adopter Adobe CS3 Training.

Based on the number of client requests, we are currently working on a special “CS3 Boot Camp” training program in partnership with Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts (the “boot camp” name may change). Even though it is a couple week’s earlier than our official upgrade date, we’ll have an early-adopter version of those classes available in the next four weeks.

We hope to have the full CS3 training schedule published next week. Until then please email help@creativetechs.com with any questions, or to schedule personalized one-on-one CS3 training.