Photoshop CS is also known as Photoshop 8, but I personally would have called it Photoshop 7.5. It is not that big of an upgrade, mostly new tools as opposed to updating version 7. Here is a short list of what is new, there are other minor upgrades as well:
• The File Browser has been enhanced
• New Multi-page PDF and slide show tool
• Photomerge tool (useful if you do lots of panoramas from multiple photos, but not really necessary)
• Tracking Edit History (Useful if you need to document editing, scientific or legal uses)
• Crop and Straighten Photos (nice tool if you do lots of scanning)
• Versioning and Version Cue (useful in a multi-user environment)
• New Keyboard shortcut list
• Photo Filter Effects (not really that useful)
• Shadow/Highlight Corrections (really useful if you do lots of professional photo processing or scanning. For a professional this one feature would be worth the upgrade cost in time savings)
• Pixel Aspect Ratio adjustments (useful for video work)
• Match Color (useful when scanning)
• New Filter Gallery (if you use lots of Filters this can be a time saver)
• Lens Blur Effects (fun, but not ground breaking)
• Fibers Filter (useful if you like to create your own textures)
• Layer Comps (very useful. Allowing you to easily create several different versions in one file)
• Scripting (useful for batch automation)
• Text on a Path (I have this one as my online demo, useful if you do page layout in Photoshop. Personally I prefer to use InDesign CS for all my page layout)
• Custom How To links (useful if you manage Photoshop users in a business or school setting)
There are also some upgrades to ImageReady as well, the most important being that ImageReady can now make proper slices and tables. But I do all of that work in Dreamweaver MX 2004.
