Back to school: five Adobe offers for design/web development students

As any prospective employer will tell you, some kind of web-related skills look good on everyone’s CV. As a lot of you are entering further education to gain some of those skills, we’ve compiled a shortlist of great Adobe software products that are available on the cheap (well, comparatively speaking – but you can always pool together with your course mates) for everyone with a student card.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5
Still a great entry point for anyone interested in creating websites, this version of Dreamweaver comes with integrated code hints for CMS suites such as WordPress and Joomla!. You can also input URLs of websites you like to see how they have been built.

Adobe CS5 Photoshop Extended
Photoshop is THE image editing software out there – no question about it. 3D-based content is supported here, along with the usual manipulation functions such as layering or rotating. All tools function speedily and intuitively, and you’ll be able to create logos, images and graphics for everything from print projects to blogs and bigger websites. A must for any graphic designer.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9
A slimmed-down, budget version of the CS5 version, this software package is more the equivalent of a beginner’s course rather than a full degree, but for anyone looking to dabble in a bit of photo and video editing on the side, maybe complimenting a course in web design or media studies, this is an offer well worth considering. It doesn’t have the range of tools its bigger sibling has, but it does double up as a photo organiser that you can link up to Facebook.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium
This software suite lets the user knock up multimedia content in no time – no wonder, since it includes, among others, Adobe’s InDesign, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator software suites. As a result, the Creative Suite 5 is a fantastic all-round package for design students (both print and web). All interfaces have been integrated into one, so you can use different applications on your project without having to switch between different windows.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
More a complimentary package than a standalone software, Photoshop Lightroom provides Photoshop-using design geeks with some extra effects and processing tools for photographs. RAW images taken by digital cameras can be edited directly in Lightroom, and the finished images can be shared immediately with platforms like Facebook and Flickr.