Mixing ACR 5.7 and 6.2

Question

I grew quite fond of processing my RAW shots through ACR, accessed through Bridge CS4. I'm a Mac PSE user, and thought I got a pretty good trade: give up PSE Organizer, get full-featured ACR. "Expose to the Right," adjustment brushes, presets...rah!
Sadly, that gig is partially up: PSE8 ships with Organizer and de-featured ACR 6.2. Upgrading to full PS just to get full ACR is too expensive. So, unless I move to LR, I'm wondering what happens if I mix-and-match 5.7 and 6.2.  Use ACR 5.7 for initial workflow, including capture sharpening and most edits. For selected images that are the keepers (and/or merit PS editing), open in Elements ACR 6.2, change to PV2010, adjust sharpening and noise reduction there.
My two questions:
the noise reduction in PSE ACR 6.2 seems to be the improved stuff, correct? And no sliders for luminance and color detail, so are those effectively set to zero?
the PSE ACR 6.2 seems to read OK any of the changes made in 5.7 (adjustment brushes, graduated filters), so my guess is under the hood the XMP processing is pretty full-featured...anything that I should NOT do in 5.7 because the PSE version of 6.2 can't/won't read it?
thx

Answer 1

stewch wrote:
…The Bridge CS4 that I have came as part of PSE.
…and you're saying you think that gives you a full version of ACR 5.7? 
Wow !
You mean you see all nine adjustment tabs, all the subtabs and all the adjustment sliders in ACR 5.7?
1.— Basic   (11 sliders)
2.— Tone Curve
       (Parametric sub-tab 4 sliders; +
        Point sub-tab)
3.— Detail (5 sliders)
4.— HSL/Grayscale tab
       Hue sub-tab (8 sliders), +
       Saturation sub-tab (8 sliders), +
       Luminance sub-tab (8 sliders)
5.— Split Toning tab (5 sliders)
6.— Lens Corrections tab (7 sliders), including
       Lens Vignetting, and Post-Crop Vignetting
7.— Camera Calibration tab (7 sliders) +
       Camera Profile popup menu
8.—  Presets tab
9.— Snapshots tab.
This is certainly news to me.  Please confirm.
Wo Tai Lao Le
我太老了