Photoshop CS2 obsolete with an Olympus E-3

Question

I just received my new Olympus E-3 this week and it is a very impressive professional DSLR camera. I have to say that I am exceedingly disappointed with Adobe right now as it looks like they are no longer supporting Photoshop CS2 even though it is only one revision old. With the latest updates I can use their digital negative converter (which I wish more camera manufacturers would support) and my Photoshop Elements 5.0, including Camera RAW, works with the E-3 ORF/RAW files. Photoshop CS2 apparently has no plug-in for it, the latest Camera RAW doesn't work in it or in Bridge, and it no longer accepts new .dng files sent to it from PSE5. It is now largely useless to me as I can't used it until the photos are degraded .jpg's.
I am on Vista, so is their anything I need to do, or is my analysis above correct? CS-2 over CS had enough to make me upgrade, CS-3 over CS-2 didn't.

Answer 1

Nobody likes the fact that to get the latest raw support for the latest
camera (without hoop jumping) you have to upgrade Photoshop. Most of don't
think it is fair. However, there are some things to keep in mind.
1. Each new major release of Photoshop brings massive updates to ACR. These
updates would not be an easy or really cost effective thing to do for older
versions of ACR.
2. It is very likely that updates to ACR are not solely in ACR itself. I
would imagine that some changes have to be made to Photoshop to. This means
they couldn't update ACR to work with CS2 because CS2 is lacking things that
would be needed. Things that are only in CS3.
3. Even if Adobe charged $19.95 for the ACR upgrade for Photoshop CS2 if
they couldn't bring it inline with CS3's ACR but only could add support for
new cameras people would still complain.
4. There is a work around, download the latest DNG converter program, it is
free and convert your raw images to DNG. This is in my book a good thing
anyways. Just as soon as DNG becomes and ISO standard it will be the safest
raw format available. In other words it will be the most future proof raw
format we will have. Once your files are converted to DNG you can then load
them in to the ACR that comes with CS2.
Myself, I think the mistake Adobe made was not making the camera support a
plug-in for ACR. By doing this they could have simply updated ACR as they
wished giving you the new version with each new version of Photoshop, but
allowed people with the old versions to use new cameras because you would
only have to download new profile plug-ins for new cameras. I don't see new
cameras as being a major reason to upgrade ACR. I see the new features and
improvements made to each new version of ACR more of an upgrade draw than
new camera support. I think Adobe would have lost very little income by
designing ACR to support new cameras by doing plug-ins. I would still have
upgraded from CS2 to CS3.
Of course there is also the new upgrade policy. Photoshop 7 is the oldest
version you can now use to upgrade to Photoshop CS3. If you have a version
older than 7 you have to buy the full Photoshop package, you can't upgrade.
When Photoshop CS4 comes out then CS1 will be the oldest version you can use
to upgrade. So sooner rather than later unless you like to buy full packages
instead of upgrades one is going to have to upgrade anyways.
Myself I would use the DNG converter now and then upgrade Photoshop when CS4
comes out. I figure CS4 is less than a year away.