Can you Help??

[Coffee Coffee]

I am looking for some pros/cons of AutoDesk Impression vs Adobe Photoshop.

I attended Cad Camp this week and was impressed with Impression, I brought it back to the office and the lead here was equally impressed BUT the IT Manager wants to know what would make it better than just getting the Adobe product.

I am just getting into Impression and can't put together the answers quick enough....

Can you guys give me some input?

Thanks so much

Oh and we are running AutoCAD 2008

[cwall]

Well the first difference is price; Photoshop CS3 is about twice price when compared with AutoCAD Impression. I can give you some insight as to how to use the two products in conjunction with one another which is what we do at our company. Impression will open an AutoCAD file as is, whereas Photoshop will not, we have to separate the different layers in AutoCAD, create a PDF and then import into Photoshop to work without Impression, for my money just the simple fact that Impression will open an AutoCAD file and keep the layers and then save directly to a .psd file with those layers in-tact is invaluable. That in itself is worth the $499 Impression price tag for me. Pays for itself with just that one feature. The biggest difference that I have come across is the block replacement and the fact that Impression will give you that "hand rendered" effect so many Developers ask for. Photoshop can give you the same effects but it takes a lot of hard work and tweaking to get it there, whereas Impression is just a matter of drag & drop. The block substitution in Impression is absolutely wonderful. We just need more available block Libraries out there. Hope some of this helps.

[Hammer.John.J]

originally, i thought impression was a joke, the early releases were dog slow and really didn't fix any of the issues with fills. Now the beta version, is night and day. You can essentially reproduce a photoshop rendering with impression in about 1/4 of the time, especially if you have large complicated drawings, with many fills and tons of blocks like trees!

i'd sign up to beta test impression if you don't know how to photoshop.

[Coffee Coffee]

Thank you very much for your input. Working (or in the case of photoshop trying to work) with the two programs Impression is definately the easier of the two to work with and I like the results I am getting. I still have not been able to sucessfully get my AutoCAD drawing into a Photoshop and have it be workable. I will definately pass all this info onto the IT manager who is in charge of the purchase.
Thanks again!

[Coffee Coffee]

Just an update..

They decided to go with Autodesk Impression!

Thanks again for the input