CS3 vs CS3 extended

Im purchasing photoshop cs3 extended and wondered if its the samw basically .. I know it includes more but will it be the same basic program as cs3? I want to be able to follow tutorials I have elements 6 now. anyone have cs3 extended or knowlege about it ty in advance

It's the same program, just with more features. You'll be able to follow any tutorial written for Photoshop in the last couple of years, along with ALMOST everything written for it in the last decade or so.

Where you'll need CS4E-specific tutorials is when you want to get into features such as 3D painting, animation, motion graphics, advanced image analysis, etc. Other than that kind of stuff, Photoshop is Photoshop.

By the way, just so you know, if you're planning on doing 3D painting, I highly recommend you upgrade to a 64-bit OS if you're not using one already, and that you put at least 4GB of RAM in your computer, preferably 8GB. The 3D paint engine is a tremendous resource hog. It can be a bit unstable with the relatively small amount of RAM a 32-bit OS is able to feed to it. Vista x64 and recent versions of OSX both work really well with it. Windows XP and Vista x86, not so much.

Chosen thnx for the reply .. not sure right now if I'll be doing any painting but my laptop is 32 bit. Basically I want it for photos and basic editing. I run into walls alot with elements when fiollowing tutorials because its limited and most tuts are for PS CS. Thanks again for your comprehensive answer much appreciated.

You're welcome, Ginna.

Let me make a correction to my earlier suggestion. Apparently I was having a brain fart or something earlier. You said CS3, and I thought you'd said CS4. 32-bit will do you just fine for CS3. Disregard what I said about 64-bit.