Pros & Cons
-
- Nondestructive filtering; outstanding animation features; overhauled interface; increased platform support; myriad excellent new features and tools.
-
- Weak interface support for two-monitor setups; a little feature bloat.
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Specs
| OS Compatibility: | Mac OS |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Type: | Business |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
The
The Extended version is found in four of the six permutations of
I tested Photoshop CS3 (Extended and Standard) in Vista, in Win XP, and on Mac OS X 10.4. The program performed well on all platforms, but MacIntel users will experience the greatest leap in speed, because of the software's Universal Binary status.—
What's New in CS3?
In either of the new versions of the app, nothing is more apparent upon launching the application than its drastically overhauled interface. Palettes now reside in docks that run along the right side of the interface. These docks can be minimized so that only palette icons are showing. You can gain more precious screen real estate by pressing the Tab key to dismiss the palettes. What I really like, however, is that hovering your cursor near the edge of the screen makes the palettes spring back into view, offering perfect "there when you need them, gone when you don't" accessibility. My only reservation is that, as I also said in my review of
Once you've gotten past the interface changes, you'll quickly discover the feature that, on its own, justifies the cost of the upgrade for many users: non-destructive filtering. Before, even something as basic as sharpening an image created an irreversible change to the photo; if you decided a few days later that you'd over-sharpened, you were out of luck, and you'd have to go back to a copy of the original image (provided you'd saved one) and start over. Photoshop CS3 solves this problem, at last.
The solution to this problem takes advantage of the Smart Objects feature introduced in Photoshop CS2. If you first convert your image layer into a Smart Object, filters applied to that layer now appear listed beneath it in the Layers palette and are eternally editable. Simply double-click a filter's name to adjust the settings. Also, you can drag the filter names up and down to experiment with the order in which they're applied—it can make a big difference. And the Smart Object's layer mask lets you selectively apply filtering to discrete regions of the image. This feature is a real breakthrough for Photoshop; you've now got image editing with almost total flexibility.
The new Black and White command allows you to customize a color image's conversion to monochrome by boosting or deemphasizing ranges of color found in the original. This control is virtually identical to one found in Lightroom, even using a variation on Lightroom's "targeted adjustment" tool that I raved about in my Lightroom review. Want to brighten the sky in your image? Simply click in the sky and drag to the right to brighten it; dragging left darkens it. Photoshop automatically targets the correct color range and adjusts the command's Blues slider as you drag in the image. Unfortunately, this feature is even easier to miss in the Photoshop interface than it is in Lightroom's; I hope that Adobe will promote this terrific tool and find ways to showcase it throughout the program.
Another feature that has seen huge changes is Camera RAW. For starters, it now opens not only raw formatted images but also the JPEGs and TIFFs that might be found on your camera card. Camera RAW also now contains many Photoshop features such as cloning, healing, and monochrome conversion. I'm all for flexibility and power, but it seems to me that Camera RAW has now been expanded well beyond its initial reason for existing. Is it convenient for Camera RAW to have so much overlap with Photoshop itself, or is it just confusing? With so many options, you may well feel the "paradox of choice" and be at a loss for which corrections to make, and where, and when.
There are many other additional excellent new features and enhancements, but three warrant special attention for the impressive contributions they make to the app's overall ease of use. Working in tandem, the new Quick Selection tool and Refine Edge command add a helpful new technique for making selections in images. Quick Selection lets you paint a selection right on your image, and Refine Edge helps smooth away any ragged edges. The Auto-Align Layers command makes it easy to take the best elements from similar shots and combine them into one perfect picture. Finally, the Clone Source palette lets you define and recall up to five cloning source points, with an optional overlay to help you position your cursor before you start cloning away.—
Photoshop Extended
The additional money spent on the Extended version of Photoshop CS3 buys such a wide range of additional tools that it's all but certain no single user will need them all. Computer animators will undoubtedly benefit the most; for this market, the Extended version is quite compelling. Those working in 3D should be pleased that they can now import common 3D file formats and rotate and scale the 3D objects, all within Photoshop. The program has long been a popular choice for creating texture maps, but now you can edit textures and see them update on the models without having to leave Photoshop.
Photoshop CS3 Extended also opens video files and allows you to paint and clone right on the frames. Furthermore, you can add layers and animate their position, opacity, and layer styles by setting keyframes in a new timeline straight out of Adobe After Effects.
Doctors will have as little use for these video features as animators will for Extended's ability to open the DICOM medical imaging format. There are also measurement and analysis tools designed specifically for architects and scientists. Is one version of Extended enough? Should it be "Extended à la carte"? No wait, that's even more choices . . .
Adobe has put massive amounts of power in your hands; this is great, but it can easily overwhelm newcomers. But then, that's why there's Photoshop Elements, and now Photoshop Lightroom. Photoshop CS3 remains the choice for digital imaging professionals.
More Photo Editing reviews:
Final Thoughts
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Adobe Photoshop CS3 offers some killer new features, such as non-destructive filtering, a newly flexible interface, excellent monochrome conversion, and terrific cloning enhancements. Photoshop remains the best option for getting anything done in the field of computer graphics.