Recently the new version of Adobe Photoshop was released. One month ago, I atended a presentation for the new Creative Suite 3, organised by Anodos (Adobe’s distributor and reseller in Greece). Greece is the first country in the world, where CS3 was presented (because of local time). What made me the biggest impression of all the new versions, is the new Adobe Photoshop CS3. Photoshop comes now in two version: Standard (which is cheaper) and Extended (with more professional features). The shortcut icon has changed (as for all Abode-ex-Macromedia programs). Now it is minimal and with two letters pointing the program (PS for Photoshop, DW for Dreamweaver and so on). Back to Photoshop now: Extended version offers 3D and motion support and it intergrates with MATLAB, which means that it is ideal for 3D artists and scientists. The interface is a little bit different in Adobe Photoshop CS3. The toolbar is vertical with one column now, which maximises the workspace, but you can switch to classic view (two columns) if you do not like it.
The big improvement though are smart filters. From filter>Smart Filter menu you apply a smart filter and then any filter you want. Your smart object remain re-editable. Using Masks you can change the filter parameters and you can toggle it on or off.
If you are a photographer and you like panoramic views, you will find Photoshop CS3 extremely usefull. In CS2 panoramic photos were bad-looking. In CS3 with the auto-bend and auto-align layers selection your photos blend well and it even recognises if an object appears in two photos and blend it in the right way, so it does not appear twice in your panoramic view. Photoshop CS3 fixes the color too.
For black&white photo lovers, there is a great addition: A new color mode. Black&white mode has great results and now it is a piece of cake to convert colored fotos to black&white. In CS2 you should convert them to greyscale mode and fix the curves to have a fine result.
Magic Wand tool is much better too. It takes very little time now to select objects, even if they have lot of edges and the colors are not clear.
Adobe Bridge has also improved with multiple additions, like zoom or effects. Photoshop CS3 intergrates well with Flash and Dreamweaver (yes web designers, Flash CS3 opens .psd files correctly). An example of what I mean with “intergrate”: You are building a web page in Dreamweaver CS3 that contains a photo, but you change something on that image in Photoshop CS3; it will automatically be updated in Dreamweaver too!
