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Over the years that Adobe Photoshop has had to mature into a professional product, it has gained impressive features with each new release. The release of Photoshop CS3 is no exception. Before I get into the details of the software, I must disclaim – I tested it on a Dell laptop with 1GB of RAM, and an 1.86 Ghz Intel Pentium M processor. Any issues with performance that I mention may very well be due to my PC, and not the software itself. Now that I got that out of my system, lets get the show on the road.
Panels
The improvement of these tools not only is due to the content in the Panels, but also how you manage their appearance in your “workspace”. Similar to the older Macromedia products such as Dreamweaver, you can now click the arrows in the top right of the Panel to make them minimize. This is extremely helpful for those of us that do not have gigantic monitors, and need to get those Panels out of the way so we can work with an image. Here are a few screenshots of the different ways you can view your Panels:
Quick Selections
In previous versions of Photoshop, it was always hard to make a precise selection in a photo – without spending large amounts of time making Paths or very, very carefully. Meet the new Quick Selection tool. It’s no Lasso tool or Magnetic Lasso tool; trust me, it’s a ton better.
With the Quick Selection tool, you can easily select any item in your photos. Very similar to using the Brush Tool, with the Quick Selection tool you can choose your Brush diameter, Hardness, Spacing, etc., to make it as flexible as painting on the canvas. Just click on the item you want to select (such as the tree I selected below), drag around like you’re painting, and that’s it. If you the brush goes outside of the lines accidentally, don’t worry, you can stop, hold down the Alt button to make it so it’s in remove mode, and click on the part of the selection region you want to get rid of.
Now that you’ve selected your object easily, you can spend more of your time styling it, or apply Filters.
Device Central
This new addition to Photoshop allows folks that are developing screens, applications, or just resizing images for mobile devices to make sure they’ve got the right dimensions. Device Central is located in the File menu and opens up a new window listing devices… and will give you a preview of how your image will look on each of the devices. It also allows you to add your own devices if your is not listed. Popular phones and devices from all of the large manufacturers are included.
It’s great to see Adobe putting so much emphasis on mobile devices, since that’s clearly the direction consumer electronics is headed.
Camera Raw 4
The new version of Adobe’s Camera Raw is pretty much a full-featured photo enhancing application on its own. Bring in your JPGs, TIFFs, or pretty much any other digital camera file type, and you can easily make coloring adjustments, and remove dust from your photos in no time at all. Other tools available in Camera Raw are Crop, Retouch, Straighten, Red Eye Removal. Another notable feature is that you can input a camera profile so you can easily correct recurring problems with your photos.
Filters
Another way that the Filters were improved is that you can now change the order at which the Filters are applied to the image. When you create a Smart Image out of the file, you can then move Smart Filters you’ve applied up and down in the Layers Panel. I was very impressed by this. See some samples of changing the order of Filters below.
With Smart Filters turned off:
With Lens Flare applied after Fresco has been applied:
With Fresco applied after Lens Flare has been applied:
Auto-Aligning Layers
With the Auto-Align feature, you can merge similar photos together to create the “perfect picture”. Did you take a picture of a group of friends where one person had their eyes closed… and then you took another and someone else’s eyes were closed? Well with this feature, you can align the images, and then using Layer Masks you can show or hide parts of each image at will.
Another way you could use this is if you were taking a picture of a building or landmark that constantly had people walking by. If in one picture there was a person standing in one place, and then a person standing somewhere else in your next picture, you could merge them together to get a person-free shot.
Other Notable Features
One of the features that I used frequently in previous versions – Feather - was removed… and then reincarnated as Refine Edge. With Refine Edge, you can make your traditional Feather tweaks to selections, but you can also adjust the Radius, Contrast, Smooth, and Contract/Expand all from the same dialog. The Refine Edge dialog also has options to mask everything except for what it selected so you can focus on the section you’re working with.
Clone Source is helpful for photographers and anyone else that will be using Photoshop to “clean-up” their images. With the dialog, you can use the tradition clone tool, but on steroids. It allows you to view a transparent version of the original image on top of what you are cloning, so you can see what you’re drawing over. Very helpful when working with busy images.
The Print Dialog also got a makeover. No longer do you have to go to “Print with Preview…” to get a preview of how the image will look on paper – because the regular “Print…” dialog now has a preview built right in.
Overall
Photoshop CS3 is a great upgrade in the 17 year old product line. The updates in the user interface, combined with new powerful tools like Smart Filters, allow you to be more efficient in your design work without taking away any key features from past versions of the product. I’m definitely a fan of Adobe Photoshop CS3, and highly recommend the upgrade. However if you’re a new user, Photoshop may still be a little overwhelming at first. Just make sure to scout out some tutorials online for your daunting tasks, and you’ll be Photoshopping in no time.
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