Photoshop CS3 features revealed

Tuesday, March 27 2007

Nondestructive filters, improved RAW image processing, advanced compositing, support for automatic 32-bit high dynamic range images (screen shot shown), smooth Flash web integration, and easy black-and-white conversion are among the many new and improved features that are being revealed today in the official announcement of Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Adobe today relased details about new features in both new versions of Photoshop. Here are detailed descriptions of these features, provided by Adobe:

Increased productivity and streamlined workflows—Photoshop CS3 comes with a wide array of new features and improvements to existing ones, but if there’s one thing you will notice immediately, it is this: Compared to previous versions of the software, Photoshop CS3 is just faster. As of December 1, 2006, beta versions of Photoshop CS3 are performing 40% faster than Photoshop CS2 on Intel-based Macs. The new Photoshop also gets you there faster with streamlined workflows stemming from new preset capabilities, redesigned palette management, and compatibility with the newest systems—including native Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) on PowerPC and Intel processors, and Microsoft® Windows® VistaTM.

Unrivaled editing—How do you improve on the kind of editing power and performance that are the professional standard in digital imaging? By going the extra mile in protecting the ultimate quality every step of the way, and by making even more of the features professionals rely upon live and re-editable. With Photoshop CS3, you can now apply, adjust, add, and remove filters at will, without starting over. Enhancements to color correction include easier, more powerful monochrome conversion, an improved Curves adjustment, and cloning and healing tools that now feature preview overlays and multiple source points.

Breakthrough compositing—Whether it’s a peak-to-shore panorama or creating that one perfect shot from a series of images, Photoshop CS3 makes compositing faster, easier, and better. Speed compositing by automatically aligning and blending layers. Make an image selection with one stroke of a brush. Perfect any selection edge in a easy-to-use, intuitive dialog box.

Top new and enhanced features in Adobe Photoshop CS3

Nondestructive Smart Filters

Smart Filters are simply Photoshop filters that are applied nondestructively, and remain live and re-editable. That gives you the flexibility to experiment with different filters and settings, without having to back up and start over with the original image. You can edit the Smart Filter mask to precisely adjust the filter’s effects on different areas of the image, and because Smart Filters are applied within the context of Smart Object layers, your designs are accelerated by now being able to scale, transform, and filter your images in an efficient, nondestructive workflow. Smart Filters are easily accessible and adjustable in the Layers palette.

Quick Selection tool

Photoshop has always been distinguished by its powerful selection tools, which enable you to target editing and enhancements to precise areas of an image. Photoshop CS3 slashes the time necessary to choose image areas with the new Quick Selection tool. Now, instead of painstakingly outlining the image region you need to work on, you can simply paint the general area with the Quick Selection tool. Photoshop CS3 watches as you paint, and analyzes the image to complete the selection automatically. Expanding or contracting the selection is as simple as holding down modifer keys. And the Quick Selection tool can be used in conjunction with all of the other powerful selection tools in Photoshop. Whether it’s simple or complicated image selections, or image area extraction for advanced compositing, the new Quick Selection tool is a real time saver.

Refine Edge

The final touch to any image selection, the new Refine Edge feature is the simple, flexible way to modify the edge of a selection before you begin editing the area. With one-click access from the Options bar, or from the Select menu, Refine Edge lets you precisely smooth, feather, contract, or expand the current selection, with simple slider controls, in a single, intuitive dialog box.

Automatic layer alignment and blending

Automatic alignment and blending of image layers makes it especially easy to create advanced image composites—for example, combining the best parts of multiple images of the same scene into one “best” image. Now you can simply place multiple, related images on separate layers in one document, and then let Photoshop CS3 analyze the contents, moving and rotating the layers so they overlap as precisely as possible. Use the masking tools to reveal the areas you need from different layers to finalize the elements of the composite image. Then use automatic layer blending to seamlessly blend the color and shading into the final image. You could achieve the same highest-quality results in earlier versions of Photoshop, but the new automatic layer alignment and blending features get you there faster, with less work.

Streamlined interface

Photoshop CS3 maximizes your work area and creative time, by minimizing the effort of arranging your workspace. The Tools palette now appears in a space-saving, single-column arrangement, with other palettes arranged in convenient, self-adjusting docks that can be widened to full size, narrowed to icons, or collapsed completely with the Tab key. When hidden, moving your mouse to the edge of the screen automatically reveals the palette dock. Then Photoshop hides the dock again when you move back to the image. Store your favorite workspaces as presets, and call them up instantly in the new Workspace button menu on the Options bar. You can also choose from a wide range of included presets, designed for a variety of specialized tasks. It all adds up to keeping the tools you need at your fingertips, but never in your way.

Next-generation Adobe Camera Raw

Photoshop CS3 features the latest version of the revolutionary Camera Raw, which processes raw data nondestructively from your compatible digital camera for superior photographic results. Photoshop CS3 also allows you the flexibility of applying the editing power of Camera Raw to JPEG and TIFF files as well as raw formats.

Enhancements to Camera Raw include:

Accelerated performance
Nondestructive Clone and Heal tool
Even higher quality processing from raw to Photoshop
New Fill Light and Vibrance controls to fine-tune lighting
Intuitive monochrome conversion and control
Precise color- adjustment controls
Support for more than 150 cameras
Compatibility with Photoshop Lightroom conversion settings
Adobe Bridge with Stacks and Filters

Whether you’re a photographer with thousands of shots or a designer with folders full of images, you’ll appreciate the enhancements in the next-generation Adobe Bridge software included with Photoshop CS3.

Adobe Bridge enhancements include:
Faster performance
New three-column layout and saved workspaces for flexibility and efficiency
New Filters panel speeds finding just the images you need
Stacks, to compress a series of images to a single thumbnail with a single click, and expand them again just as easily
New Loupe tool to instantly zoom in and out of any image area you want to inspect closely
Flat view for an instant view of all the images in a set of nested folders
Instant access to Adobe Acrobat
ConnectTM for online, real-time video and audio collaboration
Bridge Home, with up-to-date information about all your Creative
Suite 3 software, as well as video tutorials, tips, and resources
Vanishing Point with multiple, adjustable angle perspective planes

One of the most-loved debuts of Photoshop CS2 is now even more flexible. Easily paste graphics in perspective to create packaging mock-ups and effortlessly edit in perspective— Vanishing Point adjusts brush strokes, healing, and cloning as you paint over the planes. In Photoshop CS3, you are no longer restricted to adding planes at 90-degree angles. You can now quickly and easily create multiple planes in any image, connected at any angle.

Enhanced Merge to 32-bit HDR

The human eye sees a much wider dynamic range than can be captured by most camera sensors. That means if one area of your subject is brightly lit, and another is in shadow, something has to give. Merge to HDR lets you use your digital camera to capture bracketed exposures that together cover the dynamic range of the scene, and then combine them within Photoshop into a single 32-bit HDR image with maximum range and fidelity. Updated for Photoshop CS3, Merge to HDR helps correct the problems which can be caused by handheld shooting, with advanced automatic alignment of your bracketed exposures as they are merged. Plus, more sophisticated processing routines give you even better results in the final 32-bit HDR image, in a higher fidelity conversion.

Black and White conversion

Advanced black-and-white conversion is simpler and faster, with a new Black and White adjustment that helps you quickly remap the colors in your image to monochrome, and improvements to the Channel Mixer. In the Black and White adjustment, one button analyzes the image and offers conversion settings. You can fine tune with simple sliders that control the conversion of each color— even interactively adjust channels in the large preview. Just click an image area to highlight the appropriate color slider, or click and drag an image area to instantly adjust the conversion. Then, save the settings you use most as presets— one click will access them at any time. The Channel Mixer adjustment is also extensively improved, with new included black- and-white presets, the ability to save your own settings as presets for reuse later, and the new Total indicator that keeps you informed on the total percentage contribution from all three color channels.

Improved Curves adjustment

Take advantage of precise color correction made easier, faster and more powerful with the improved Curves adjustment. Use the new color-correction presets included with Photoshop CS3 to make automatic adjustments, or create your own presets to achieve the best results over and over. Curves now features a larger, improved display incorporating an integrated histogram and simultaneous display of multiple color channels. Photomerge with advanced alignment and blending Photomerge provides a fast, easy way to convert a series of images into a panorama. In Photoshop CS3, the Photomerge engine incorporates new automatic layer alignment and blending technologies (see “Automatic layer alignment and blending” on page 3) for even better results. Now, in addition to finding the overlapping areas of images and assembling the panoramic composite, Photomerge also rotates and transforms images for superior results. Improved blending smoothes the transition between images, especially noticeable with the slight differences in lighting captured from one part of the panorama to another.

Adjustable cloning and healing with preview overlay The Clone tool allows you to sample an image area and paint it elsewhere. Similarly, the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush not only let you paint with an image sample, but also maintain the texture and shading in the area painted, for fast, effective retouching. All these tools go further in Photoshop CS3, with greater flexibility and efficiency, thanks to the options available in the new Clone Source palette. The Overlay option lets you see the source pixels under the brush, so you can precisely position the destination for the brush stroke. You can now also set an offset, width, height, and rotation for the source area—in effect, transforming the cloned area as you clone with it. And you can set up to five different source points, and switch among them with a single click.The new Clone Source palette controls the display of the preview overlay for up to five separate source points, as well as controling the scale, offset, and rotation of each.

Zoomify export

The resolution of digital cameras is increasing at a rate that far outstrips the increase in internet bandwidth available to most people at home or work. That means having to decrease the resolution of your images, so that they can be efficiently downloaded by web visitors or transmitted through e-mail. Now, you can export full- resolution images to the Zoomify format to enable flexible, robust viewing on the web using the Adobe Flash® Player. View the entire image or zoom in on the finest details, even with low-speed internet connections. This kind of fidelity has been totally impractical on the web, until now.

Photoshop Lightroom integration

Professional and enthusiast photographers alike are discovering the newest member of the Photoshop family—Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This new application was built specifically to answer the demands of managing, developing, and presenting large volumes of photographs. Because Camera Raw and Lightroom share the same imaging engine, conversion settings are compatible between both applications, and the changes you make in either Photoshop or Lightroom will automatically appear in the other software. Also, once you save image edits in Photoshop, the changes will be instantly reflected in the Lightroom Library, where you display and manage your image collections. Adobe is working to ensure you can pass files between software applications, and between platforms.

Improved print experience

With so many different printers and printer drivers, getting physical prints from your digital images can be a challenging task. Simplified printing, co-developed by HP, offers better control over print quality, with color management, a larger print preview window, and more controls in one place to streamline the printing experience and enable you to print in fewer steps.

Adobe Device Central

Designed to assist in the creation of dynamic and interactive content for mobile phones and devices, Adobe Device Central CS3 helps set up new designs targeted at mobile devices, then lets you preview, test, and optimize your designs for a wide range of products. The updateable device library shows the capabilities and constraints of target devices, and the improved Flash LiteTM emulator provides the preview and testing environment. Adobe Device Central slashes the time necessary to design for a wide array of mobile products.

Workflow enhancements

A new version of Photoshop isn’t just about more—it’s about better. Photoshop CS3 features a host of improvements and enhancements to existing features, all designed to make your work with digital images faster, easier, and more efficient, so you can spend your energy being creative. It’s about doing more in less time.

Peak performance on the newest operating systems—Photoshop CS3 runs natively on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) on both Intel-based and PowerPC Macs, and on Windows Vista.

Zoom to 300%—Get the extreme detail with a new maximum zoom setting of 3200%.

Save for Web—The feature now automatically converts images destined for web display to the sRGB color space.

PDf support enhancements—Preserve the size and aspect ratio of PDF documents opened in Photoshop, with support for both the PDF/X-4 standard and Adobe Acrobat® 8 (PDF 1.7) documents.

PDf Presentation improvements—Add text including filenames and metadata, choose the font size, omit or include annotations (notes), plus text and background color improvements.

Color Picker—When choosing a color in the standard Adobe Color Picker, click Add To Swatches button to instantly add that color to the document’s Swatches palette.

Photo Quote: It's weird that photographers spend years or even a whole lifetime, trying to capture moments that added together, don't even amount to a couple of hours. - - James Lalropui Keivom