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What's New In CS3
Some of the new features in CS3 can be seen immediately.
Many of them extend and develop existing features, although most are not of much concern to newbies.
New interface and palette layout
As soon as Photoshop CS3 is opened, it will look slightly different.
The toolbox can be displayed on the left as a single column which saves a little screen space.
The palettes can be moved to the left or right. They also come with small tab icons, with or without the names showing. The tabs can be grouped together, while a click opens them up and they can be set to automatic close.
New Curves
The main functions for tonal corrections for photographs are Curves and Levels. They can now be seen in the same Curves box.
as well as the Histogram, Baseline, Intersection Line and Channels Overlays can all be displayed in the box.
This is a bit of a mixed blessing and people new to Curves would be advised to turn these off at first to avoid being hit by too much information at once.
Black & White conversion
For those in the know, converting colour images to black and white has been a bit of a craft. The new dialogue box combines more than one method to give full control of black and white tones. Colours can be lightened, blue skies can be darkened and a colour photograph turned into a fine art image.
Eyedropper samples
Eyedropper samples now come in 7 flavours.
Added to the basic three are: 11x11, 31x31, 51x 51 and 101x101 pixels.
Auto-Align Layers
Two or more images of very similar content can be put together as layers. The Auto-Align Layers function will automatically combine them in register. This way the best features of each image can be used.
Taking this to the next stage, Auto-Blend Layers will completely merge the layers together with layer masks and tone and colour matching. Most of the time, it works really well.
Auto Align is incorporated into Photomerge, making the merging of a series of images to create a panorama a much simpler process.
Working details on Auto-Layers and Auto-Align can be found in
Photoshop In A Day
. Explanations for all the new CS3 features can be found there also.
Brightness / Contrast
The old Brightness/Contrast adjustment is heavy-handed and gives a rather course result.
The updated will adjust Brightness and Contrast without clipping the highlights and shadows in the same way, giving a much more subtle result.
A Legacy box gives the option of retaining the old high-contrast effect.
Smart Objects
It is much easier now to open an image as a Smart Object either from a Raw file or from a standard image.
The real improvement comes with Smart Filters. Filters can be given the characteristic of Smart Objects so that any filter changes are non-destructive to the image. They work very much like Adjustment Layers in that the applied filters can be saved on a separate layer, providing the opportunity to re-open the image and make further changes to the filters.
Shadow/Highlight can also be used as a Smart Filter, allowing for a rethink.
Quick Selection Tool
This is a variation on the Magic Wand. Drag the tool across the area to be selected and Photoshop will make a selection covering that range.
The selection can be modified with the Refine Edge option. It can then be expanded or contracted, smoothed and feathered.
The Refine Edges feature can be used to adjust masks also; a bit similar to using trapping through Levels.
Clone Source palette
This is a new palette for the Clone Stamp and Healing Stamp Tools. Via the palette, after taking a cloned sample, it displays as a ghost image over the main image.
It is then possible to position the cloned area over the damaged area and line up the pixels exactly.
Another feature in this palette is that it can store 5 cloned samples; very useful when repairing a series of similar images.
PDF Presentation
PDF slide shows and presentations are a little easier to create and more information can be embedded into them.
Photoshop PDF files are now compatible with Acrobat 8.
Vanishing Point
With Vanishing Point images and repair patches can be given the perspective of their target areas. This has been extended to enable images to be wrapped around surfaces of any angle. Elaborate geometric shapes are no longer a restriction.
3D enthusiasts will find new support for a number of 3D programs, such as Maya, 3D Studio and Acrobat 3. Numerous 3D files can be worked on directly in Photoshop.
Printing
The Print dialogue box is much more comprehensive, containing many more functions in the one box.
There is Print with Preview, paper orientation and scaling, colour management options, output features such as registration and crop marks, and a link to a Print On-line printing service.
Bridge 2.0
A dark grey background has been given to Bridge, providing a better display for the colour managed preview images.
It runs faster than the old version and the panels have been improved. The metadata panel displays more while images can be sorted by Rating, Name, Size and a range of choices.
The slide show feature is useful and in Bridge as a whole there are so many permutations of display and layout, it takes a while to go through them all.
Camera Raw
Camera Raw is up to version 4.3 and contains some new processing options, such as Recovery and Fill Light, which work a bit like Shadow/Highlight. Vibrance and Clarity also help here.
Curves has a new feature, known as parametric tone curve adjustments. This allows changes to be made in light zones and not just specific points.
Sharpening has been improved.
There is a Defringe function for cleaning specular highlights and a Retouch Tool.
Folks doing professional work and using Raw files all the time will find the improvements in Adobe Camera Raw useful.
Is CS3 worth buying?
If you have CS2, then probably not. Stick with CS2 and there won't be much in CS3 you can't live without.
If you are on an earlier version, then CS3 is worth getting. You will find lots of new useful bits in it.
Now that CS4 is out, there can be some real bargains for someone buying CS3.
What's New in CS4
Back to the top of the CS3 page
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