20788

Provides: Manipulation of pixels for image alteration, improvement, and/or enhancement
Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4.9
Retail Price: $649 (upgrade from $199); Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended = $999 (upgrade from $349). Compare versions. Also available as part of Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Note: The following is a preview of beta software. That means this software was still in development and was not formally "completed" at the time this preview was written. Thus, there may be changes in design, functionality, and performance from what will be shipped to the consumer.

Photoshop is the kingpin of the Suite programs. It is the heavyweight contender that tells the 800 pound gorilla where to sit. Each iteration of Photoshop not only has to be better than the last, but has to be significantly better than the last. That has pretty much happened over the years, but for this version, Adobe took their gloves off and gave the user new capabilities that were just not possible before. The new functions and changes can help not only the novice, but also the experienced user.

Many people find that the first time they sit down to Photoshop, it can be overwhelming and intimidating. However, like all great programs, if you simply sit down and take little steps, you will soon find that it all makes sense. Not all of Photoshop is for everyone, and the new version is proving that by providing two different versions: Standard and Extended. The new Standard version is pretty much like past versions of Photoshop of old, but with many new features and functions. The Extended version is for a custom few, some in technical fields. I do feel that Photoshop Technical might have been a better name, but that might imply too tight a direction of where that version could go. Later, I'll delve into what constitutes the Extended version. The good news is that no functions were dropped from PS CS2 to PS CS3 Standard. The Extended functions are all new functions or enhancements of functions.

The arrival of PS CS3 also means the formal loss of ImageReady. If this is a program you used and depended on, be careful how you toss your PS CS2 folder. If you like ImageReady, keep your copy of IR-CS2; it will work for a long time (although it will never be Universal) and will not have the same interaction with the new version of PS as did with the earlier version, but it will work. However, if you were dependent upon IR for creating animations, fear not; animations have been enhanced big time in PS CS3...if you get the Extended version.

One of the big changes is not exclusively for Photoshop, but rather most of the Adobe products: the interface. Out are palettes (per se) and in are Panels. Although Photoshop specifically uses the term Palettes, they are the only application to use that term for what everyone else is calling Panels. But, a rose by any other name would still be what is the new interface. Not really as a gimmick, but to best and most efficiently demonstrate the new interface, I'm going to present a link to one of the new Flash videos on the new interface and how it works. You can see this here. My reason for side-stepping showing the interface is that this is a Suite-wide interface, and there's enough to show about Photoshop. Suffice it to say, the new interface has some tremendous advantages for many users, but for those who've invested in multiple screens, get ready for a bit of a disappointment; if you keep your palettes on one screen and the image on the other, you will not be able to take full advantage of the new interface. Rather, you will need to keep your palettes floating, not unlike you already do. We can only assume that this is an issue of the growing pains of a new interface, and will be addressed in future versions. My take on the new panels is mostly very positive. I like how you can control and limit the amount of lost space caused by palettes. My biggest complaint is that if you have the panels down to icon mode, you can only have one palette present itself at a time in any given panel. Right now, if you want more than one palette on display, you have to open the entire panel. Not a big deal, but a limitation.

Tip: Any time you get a new version of Photoshop, go to the Windows menu and select Workspace -> What's New in CS3. This will highlight every new feature in every menu, making it easy to navigate through all of the New Features. Right here, I'm simply going to present my favorite new updates with Photoshop. These are not necessarily in order of significance, but rather, "the new things I hold dear." Toward the end of the review I will present what's in the new "Extended" version.

Photomerge/Stacks/Align/Blend

If you go to any National Park, the park down your street, or vacation sites anywhere, you will see people taking a series of photos as they rotate CCW or CW with the hope and intent of "stitching" these shots together when they get home. Typically, there are two problems with this approach: First and foremost, there is the issue of parallax. If you take your finger and hold it at arms length in front of your face, then close the right and left eye one-at-a-time, you will see your finger snap to the left and right. This is because of the orientation of your eye, your finger, and the background. When you rotate around taking photos, you are creating the same dynamic, but on a greater, scale compounding the problem for each shot. The further away the principle image is from your camera, the less of a problem this is, but there is a problem nonetheless. To resolve this problem, you can purchase various "nodal" supports for your camera to mount on your tripod.

The other problem is easier to resolve, but most camera users will fail to adjust—that's setting the camera to a Manual mode. The problem is that as you rotate, your light changes, and just about every camera out there will adjust to the changing light by adjusting the shutter speed and aperture to get the best shot. However, what the best shot is in shade is different than in sun light.

As a proper way to test this, several months ago I was north of San Simeon, California to see the elephant seals. I took a series of panorama shots that had to go wrong. That is, I didn't use my nodal support or tripod and I didn't set my camera to manual. Below is what happens when if took one of the series of 4 shots into PS-CS2. As can be seen, the diagonal bands of different luminance are created as I aimed my camera closer to the sun (west). I tried to compensate in PS, but I just couldn't get the same luminance across all of the images.

The next image contains the same four images run through PS-CS3.

But it gets better. Below are two close-ups of the rock that can be seen in the CS2 image that is bisected by the right-most diagonal line, about 1/4 the way from the top of the image. Notice how there is a ghost image on the left. That's the CS2 version, and that's caused by the parallax problem mentioned earlier. The CS3 version, on the right is perfect.

How did this happen? The answer is in what CS3 does and provides. If you look at the Layers Panel, you can see that PS now creates these amazing layer masks that chop up the image in a manner that forces only the best to be displayed.

By Control-clicking the layer mask, you can see the marching ants demarcate where the rock was bifurcated to present the best possible image. In addition to the precise layer mask, PS does a complete luminance correction to the entire image to balance the image.

Now, I'll be the last person to say you can throw away your nodal supports for your tripod; I still travel with mine. And, if you are making any QTVRs, there's no way to not use them. However, for the occasional 2-10 panorama hand-held shot. This cannot be beat.

Panorama Tip: When taking panorama shots, rotate the camera to portrait position, not landscape. By taking a series of shots, left or right, you are already getting the image as wide as you want. By taking the photo in a portrait position, you will be getting height you will need later when you crop the image. Also, be sure to overlap your images from 15% - 25% minimum for best results.

Intel

That is, speed. Photoshop is fully Universal, and can take every bit of the Intel processor and run like the dickens.

To best test this, I used the panorama functions mentioned above, but did the process a bit different. There are two ways you can do a panorama: one is to simply go to the menu File -> Automate -> Photomerge. The other approach is if you feel you need more control of the process and wish to lock layers at certain points and/or create layer masks at various points. To do this, you need to select your images and:

1. Open desired images
2. From the File menu, select Scripts -> Load Files into Stack...
3. Select all layers, then Edit -> Auto-Align Layers...
4. and finally Edit -> Auto-Blend Layers

To make this test as rigorous as possible, I used RAW images, which are large. I divided the test into four parts, each step as seen in the list above. In Adobe Camera RAW, I can either maintain an image as a 16 bit image or convert the image to 8 bit. I did the test using both. To give you an idea of the size of these (8.2 megapixel) images, one of them was saved into TIF format (no compression) at both 16 and 8 bit. The 8 bit image was 23.5 MB, the 16 bit image was 46.9 MB. There's a lot of data in each, and I was working with four images to create this panorama.

Lastly, when running any Universal program on an Intel machine, you do have a choice as to whether you run the program in Rosetta or Native. If you run the program in Rosetta, you can still use all of your old plug-ins, but you will not be taking advantage of a the Universal aspect of the program. When you run a program Native, you get full speed but lose every plug-in that hasn't been re-written to Universal. Again, I tested for both.

One last caveat: These are not scientific results. I used the stopwatch on my watch and rounded the time to the closest second. I had other programs running in the background that very likely could have altered any result. To make these readings more sound, I should have restarted the program and/or computer between each test and ran each test multiple times to create averages. I did not do that. Despite the lack of tight controls, the results are reasonable indicators of the speed of the new Photoshop.

So, first up is the G5

G5 dual 2.5 MHz Process, 2 GB RAM, X.4.9
	8 bit	16 bit
Open RAW image	25"	19"
Loading files into Stack	7"	8"
Auto Align	42"	2' 20"
Auto Blend	23"	33"

Next is the MacPro under Rosetta

MacPro dual 3.0 MHz Process, 8 GB RAM, X.4.9 - Rosetta
	8 bit	16 bit
Open RAW image	16"	17"
Loading files into Stack	11"	12"
Auto Align	40"	1' 1"
Auto Blend	24"	27"

Last is the MacPro running Native

MacPro dual 3.0 MHz Process, 8 GB RAM, X.4.9 - Native
	8 bit	16 bit
Open RAW image	9"	14"
Loading files into Stack	3"	4"
Auto Align	17"	31"
Auto Blend	10"	11"

Yeah, that's fast.

Smart Filters.

PS-CS2 introduced Smart Objects, which are "indestructible" layers. That is, you can perform a variety of alterations and transformations and not lose data or permanently change pixels in the layer. This has now been expanded to Filters. Now, if you take an image and, from the Filter menu, select "Convert for Smart Filters." you can run filters that are non-destructive to the original image.

As seen in the screen shot below, you can perform multiple filter operations on multiple layers. After creating your filter effect, a layer mask is created for any touch up operations. Each layer has an "eye" to turn on and off, and you can run all of the standard Blending modes.

However, the full power of this features is that by double-clicking the layer where it says "Filter Gallery," Photoshop re-presents the original Filter, and you can continue to fine-tune your work. In other words, this works exactly like a standard Adjustment Layer. In addition, a layer mask is automatically created, letting you non-destructively show or hide the effects of your non-destructive filtering.

One minor limitation is that the nature of any given filter gallery is not automatically identified, and you cannot rename the filter layer. You can however, rename the layer itself. So, for instance, in the example, above you could rename "Layer 0" to (e.g.,) "Poster Edges."

By the way, as I stated, this is just like using Adjustment Layers to correct images so you do not damage the original pixels. One big gap in Adjustment Layers has been the lack of a Shadow/Highlight... adjustment. Now, if you use a Smart Layer, you can use the Shadow/Highlight... adjustment as an Adjustment Layer. Cool.

Black and White

It's sad, but true. If you ask Photoshop users how to convert an image to grayscale, too many of them would say "Go to The Image menu and select Mode -> Grayscale. You are done!" Well, I did that on the image below. It's grayscale, but doesn't look very good.

On the other hand, if you asked 10 Photoshop experts how to convert a color photo to black and white, you'd get 13 answers. Now, however, there is one easy answer from them all (well, almost all of them).

New with PS-CS3 is the Black and White Adjustment (which is also available as an adjustment layer). As seen below, it is sort of like the channel mixer, but rather than divided into only three colors (RGB), Black and White is divided into six. You can drag each tint to enhance and/or flatten the ranges between the colors. But things get much better when you move the cursor onto the document. There, the cursor turns into an eyedropper, and when you drag left and right across your image, whatever color(s) are predominant under the cursor at the time you moused down will selectively be altered in the Black & White dialog box.

Thus, from the subtle differences between the grayish-brown sand and the brownish-gray elephant seals, I was able to achieve a better tonal separation. Finally, using curves, I was able to make the image "pop" (as they say).

Also note that on the bottom of the Black and White palette is the ability to tint an image, as well as control the saturation. Good stuff.

I've used a wide variety of techniques to convert images to grayscale—from Dr. Brown's double-hue-layers approach to the Channel Mixer to others—but nothing has provided the spot detail control that Black and White provides. It's simply wonderful.

Clone Source

One of the nifty advantages when cloning in PS CS2 Vanishing Point was that you could "see" a ghost image of what you were rubber stamping with. This ability has been brought into Photoshop in a big way. As an opportunity to show what can be done, look below at the image of the squirrel. If I wanted to remove the shadow to the squirrel's right, the standard process was to take some of the wood with no shadow and paint over the region with shadow. However, this can be a very tricky operation to make sure the lines of wood align with the rubber stamped lines of wood. As it is, you have to guess as to where you mouse down. This is usually done by trial and error, but no longer.

Enter the new Clone Source Palette. Here, you can store up to five "stamps" to grab and select from as you alter your image. You can offset the image and have any image scaled up or down in size. This lets you clone things into the distance, and if you need it, you can set the angle the image will be cloned as well.

One special feature (borrowed from Vanishing Point) is the Overlay mode. When this is selected, the user can fine-tune exactly where the stamp will occur. Thus, aligning the strips of wood is a piece of cake. Unfortunately, the overlay is the entire drawing, and the larger the drawing the full size overlay can be is a bit overwhelming. It would be good if in the future you could define how much of an overlay surrounds your images. As it is, the entire image is overlaid over your image, and that can be overwhelming and confusing. All is not completely lost, though, as there is an option called "Auto Hide" that, when checked, will turn off the overlay as soon as you mouse-down.

Refine Edge

So, you are trying to make a selection and you want to get the edge just right. If the edge is too crisp, the monster head on the baby will not look right. You know you need to "feather" the edge a bit, but how much? For years, this has been an issue of luck and experience. Now, a new tool lets you see exactly how much you will be getting: the Refine Edge window.

The Refine Edge command is available on the Tool Options bar for any activity that creates a selection, and it can also be selected from the Select menu (and Option-Command-r)

Across the bottom are five different views of your selection:

1. The first one is the standard view with marching ants.
2. Next is a the QuickMask view
3. The third is your selection against a black background
4. The fourth is your selection against a white background (the squirrel above is shown against the white background).
5. Lastly, you can see just the mask of your selection.

Regarding these views:

• As far as the sliders go, the Radius defines the size of the region effected. Increased Radius is better for refined edges.
• Contrast helps sharpen edge detail and remove fuzzy noise. Contrast helps remove artifacts caused by Radius.
• Smooth averages out jittery selections.
• Feather increases the "softness" around a selection.
• Contract/Expand decreases and expands the size of the selection, and can be used to remove extra background around a selection.

If you make a lot of selections, or if you haven't because it's been too hard, you will find "Refine Edge..." to be a fantastic new tool.

Quick Selection Tool

Speaking of selections, one of the long slighted tools in the selection tool box was the Magic Wand. I actually have always liked the Magic Wand mostly because I knew what it could do and why it couldn't do other things. As such, I had fairly good success when I used it (I didn't use it all that often). Now comes a new addition to the Magic Wand tool. It's called the Quick Selection Tool, and it can be found as a drop down tool from the Magic Wand tool.

The whole trick for making selections is to find edges. The trick to the Magic Wand Tool was to set the Tolerance of what was an edge to a range that would help you work quickly enough to get the job done, but not so quickly as to accept everything. The beauty of the Quick Selection Tool is that it seems to set the tolerance as a condition of what you are doing, sort of a dynamic tolerance.

Instead of clicking, as you do with the Magic Wand, the Quick Selection tool is brushed across the item you want to select. Work slowly and "paint" across the item you are trying to select. As can be seen below, there are very few controls for this tool: brush size, Sample All Layers, and Auto-Enhance. In addition, there are three selection options: Select, Add to Selection, and Subtract from Selection. Below, I've got things set to the Add to Selection set so that as I drag across the elephant seal, my selection grows.

As you continue to drag, sooner or later, your selection will grow in some funny eruption onto the other parts of the drawing, as seen below when the dark sand below the seal became active. When this happens, there is an auto-response action from the user for wanting to tap out Control-z. Resist the urge! Rather, select the third option—Subtract from Selection (or press the Option key)—and drag on the unwanted part of the selection. This "teaches" Photoshop that this texture/color/hue/ is not wanted in the selection.

I have no expectations that the Quick Selection tool will become the predominant selection tool in Photoshop. Rather, it will become a commonly grabbed tool to make those "Quick Selections." On the other hand, this tool, coupled with the "Refine Edge..." window, will create a lot of effective selections for many people.

I could go on with other important enhancements, but let me just list a few here:

• Major changes to the Curves adjustment. There's a histogram now with pre-made (and customizable.) options.
• The Print dialog is now Print w/ Preview, and is extensively rewritten (for the better).
• The Brightness/Contrast adjustment has finally been fixed so it doesn't blow out highlights (in other words, it's now usable).
• The Channel Mixer has been enhanced.
• The Merge to HDR has been made usable by those without tripods due to the Auto Align...features from the Photomerge. Adjustable angles in Vanishing Point.
• And there is more...

Photoshop Extended

As I stated earlier, a number of the Extended items in PS are not for everyone, and I have to add my name to that list. I do not do video, 3D, or much in the line of the analytical tools provided. Because of this, my comments below are somewhat sketchy and limited. On the other hand, if you are one of those who've been wanting these features, you are in luck—they are here!

The Count Tool

I'm going to start off with one of the more esoteric but valuable new features, the Count Tool. The majority of PS users do not need this, but let's say you are doing work for the costal service and they've asked you to count the number of elephant seals on the beach in any given day. As you stare at the screen, pointing with a pen, you count away until someone gets into an argument over at the next desk, and suddenly, "Oh, where was I?"

The Count Tool literally places numerical tags every time you click a mouse. This way you have a running count and verification that every item that needs to be counted, was counted. You can change the color of each count, but you cannot change the size or the font of the number. In addition, you cannot place the counts on a separate layer. Even if you have a new layer active, the numbers show up on the background layer. Finally, the numbers are not "smart" in their contrast. That is, if you have the number set to be a light number to show up against a dark background, if in the photo a different region is lighter, the numbers do not shift to a darker shade. A curious collection of limitations.

But this is a computer, right? It should count for you. Well, it can, but that does depend upon your image and how great a contrast there is for the item you are counting. The image above does not have enough contrast, so performing an automatic count was not possible. The trick is to select each of the items you want to count by either using the Magic Wand (with Contiguous option turned off) or use Color Range. Then, you have PS count all of the items that are selected. The catch is to make sure you have large regions of selections. If you have small fragments of marching ants, each fragment will be counted as a unit.

The automatic counting in PS is good in theory but very limited in practice. It's seldom that anyone has to count canon balls in snow, and it's not easy to select items with any shading on them that doesn't also have extraneous fragment selections. If there is a way to merge the smooth selections of Quick Select with the discontinuous ability of the Magic Wand or Color Range, the full power of this will soar.

Animations

From the esoteric to the more likely popular. As mentioned, PS CS3 comes with the dropping of ImageReady. One of the functions within Image Ready was the Animation Palette. For doing simple animations, IR provided a fairly easy and powerful tool. But this is now PS CS3 Extended, and how does performing Photoshop operations on QuickTime movies sound?

First off, I have to say I am not an animation or movie person. The more I say, the more I will get myself into trouble. Those who know far more about animation than I do will wonder why I'm allowed to say anything. Suffice it to say, I will provide two screen shots. Below, you see a small QT movie I found on my hard drive along with the animation palette. By dragging the timeline, I am able to move the action forward or backward.

However, the best thing I believe I can do for those who know about this is to provide a screen shot of the various tools available to the user. I'm sorry, I do wish I could explore this more for you.

Measurement

If you want to read an interesting subject about an unlikely juxtaposition, read about how we all owe Napoleon a great debt for implementing the metric system. True, he wanted to to help merchants unify their commerce, but we all do owe the metric system to Napoleon. More to the point, a measurement system is based on some fixed unit, and, invariably, that boils down to "a measurement is a specific measurement because someone said it's that measurement." For example, I can say that 100° is boiling water and 0° is frozen water. But I can also say that the same points are 212° and 32°. Either way, the water boils and freezes at the same point, but the numbers affixed to these points is "open."

Now, in Photoshop, you can tell what the size of of something is, literally. In addition, you can do this in 3D via Vanishing Point. At it's basics, you can bring up an image, take the measuring tool and drag out a line. Then, from the Analysis menu -> Set Measurement Scale -> Custom you can define how long a line "that" long is. From this, any planer line will be a percentage of that original line and you can determine any other measurement.

But, we do not take photos (generally) of planer objects. Rather we take photos of 3D objects. If you bring a photo into Vanishing Point and create your various planes, with the ruler tool included in VP, you can then measure length, height, and depth to a reasonable accuracy. In the image below, you can see both a length and an angle measurement for each measurement. Unfortunately you can only show both items or neither; you cannot exclusively show one or the other. For anyone doing re-creations and/or restorations, this will be worth the price of Photoshop alone.

3D

Alas, I know less about 3D than I do about video and animation. And, because I do not own any 3D files, there was no way for me to test or explore these features. Because of these limitations, I can only mention what can be done. According to Adobe, Photoshop Extended:

• Place 3D objects into an image
• Open 3D files in Photoshop
• Edit 3D textures
• Save 3D files
• Transform 3D models
• Move, rotate, or scale a 3D model
• Edit the 3D camera
• Change or create 3D camera views
• Change lighting effects
• Change rendering effects
• View cross sections
• View 3D animations.

In short, this is an amazing release of Photoshop. If you have an Intel Mac, you owe it to yourself to upgrade. If you do any image correction, you owe it to yourself to upgrade. And if you've ever done a panorama, you owe it to yourself to upgrade. Etc., etc., etc.

This has to be one of my favorite Photoshop releases in many many years. Enjoy.
  

See other Adobe CS3 reviews.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.

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