By: Erik Vlietinck
Thu, March 29, 2007 - 6:01:00
Pros: 0

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When Adobe decided to release two versions of Photoshop CS3, I for one wondered why. Now that I’ve seen the pre-release, it’s obvious. The Extended version has a lot more power, but some of that power is overkill to amateur and semi-professional photographers. Except for the DICOM support, most other image editors will want Extended, though.

In Extended you will get 3D visualisation and texture editing right in Photoshop (still too buggy to test properly at this stage), motion graphics and video layers (also on Mac OS X, with Capture Scratch QuickTime files right from Final Cut Pro or Express), measurement and data tools in the Analysis menu, DICOM support (medical), MATLAB support, and movie paint. You’ll get more complete support for adjustable cloning and healing with overlay previews, 32-bit HDR, a more powerful vanishing point feature, animation tools for Flash projects, better ruler and count tools, and more advanced image stack processing (especially useful for medical use).

What Photoshop CS3 in the basic version and the Extended one have in common, is a vast array of improved and new tools and features. Except for the obvious interface improvements, the non-destructive Smart Filters are among the most useful for any image editor. They allow you to adjust a filter’s effects on different areas in the image.

My personal favourite is the Quick Selection tool. That one is too good to be true: it enables you to quickly create a rough selection, then fine-tune that with the Refine Edge toolbox. In that Toolbox --more a dialogue window, really-- you can set feather values, smooth, expand or contract, etc. Every slider has an icon that changes so that you can see right in the dialogue how the image will be affected.

Selecting Image Areas Fast

The Quick Selection tool is my number one most wanted feature. My second most wanted feature is the Color Replacement Tool. The Color Replacement tool simplifies replacing specific colours in your image. You can paint over a targeted colour with a corrective colour. The Color Replacement tool doesn’t work in images in Bitmap, Indexed, or Multichannel colour modes.

This tool has a tolerance setting. You can enter a percentage value (ranging from 0 to 255) where a low percentage is used to replace colours very similar to the pixel you click, and a higher percentage to replace a broader range of colours.

As far as I could see, the Color Replacement Tool is most useful in areas were there’s sufficient contrast and difference between colours. In those areas it will enable you to “colour behind” objects that have a distinctively different colour. Spectacular and useful!

For 3D artists, Photoshop CS3 Extended has another most wanted new feature: the ability to open 3D objects in Photoshop and the ability to create a new layer from a 3D file. While I could open a 3D file without any problems, the “Create New Layer” capability made the beta crash. Well, it’s still a beta for a reason. In fact, the next most wanted feature did not make the application crash at all. 

3D and Movie Support

File formats supported for 3D processing are OBJ, 3DS, Collada, KMZ (google Earth), and U3D (CAD).

In the Extended version, you can also open movies. QuickTime movies are supported. I opened one that I had imported through Final Cut Pro. The new Workspaces option --which allows you to save all settings in Photoshop, including which palettes and windows should appear, and which menu commands are available to you-- enabled me to open the new Timeline.

I could now edit every frame of the QuickTime file if I wanted. The video file is treated as one layer, but one special layer, where some of the After Effects commands are available to you, right there in Photoshop CS3. The Clone palette --also new and much improved-- has a special control for painting and cloning in video: the Frame Offset control, which allows for cloning or healing from any frame to another dynamically, in real-time.

The vanishing point is more powerful in Photoshop CS3 Extended than it is in the normal edition. It supports planes that are not at 90-degrees angles and gives you the ability to measure in perspective. You’ll define the scale, and then you can measure any distance along the plane even in photographs with sharp angled points of view.