Photoshop is still A #1 in graphic design

Intro

Adobe Photoshop CS3 is here, and it is all the Photoshop goodness it was before, and more. Anyone willing to pay the $600 price tag, or $200 upgrade, will find the CS3 is worth every penny and is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in graphic work.

Background

The first time I used Photoshop was back in 2002. It was Photoshop 7.0.1, and I was hooked immediately. I taught myself how to use it, and than took classes to see it's full potential. Photoshop had it's start in 1988 with version 0.63. I used it once, and it is very simple, but for it's time it was a breakthrough. Now today we have this behemoth of a program. Photoshop has built a reputation for being a standard in graphic design, and you'll soon see why.

First look

When you first open the program, you will find it is very similar to any Photoshop before it. You have your menu bar, canvas, toolbox and palette windows as you would have in CS2 or CS1. One thing that is noticeable, though, is that despite the size of the program, it opened quite fast. Faster than CS2, even. While it is minor overall, it was impressive. Once you open a new document, you can start using the many upon many options Photoshop has available to you. So many, in fact, that it's borderline insane. It's easy to see why new users are turned aback by Photoshop. For one, there are so many options that it is hard to find any that seem familiar to a novice. Things like color menus, contrast, hue, saturation, canvas sizing, and transformations are all buried under a mountain of other options that are unfamiliar. Second, many of the options have vague names to them, and unless you have extensively used Photoshop before, you will have no idea what they specifically do. Crystallize, for example, may give an idea of the function, but it will certainly be different from your expectations the first time. Finally, the settings on many options will be difficult for new users to understand. Take the Posterization option, for instance. What does the Posterize setting mean to a novice? Not much. It takes time to get used to the massive number of possibilities Photoshop presents. For seasoned Photoshop users, it will be business as usual, and I found it easy to use and navigate. If anything, it does have an easy to use menu and palette system, and provides dialouge boxes for most every option if you are unsure of it's function. The dialouge boxes present you with a preview of the what the function will do to your images, and shows the settings for the function. It makes your work a lot easier, but doesn't seem to help new users much. If you've ever tried to use CS1 or CS2, be prepared for the same steep learning curve in CS3.

New features

Photoshop CS3 contains everything CS2 had, but how does CS3 build on it? Wonderfully, to say the least. Of the new options available to you, the most impressive is smart filters. Converting an image for smart filtering allows you to have complete say over what a filter can do and affect, instead of just the standard filter function. You can change the opacity, apply blending modes, change colorations, determine the areas it can affect and more. The smart filter has it's own layer mask, so you can turn on and off or change the intensity of a filter affect just like using a normal layer mask. This gives you many more possibilities on editing you images, or for creating work from scratch. It really is the best new thing Photoshop has seen since camera raw 1.0. The other notable new feature is the improved suport for camera raw, which is Photoshop's support for raw image files. DNG (digital negatives) are now fully supported, and include many more camera models file formats. Working with raw files gives more more freedom than with .jpg files, with access to essential settings like white balance, color balance, temperature, and sharpening to name a few. While some of these can be done on JPG files, quality will drop when theses settings are applied. On raw files, all quality is retained. For pure aesthetic photo manipulation, professionals will find camera raw more refined, and an excellent tool. Also on board is a quick select tool, which allows you to not only select parts of an image, but precisely control the quality of such selections. The quick select tool is much more accurate and cleaner than using a standard selection tool or the magic wand for making specific selections. This is very useful if you want to isolate, remove something or extract it for another use.

Other info

Even though Photoshop is huge, it can be expanded. Crazy, right? Well, this is where plug-ins come in. Plug-ins are small programs that add to Photoshops functionality. Many are filter based, though some have unique and new functions. Many come at a cost, but you'll find they are worth it. Some that I recommend are Eye Candy, which is a filter set, Plugin Galaxy, which contains both filters and effects and Alien Skin for photo enhancements, Ozone for color work and Fluid Mask, which is like a more sophisticated version of quick select, and easily the best Photoshop plug-in right now. The help section in Photoshop CS3 is now bigger than ever, and easy to use. You can access it by the help menu on the menu bar. The contents are spread much like an index, but theres also a search bar to quickly find what your after. The shear amount of topics in CS3's help section is vast, and most of the topics are specific and very useful. If you ever find yourself stuck, than CS3's impressive help section is there for you. Photoshop supports huge files with more ease now, with files over 2GB in size using the .PSB file. This, if you ever need it, is very handy.

Bottom line

Photoshop CS3 is the best graphics program available on the market, hands down. At $600 for the standard version, it's expensive, but if you are a graphics artist or a professional photographer, than this is one tool you can't be without. I am very happy with CS3, I can't describe how much joy I get out of using it.