articles/Photoshop/photoshoprevealed-page2

Photoshop CS3 features revealed - part 2 of 1 2

by Mike McNamee Published

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 colours 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 colour- even interactively adjust channels in the large preview. Just click an image area to highlight the appropriate colour 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 colour channels.

Improved Curves adjustment

Take advantage of precise colour correction made easier, faster and more powerful with the improved Curves adjustment. Use the new colour-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 colour 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 colour 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 colour 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 colour improvements.

Color Picker-When choosing a colour in the standard Adobe Color Picker, click Add To Swatches button to instantly add that colour to the document's Swatches palette


Please Note:
There is more than one page for this Article.
You are currently on page 2 Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published
last update 09/12/2022 14:57:53

More Photoshop Articles



There are 0 days to get ready for The Society of Photographers Convention and Trade Show at The Novotel London West, Hammersmith ...
which starts on Thursday 1st January 1970



Fast and intuitive, PortraitPro intelligently enhances every aspect of a portrait for beautiful results.

Update cookies preferences