Drury's digital diary

PSA Journal, Jan, 2008 by Fred Drury

Several months ago we promised you a December update on "What's new in Photoshop CS3." In summary, I can say that there's more than we can cover in a single column, but I'll do my best. And apologies up-front if I miss your favorite!

This is the second update for Adobe's Creative Suite[R] and a lot has happened since CS2 was introduced almost two years ago. Quite important to CS3 were Adobe's acquisition of "Raw Shooter Pro," which has left a clear imprint with a much improved Raw processor. Another very important development was Adobe's release of Lightroom[R], which took place early this year. Lightroom's contribution appears in CS in the form of major improvements in the functionality of the Bridge software. The newly arrived Photoshop[R] CS3 now comes in two editions, the basic version and a new version called "Extended" ... this new version is targeted to technical audiences in the medical and engineering world where 3D is an important issue.

The focus of this column will be on basic CS3, and more particularly on the changes in it that will most impact photographers. I'll present the changes more or less in a typical "workflow sequence." starting out with changes that have been made nearest the camera end first.

Bridge[R] first arrived on the scene as an update to Photoshop 7, so it's a much less mature product than is Photoshop. It therefore makes sense that one sees major improvements with new versions of Bridge. This is definitely the case with this new release, which had already been further enhanced with a subsequent update available on the Adobe website. The function of Bridge remains somewhat unclear ... when first released, it appeared Adobe intended it as a "bridge" from Photoshop to the several other programs that formed their Creative Suite ... this seemed to make sense. However, a new issue called Digital Asset Management (DAM) intruded into this picture. DAM is all about how you download, backup, rate, keyword, optimize and archive your digital files so you can find what you want quickly and easily. It now seems that Bridge is morphing into Adobe's DAM tool ... in competition with Extensis Portfolio and Microsoft Expression Media (formerly iView Media Pro). This is further complicated by Adobe's release of Lightroom, which delivers substantially overlapping functionality. Suffice to say, the picture is complicated and the outcome uncertain. In any event, Bridge CS3 is much improved from the CS2 version and its ability to handle DAM tasks is much better and more complete.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The new CS3 Raw processor (and Lightroom's Library module) show considerable improvements most of which came from Raw Shooter Pro. No longer is the RAW processor only for RAW shooters--one of the most significant improvements is the additional capability to handle JPG and TIF images. Now everyone can take advantage of the ability the processor provides for recovering clipped highlights or shadows. Where there were five tabs in CS2, there are now eight in CS3 (Figure 1). Major additions have been made in the Adjust tab with the addition of features designed to assist recovery of highlight and shadow detail. Of special note is the addition of a Grayscale tab which is incredibly useful for converting color images to B&W (Figure 2); this capability is also available within Photoshop CS3 as an adjustment layer. If you're a B&W fan, this will rank as one of the most important improvements in this new version.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Historically the Brightness]Contrast tool has always been an invitation to overkill; a little like using a 201b sledge to repair a fine watch! In CS3 the tool has been much improved and probably is now somewhat useful for rookies. Curves remains far away the best image adjustment tool and it's best to devote one's energies in the direction of learning to use that tool well, rather than spreading energies across multiple and inferior tools including the now-improved Brightness/ Contrast.

Curves aficionados have always felt underserved by the absence of a histogram in their favorite image adjustment tool. Now with CS3 there is a histogram (Figure 3) shown in the background of the dialog ... unfortunately it is not dynamic like the histogram in Levels which updates as you move the sliders in that dialog. There are additional enhancements including a drop-down menu of presets, an auto box which if selected causes Curves to "correct" the image based upon its choice of the lightest and darkest points in the image, boxes that can be checked to overlay channel adjustments so one can see all of the individual channel curves (and the composite). All of these enhancements are "nice" but don't really add much in the way of useful functionality to the Curves tool, in my opinion.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Quick Selections is a new tool in CS3. It was first available in the Elements version which is a way Adobe has "trialed" new techniques in the past and will likely do so in the future. It functions kind of like a magic wand on steroids--you make an initial selection by clicking the mouse in an area of this image and it returns a local selection ... if you then hold down the shift key and drag the mouse to an area you'd like added to the selection, the program "automatically" follows your instruction. With a little practice, this tool will help you make quite complex selections much faster than any other option. The Quick Selection tool is grouped with the Magic Wand in CS3.