No Reason Not To Upgrade To Photoshop CS3 (Page 4)

Using the new measurement tools (inset), one can measure areas and distances. Photoshop keeps all the data in an easy-to-use log. Click the image to view at full size.

The Analysis menu and Photoshop’s new measurement tools are designed to help architects, the medical community and other professionals who need quantitative analysis. Imagine you have a schematic drawing in Photoshop. Establish the scale of the drawing (1 inch may be equal to 1 mile, for instance), then use selection tools or the new Ruler and Count tools to measure objects or distance. The Count tool doesn’t measure distance but tallies objects. All this data is organized by Photoshop CS3 Extended into a Measurement Log for easy access or export.

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Using the new measurement tools (inset), one can measure areas and distances. Photoshop keeps all the data in an easy-to-use log. Click the image to view at full size.

The Analysis menu and Photoshop’s new measurement tools are designed to help architects, the medical community and other professionals who need quantitative analysis. Imagine you have a schematic drawing in Photoshop. Establish the scale of the drawing (1 inch may be equal to 1 mile, for instance), then use selection tools or the new Ruler and Count tools to measure objects or distance. The Count tool doesn’t measure distance but tallies objects. All this data is organized by Photoshop CS3 Extended into a Measurement Log for easy access or export.

Working with DICOM images in Photoshop CS3 Extended. Click the image to view at full size.

DICOM, which won’t interest you much unless you work regularly with medical scans. DICOM files are basically the native file format for CAT scanners, MRI scanners, ultrasound and X-ray machines, and they are different in that they can have any number of frames. Photoshop CS3 Extended includes a DICOM dialog box that can open multiple files and frames simultaneously and allows full editing and export capabilities.

MATLAB support, another capability you may never need to use. MATLAB is useful when building graphical representations of mathematical functions and algorithms, and Photoshop CS3 Extended allows for easy manipulation and plotting of data via MATLAB to create dynamic graphics based on data.

On the left: a DICOM frame. On the right: the result of stacking a sequence of DICOM frames and creating the average of them. The image becomes more realistic. Click the image to view at full size.

Image Stacks may be the most exciting development to come out of Photoshop CS3 Extended, and it definitely gets the most oohs and ahhs out of crowds at demonstrations. Basically, Photoshop CS Extended can compare groups of similar images and execute one of several kinds of commands to composite them. One example: after pulling several images out of a DICOM file, a surgeon can combine the images as “slices” of a patient to create a two-dimensional image of the patient with depth. Using the measurement tools, Photoshop CS3 Extended can also look for the maximum distance in pixels from one point to another. Another example of the power of Image Stacks is Photoshop CS3′s ability to remove large objects from photos by comparing several similar photos, recognizing what should not be in the final image and using image data from the other shots to replace what is there. Imagine taking 20 shots of a landmark at a street corner, then using Image Stacks to remove any people walking through the shots!

Photoshop CS3 Extended comes with all the CS3 Premium suites (Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium and Master Collection) and it’s definitely more powerful than Photoshop CS3 Standard. I’d recommend moving up to the Extended version if you can afford it. Photoshop CS3 Standard is the traditional “upgrade” to Photoshopâ€”same application with improved features and a few new surprises. Photoshop CS3 Extended, however, has more radical improvements that make it stand out.

BUYING ADVICE

While writing my review I asked myself, “If someone asked me if they should upgrade Photoshop to CS3, could I give a reason not to do so?” I honestly can’t think of a reason to not upgrade. The price will turn off some (it costs $199 to upgrade a standalone copy of Photoshop CS2, CS or 7 to CS3 Standard, $349 to upgrade to CS3 Extended) but the application in itself has made enough of a leap forward that I would say this is the most important Photoshop upgrade since 6.0 (the CS upgrade ranks up there as well). The vast changes with the entire Creative Suite line makes it even more important to upgrade your collection of Adobe software if you haven’t done so already. The one real caveat: have a powerful computer to run Photoshop CS3. Creative Suite 3 is three times as large as CS2 and Photoshop CS3 has grown accordingly. However, compared to the other CS3 applications, Photoshop does an excellent job of maintaining performance and staying away from pauses and crashes. I cannot always say the same about other CS3 applications.

I attribute Photoshop’s maximized performance to its public beta program, which has done a great job of optimizing Photoshop for its official release. I think Adobe should release public betas of all its creative professional softwareâ€”it definitely worked for Photoshop and Lightroom!