When I worked with the new Adobe Photoshop CS3, I realized that I am facing one of the key versions in the history of Photoshop, the new updates in Photoshop CS3 takes it to a new era of creativity. The new Adobe Photoshop CS3 is part of the CS3 family, which is remarked with the deep integration between its products, I myself see this feature of integration the key feature in all the CS3 products especially after merging Macromedia products such as Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver…etc. to the family.

It Has a Timeline Now!!

With the new integration feature you can easily move through products easily, you can copy an object from a program like Illustrator and paste it into Flash, you can open PSD layer in Flash instead of one merged layer and furthermore, you can create video content for board casting from inside Photoshop!! Yes, the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 supports creating video content. Many people I told them this feature surprised and say WOW, really!!

Actually, if you noticed that you will see that Adobe did not produce Image Ready in the CS3, and give to Photoshop its timeline after doing some enhancement in the timeline to be more video-friendly instead of the previous timeline in Image Ready, which was more suitable for creating web animated GIFs.

The new animation feature in Photoshop CS3 allows you to choose the video file template that suite your area from different types of presets. Also, it allows you to render your animation in different formats including 3G video content for mobile and FLV Flash video.

Figure1. Adobe Photoshop CS3 interface

A User-friendly Interface:

The new interface on Adobe Photoshop CS3 becomes more user-friendly and saves space for working area by the docking panels and the panels icons, which allows you to only see icon for each panel and save more space to your work. This new interface is unified for the entire CS3 package, so you can feel that you are in the same environment wile while working in different application within the CS3 packages (Figure1).

Also, the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 allows you to choose from different types of workspace view depending on your needs and most wanted panels. You can also create your custom workspace preset and save it to use while working with Photoshop CS3.

The 3D Layer:

The second remarked feature in Adobe Photoshop CS3 is its support for 3D layers. The 3D layer allows you to import 3D files into Photoshop. Further more, with simply click on the 3D layer you can edit you 3D object, change its position, pan on it, zoom to the suitable size, and choose the object light type and even the rending method. You can choose to show your object as wireframe, full render or shaded style.

Figure2. The 3D layer editing mode

The Integration:

As I said earlier, the integration is one of the key features that mark all the products inside the CS3 family. The integration between Photoshop and Flash allows you to open PSD files in Flash as layers in the new PSD Import feature in Flash and rename these layers, convert it to symbols…etc.

Also, you can open the PSD files into Fireworks and easily view the Photoshop slices in Fireworks.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 also includes an icon to connect you directly to the Adobe Bridge, which allows you to navigate your local machine for files and open it in Photoshop with simply drag and drop (Figure3).
On the other hand, the new Photoshop CS3 enables testing content and previews your work on your mobile or pocket device using the Adobe Device Central that comes along with the CS3 package to make sure that your work will display correctly over devices (Figure 4).

Figure3. Adobe Bridge CS3

Figure4. Adobe Device Central CS3

The new Adobe Photoshop CS3 comes in two versions, the limited version, which costs $ 649 and the extended one which costs $999 and includes more features than the limited version. You can know more about this new release by visiting the Adobe site on the following link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/