Adobe has made a surprise announcement at the Photo Marketing Association Show that there will be not one, but two Photoshop CS3 editions launched at the end of this month.

Adobe has already made available a beta version of the Photoshop CS3. The company has now announced that a separate edition, named Photoshop CS3 Extended, would also be offered. So which edition is right for you?

Photoshop CS3 will include improved productivity via a streamlined interface, camera Raw enhancements, Zoomify export, live filters, more precise color correction, cloning and healing tools, automatic layer alignment and blending, easier selections and merging capabilities.

Photoshop CS3 features Adobe Bridge, a file browser that allows users to process and review multiple camera images at once while also including multiple layer control, which enables users to select and move, group, transform and warp objects by clicking and dragging directly on the canvas. Photoshop CS3 also allows users to utilize Adobe Device Central, which lets users design, preview and test content that is created for smaller screens.

By using Photoshop CS3, creative professionals can polish digital photos, wrap an image around any shape using Image Warp and retouch photos using the Spot Healing Brush option. Users will also be able to neutralize red eyes with the one-click red-eye correction tool.

Photoshop CS3 is clearly aimed at designers and professional photographers.

The second, all-new version, called Photoshop CS3 Extended, adds on top of those features support for 3D rendering, motion support, paint and clone over multiple video frames, and comprehensive image analysis tools. Photoshop CS3 Extended also simplifies the workflow for professionals in architecture, engineering, medical and science.

According to Adobe, “with Photoshop CS3 Extended, film, video and multimedia professionals, and graphic and web designers can leverage the power of the Photoshop image-editing toolset and paint engine when editing 3D and motion-based content.

“Film and video specialists can perform 3-D model visualization and texture editing, paint and clone over multiple video frames. Animators can now render and incorporate rich 3-D content into their 2-D compositions. Graphic and web designers can create an animation from a series of images – such as time series data – and export it to a wide variety of formats, including QuickTime, MPEG-4 and Adobe Flash Video.”

Photoshop CS3 Extended also enables users to extract valuable quantitative and qualitative data from images. In addition to measurement and analysis tools, architects, medical professionals and scientists will enjoy increased support for specialized image formats so they can easily view, annotate, and edit images in their native format. Radiologists can closely monitor a patient’s progress over time, scientific researchers can create animations from medical images for presentation purposes, and architects can make accurate measurements of objects in their 3-D images.

“With the release of two new editions of Photoshop, Adobe continues to push the boundaries with innovative tools that empower people to communicate visually in powerful new ways,” said Alexis Gerard, author of “Going Visual” and president of Future Image Inc., hosts of the 6Sight Future of Imaging conference.

“While Photoshop CS3 will remain the digital imaging standard for photographers, Photoshop CS3 Extended is bringing to new audiences the proven benefit of Photoshop, and also exploring feature sets that eventually may benefit a broader market.”

Both Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended software will be formally introduced on March 27, 2007. Available as Universal Binary for the Macintosh platform as well as for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista computers, the final shipping releases of Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended are planned for Spring 2007.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 7:29 pm under Software, Technology.

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.
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