Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta

Recently Adobe released a public beta of Photoshop CS3. This is help people transition on the new hardware, mainly the new Intel Apple machines.

It is available to licensed users of either the Photoshop CS2 (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard or Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Production Studio Standard and Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Video Bundle (full, upgrade, and education) or Adobe Web Bundle (full, upgrade, and education). You will need to provide your Photoshop CS2, Creative Suite, Production Studio or Bundle serial number in order to get a Photoshop CS3 beta serial number, enabling you to activate the Photoshop beta and use it beyond the two-day grace period.

New features include:

• Non-destructive Smart Filters –
  Smart Filters are Photoshop filters that are applied non-destructively, and that remain live and re-editable. To apply a Smart Filter, select one or more layers and choose Filter->Convert for Smart Filters. The selected layer(s) will be converted to a Smart Object, to which you can apply filters non-destructively. Smart Filters appear as parameters under the layer to which they have been applied. Edit the Smart Filter mask to adjust the filter’s effects on different areas of the image. Note that any filter is treated as a Smart Filter when you apply it to a Smart Object.

• Quick Selection Tool –
  The new Quick Selection Tool creates selections by painting the general area of interest. Photoshop CS3 analyzes the image to complete the selection automatically. To remove pixels from a selection, hold the Opt (Mac)/Alt (Win) key and paint. You’ll find the Quick Selection tool in the same slot as the Lasso tool in the Tools palette.

• Refine Edge –
  The new Refine Edge feature offers a simple, flexible way to modify the edge of any selection. Available via the Options bar or via the Select menu, the Refine Edge dialog lets you smooth, feather, contract or expand the current selection by using simple slider controls. Experiment with the Radius slider to select irregular or fuzzy edges.

• Automatic layer alignment and blending –
  Using automatic layer alignment and blending, easily combine the best parts of multiple images of the same scene into one “best” image. Simply place multiple, related images on separate layers in one document, and let Photoshop CS3 analyze the contents, moving and rotating the layers so they overlap as precisely as possible. Then use the masking tools to reveal the areas you need from different layers to finalize the elements of the composite image. Automatic layer blending seamlessly blends the color and shading into the final image. The “Auto-Align Layers” and “Auto-Blend Layers” commands are both found in the Edit menu. Note that you must have multiple layers selected simultaneously in the Layers palette before you can apply these commands.

  There are some known bugs but that’s to be had in a beta labeled product. Check out more features and bugs here.

  Download the beta from Adobe’s website.