Software Review: Adobe Master Collection - Photoshop CS3 From Adobe Systems - Page 2

• Stacks and Filters in Adobe Bridge CS3 – While I will cover Adobe Bridge in a later installment, in Photoshop CS3 it comes with a three-column layout with saved workspaces and faster performance. You can stack related images into a single thumbnail which provides for easier browsing. You can also filter your views based on dates, metadata, as well as other criteria.

• Quick Selection Tool – While there has always been the ability to extract areas from within an image, in Photoshop CS3 they have made it much easier to choose the image area with the Quick Select Tool.

• Refine Edge – reinvents the Feather feature in prior versions of Photoshop. It improves the quality of a selection's edges, and allows you to view the selection against different backgrounds for easier editing.

• Non-destructive Smart Filters – is one of the really great features in this version that allows Photoshop filters to be applied in a non-destructive manner. This means that you can re-edit your filter changes. Because Smart Filters have their own Layer Mask, you can use the mask to filter exact spots on the image. You can also scale, transform, and filter your images in a non-destructive workflow.

• Camera Raw 4.x – offers new image processing abilities that correspond to the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program and shares the same Adobe Camera Raw processing engine. These include Recovery, Fill Light Controls, and Vibrance adjustments. The other big improvement in ACR 4, is that you can now edit non-raw images such as JPEGs and TIFF  directly.

• Adjustable Cloning and Healing with Preview Overlay – While the Cloning tool and Healing brush have been available in prior versions, in Photoshop CS3 they now have enhanced capabilities. Now you can precisely position the destination for the brush stroke as well as offset width, height and rotation for the source area.

• Black and White Conversion – is now much easier and much more powerful with an adjustment that allows you to quickly remap the colors in your image to monochrome. The slider settings let you set the proportions of the color components that are used to create the black and white conversion.

• Improved Curves Adjustment – will allow you to make precise color corrections with much less work. You can use the new color-correction presets included with Photoshop CS3, or create your own to use over and over.

Article Author: T. Michael Testi

T. Michael Testi is software developer, a writer, and a photographer. He also blogs at PhotographyTodayNet and at All This and Everything Else.

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