![]() It’s been two years since the last new version of Photoshop, so naturally there are a lot of changes. On the other side of the screen the tool palette has been tidied up, and now defaults to a single column of buttons, although it can be switched to a double column with the click of a mouse. ![]() Palette snapping to the right of the screen has also been improved, with multiple options for arranging and using palettes. It does the same job as the palette dock, but is quicker and easier to use as well as looking a lot tidier. ![]() Infrequently-used palettes can be added to this panel as extra buttons, and unwanted buttons can be dragged off and deleted. Instead the left-hand column of palettes now comes with a customisable row of button icons. ![]() The messy and unhelpful palette dock, first introduced in Photoshop 7.0, which allowed surplus tool palettes to be stored like index cards with visible tabs, has been dropped. The shape and appearance of the palette and tool bar windows is now more in line with the Windows Vista look, with neat semi-transparent frames rather than the rather stark and blocky look of earlier versions. The improvements to the interface are both cosmetic and practical. Further performance tweaks include improved compatibility with dual-core processors and Windows Vista. However CS3 more than halves that time, re-starting in just 3.2 seconds. Shut down the program, do something else for a while and then start it up again, and Photoshop CS2 will be up and running in about seven and a half seconds, which is amazingly fast for such a large and complex program. Obviously absolute performance will vary depending on the specification of your system, but on my PC (Windows XP Pro, Intel Core2 Duo 1.8GHz, 2GB DDR2, SATA2 HD) starting CS3 after re-booting the computer took just over 18 seconds, against 22 seconds for CS2, but it is in subsequent start times that the biggest improvement is noticeable. The first improvement you’ll notice is in start-up times. Another alternative is the Student Edition, costing around £140, although this requires proof that you really are a student and cannot be used for commercial purposes. However since it is still possible to buy CS2 for around £285, this is actually a cheaper alternative to buying the full product. The Windows version of Photoshop CS3 costs around £500 or more, while the premium CS3 Extended version, which includes the ability to work with video and 3D content, costs a hefty £800, and those prices are from discounted online retailers, the list price for CS3 Extended is a wallet-crushing £1,150.Įven upgrading from earlier versions is expensive, with the CS3 upgrade pack (which will upgrade from Photoshop 7.0, CS or CS2) costing around £160 and the CS3 Extended Upgrade pack costing £390. It isn’t intended for amateur home users, and people just looking for an easy way to resize and brighten up a few snapshots would be much better off looking elsewhere. Since its earliest days, Photoshop has been preferred by and developed for imaging professionals, including photographers, artists and designers. Please note that this review is based on, and the screenshots are taken from, the Windows XP PC version of the program. Photoshop is launched along with the rest of the newly revamped Creative Suite 3, but is of course available as a stand-alone program. Version 10.0 improves many existing features, adds some surprising new ones, and also greatly improves the appearance of the user interface, something which has needed doing since version 7.0. It’s also somewhat larger than that original version 1.0, since it comes on a DVD and requires 1.5GB of disk space for installation. This time it’s Photoshop CS3, significantly the tenth version of the program, and the most ambitious to date. Here we are now in May 2007, and it’s update time again. An update, unsurprisingly called Photoshop CS2, came along less than two years later in April 2005, adding many new features such as Smart Objects, a red-eye tool and the invaluable Spot Healing brush. The concept of Creative Suite, incorporating and harmonising a whole range of Adobe’s other programs, including ImageReady, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, Encore and AfterEffects, was introduced in 2003 along with Photoshop 8.0, known as Photoshop CS. The first Windows version (v2.5) appeared in 1992, layers were introduced in version 3.0 in 1994, multiple undo history in version 5.0 in 1998, and camera RAW support was added with version 7.0 in 2002. Photoshop has grown and changed over the years, but has always incorporated the latest developments, reinforcing its position as the industry standard for professional image editing. The entire program came on a single 1.44MB floppy disk. The first full version published by Adobe appeared on the Macintosh in 1990. The original Apple Macintosh version was written in 1988 by brothers Thomas and John Knoll. It’s hard to believe, but Photoshop is nearly 20 years old.
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