Month: December 2006

Photoshop CS3 beta update

I’m a bit underwhelmed at the moment, can’t see anything “must have” appearing here. The new palettes and layout methods do look promising (though require getting used to).
I’m assuming Adobe have left out a few features they intend putting into the release candidate because as they stand CS3 running native on Intel Macs looks like the only compelling reason to buy.

Quicker start up times on Windows PCs is nice but not exactly compelling. The new Bridge crashes too often for me to use it much.

I would advise clients on Powerpc macs or windows XP that they are not missing much at the moment though you can download and install the beta and run it in parallel with CS2 to see for yourself.

Photoshop CS3 Beta

A little bit exciting this one, for the first time Adobe are releasing a public beta (ie unfinished) version of CS3 Bridge2 and Camera Raw 4 for everyone with an existing Photoshop licence to try.

The link as of 10am wasn’t yet live but this will work sometime today:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs%5Fphotoshop

My guess is that there are lots of people (including potentially me) who are holding off from buying an Intel Mac until Photoshop CS3 is out and Apple would like a smoother buying curve (hinted to Adobe?). For whatever reason it will be interesting to see the Intel benchmarks for new windows/macs….

I will be playing extensively on it to see if any of my client actions need tweaking or if there are better ways to increase production, I will report on this page over the next few weeks.

You may want to try it yourself, read the licence carefully and be aware of what your doing – I wouldn’t do any serious client production on the beta just in case there are a few funnies.

Stephen