To run the CS3 beta on Mac, you will need to have Mac OS X 10.4.8. To run the beta on Windows, you’ll need to have Windows XP SP2 or Vista. Read on for full minimum system requirements…

Photoshop Legend Recognized for a Lifetime of Contributions to the Development, Advancement and Education of the Digital Imaging Community

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) is proud to announce that Bruce Fraser – best-selling author, internationally recognized Adobe® Photoshop® expert, Photoshop® Hall of Famer, and co-founder and principal of Pixel Genius LLC – has been named as the recipient of the first NAPP Lifetime Achievement Award.

There are some known issues with the Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta. For example running under MacIntel natively older non-Universal Binary plug-ins will not load into CS3. Also under MacIntel the normal brush size cursors are not working. The new UI can also “test” some Windows XP video drivers. Also, all plug-in filters will need to be updated to be used as Smart Filters in CS3. Read more info regarding issues on Scot Byer’s blog.

As of this morning-Dec. 15th at 10:00am Central, the main pages for Photoshop CS3 on Labs.Adobe.Com are not yet up. There are some links that have been floating around that will allow you to actually download the installer, but so far the page for obtaining a CS3 beta is not yet working according to John Nack.

Some of our visitors to PhotoshopNews may already be aware that Bruce Fraser, noted author, lecturer and “color geek”, was diagnosed several months ago with terminal lung cancer.

PixelGenius, the makers of PhotoKit, PhotoKit Sharpener and PhotoKit Color 2.0 has announced plans to offer beta updates of their plug-ins to run natively on the MacIntel version of Adobe Photoshop CS3.

With the release of the Adobe Photoshop CS3 public beta, users who already have a Photoshop CS2 serial number will be able to download and install the brand new version of Photoshop-at least in its current beta form.

One of the things users will notice is a new application icon which heralds the beginning of the new Creative Suite 3 icon art.

Be aware also that it will take some time to get it downloaded-the Mac version is 684MB (including Bridge and Camera Raw 4) and the Windows version is 355MB. The larger Mac file size is due largely because it’s a Universal Binary that includes both the PPC as well as MacIntel optimized code.

John Nack, senior product manager for Adobe Photoshop, photo by George Jardine.

To coincide with the announcement and availability of Photoshop CS3 as a public beta, Martin Evening has released a sample chapter from his forthcoming book: Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, published by Focal Press.

The new edition of this best selling book should be hitting the streets in Spring of 2007, shortly after the official release of Photoshop CS3.

As a special perk for PhotoshopNews readers, Martin has made his Chapter 1: What’s New in Photoshop CS3 available for free download.

The 21 page PDF, outlines all the new features of Photoshop CS3 and Bridge 2, written from a user’s perspective. It offers an honest appraisal of what will be on offer in this new version of the program, if you really want to know what’s NEW!

Got questions about the Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta release?
These are the official answers from Adobe…

CS3 Learning Center Offers Tutorials, New Feature Overviews, Exclusive Interviews and More for the Newly-Released Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) CS3 Public Beta Preview

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) is excited to announce the launch of their most comprehensive online learning center ever in conjunction with the release of the Adobe® Photoshop® Creative Suite 3 public beta preview. The CS3 Learning Center is now live and available at www.photoshopuser.com/cs3.

Company Also Previews Adobe Bridge and All-New Adobe Device Central

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Dec. 14, 2006 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) will introduce a beta version of Adobe® Photoshop® CS3 software, the next release of the world standard in digital imaging, on Friday, December 15th. Adobe is delivering a widely available Photoshop CS3 beta to enable customers to more easily transition to the latest hardware platforms, particularly Apple’s new Intel-based systems. The beta is available as a Universal Binary for the Macintosh platform, as well as for Microsoft® Windows® XP and Windows Vista computers. The final shipping release of Adobe Photoshop CS3 is planned for Spring 2007. The software can be downloaded at: http://labs.adobe.com, in the early hours Pacific Standard Time on December 15.

Source: Computer Arts

Photoshop celebrates another birthday soon and will then be old enough to drive a car, but how are today’s creative mavericks getting to grips behind the controls of Adobe’s pole-position front runner?

I’ll be taking some personal time off this week for family reasons, so PhotoshopNews will have only spotty coverage. However, you -WILL- want to tune into PhotoshopNews this coming Friday, December 15th-I can say no more…

Press Release: LaserSoft Imaging has released SilverFast 6.5. Apart from many improvements and enhancements, the new version implements “outstanding new features to support your creativity and productivity when using SilverFast software,” according to the company.

Software update adds new features and built-in video tutorials

Press Release: Portland, OR - onOne Software, Inc., has announces that Mask Pro 4 - the upgrade to the company’s popular digital image masking plug-in Mask Pro 3 - is now shipping. Mask Pro 4 provides a complete collection of Photoshop® plug-in tools that allow users unprecedented flexibility when tackling the most challenging masking job. And this new version focuses on teaching the user how to best use this comprehensive toolset for masking a wide range of images.

Press Release: Ben Long at completedigitalphotography.com has posted a Windows version of his ACR Version Control package. For raw shooters who use Adobe Camera Raw as their raw converter, this free set of applications makes it simple to create and manage multiple versions of the same raw document.

Adobe opens up access to photography directory to freelance photographers through the NUJ
Source: Macworld UK

Adobe has at last provided codes that enable UK freelance photography members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) to join its photography directory.

Adobe Is World’s First to Achieve Three Platinum-Level Certifications for Energy and Environmental Design Excellence

Source: Macworld
Written by Peter Cohen

IDG World Expo on Thursday offered details on this year’s Market Symposiums at Macworld Conference & Expo, which happens at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif. from January 8 - 12, 2007.

Introduction to tethered shooting - If you are able to connect your camera directly to the computer, Lightroom has the potential to let you import image files directly from the camera.

Photographs can be quickly brought into Lightroom, bypassing the need for a camera card and having to configure the Import settings every time you import a batch of images.

This is also referred to as ‘tethered shooting’ and I say Lightroom has the potential to do this because Lightroom will need to rely on other software that can communicate with your camera and download capture files to a specified folder location.

With this in place, Lightroom can be configured to automatically import these images into the library.

Alien Skin Software has released a new plug-in called Snap Art.

From their web site: Snap Art creates beautiful, natural media artwork in a single step. Render any image in an unlimited variety of real-world art styles including oil paint, pencil sketch, pen & ink, comics, and more. Great for stylizing photos or graphics, Snap Art works without laborious hand editing and is more versatile than Actions or brushes.

Conventional artists often use an underdrawing to outline key objects within a composition. This lightly drawn sketch serves as a guide and is usually painted or drawn over in the final composition. Similarly, Snap Art uses edge detection to discern the objects, edges, lines, and shapes of an original image. Then, using this outline, an advanced paint engine strokes and fills this outline using the brushes and colors you specify. This allows realistic reproduction of detail, but balances that realism with convincing artistry.

informit.com has posted a sample chapter from Bruce Fraser’s Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop CS2.

The sample chapter is provided courtesy of Peachpit Press and is available for reading at this url: Image Sharpening Tips From Expert Bruce Fraser.

About the book…
Whether you scan, shoot, or capture, the process of digitizing images introduces softness, and to get great-looking results, you’ll need to sharpen the great majority of digital images.

DxO Optics Pro v4.1 improves speed and fluidity for greater comfort and productivity. DxO Optics Pro v4.1 is compatible with the all-new DxO FilmPack and is immediately available for Windows and Mac users.

Press Release: PARIS, France — DxO Labs announces the immediate availability of DxO Optics Pro v4.1 — an upgrade to the recently released DxO Optics Pro v4, the company’s flagship automatic digital image enhancement software. Among the many speed improvements in DxO Optics Pro v4.1, users will be particularly impressed with the increased speed with which Raw images are previewed (2-4 times faster than in version 4.0) and the increased fluidity of the sliders (more than twice as fast).