Feature: Adobe Photoshop CS3 - the big view on Standard, Extended and the Photoshop Line.
Motivation: This is an overview of Photoshop CS3 and both of its versions
Over the past 10 years Adobe has dominated the high end bitmap graphics market place with Photoshop. Like Xerox for copying, "photoshop" has become a part of the language - albeit slightly slanderous as in "I photoshopped this headline picture for the National Enquirer".

But the dominate position that Photoshop has had at the high end has escaped them at the medium and low-end photo-finishing marketplace where the likes of ACDSee, Corel PaintShop Pro, and Corel/Ulead Photo Impact, and Xara have brought features, ease of use and pricing that Adobe was hard pressed to match. But for the past 2-3 years with Photoshop Elements and more recently Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe has entered the fray with better pricing, features, and help towards better ease of use. But Adobe products still have the biggest learning curves.

However, with the release of new Photoshop Elements 6 (at $89US street) and PhotoShop Lightroom 1.1 (at $288US street), Adobe ups the features again while maintaining competitive pricing and in both products emphasizing more ease of use. Now Adobe is fully into the entry level photo editing fray. So now people consistently ask the following question - when is it appropriate to use standard Photoshop ? But really they are asking a series of questions:

1)How good is Photoshop relative to their nearest competitors (including Adobe)?

2)When can I no longer afford to bypass standard Photoshop ?

3)What is the value add of Photoshop Extended ?

4)How big of a learning curve is there associated with using standard Photoshop ?

5)Are there some free, but good photo editors to learn image editing first on ?

Click on a topic to go immediately there

1) Curves dialog now allow saving presets and then loading them on entry. Here Photoshop is playing catchup to PaintShop Pro which allows storing and loading named presets for all its filters and color adjustments. Finally, Photoshop is starting to catch up.
2)Expanded HDR capabilities with new 32bit brushes, image adjustment, filters, and selection tools. So Photoshop stays a step ahead of competitors which are just starting on HDR.
3)Photoshop continues to expand its set of non-destructive operations beyond color adjustment and filter layers now with new, user-customized Smart Filters. For some designers this is a major enhancement.
4)Zoomify stored image option takes advantage of HTML etc to allow for greater image interaction (pan and zoom) on the Web. Photoshop manages all the underlying Web code.
5)Device Central expands preview and output, especially to embedded or mobile devices.
6)Camera Raw dialog and processing improved once again with new features.
7)Vanishing Point now has added 3D support.This means that Photoshop can be used in many industrial design and technical illustration situations.
8)New clone and healing brush, source control options allow better retouching choices and options.
9)Adds new Loupe, stacks, and filters to the Bridge connection, making classifying and organizing of images closer to practice with physical image slides and/or negatives.
10)More print preview and color management options for an easier printing process.

Now consider the last point. By far, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are the standards in print shops for high quality printing. Their features for color control are simply not matched by other photo editors. Their ability to do color separations, traps, and print alignment/adjustments have consistently lead the field. Yet here is Photoshop CS3, once again making those tasks and layout chores easier to do.

At several points in time in the past ten years, Corel Draw plus Corel Painter and Corel PhotoPaint or Paint Shop Pro as a bundle had greater bang for the buck; but not with the new CS3 Design or Web Premium suites. Photoshop is now bundled in very compellingly priced suites with other top flight Adobe products such as Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Indesign, Premiere, and others.

And individually, Photoshop with its nearly unmatched image processing innovations in clickable Styles and Smart Objects, Smart Filters and non-destructive image editing, HDR 32 bit image processing, 3D surface finishing, and auto image alignment plus blending for large scale panoramas - Photoshop stands almost alone among top flight image editors against all competitors, not just Corel. So individually and in bundles or suites of products, Photoshop is currently the best ROI -Return On Investment in professional photo editors. So that raises the next question.

2)When can I no longer afford to bypass Photoshop ?

This is similar to the question asked in the Photoshop Lightroom review; and it has a similar but not identical answer. If you are processing 30 or more images per week, the time saved and some of the Photoshop unique results achieved will more than payback Photoshop's premium price - $650US Standard edition and $1000US Extended edition at the Adobe Shop. But users will have to have 5-10 hours per week of predominantly Photoshop photo editing tasks. Otherwise products like Adobe's own Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Lightroom, Xara Xtreme, ACDsee Pro, or the Corel programs offer much more value to users.

All of these tools offer very good photo editors - approximately equivalent of buying Photoshop 6 from 4-5 years ago. Users get great Browser/Organizer tools (Xara excepted); all the major features like color, image, and exposure adjustments; masking and layering for better compositions (Lightroom excepted here), a wide selection of effects and filters including 3rd party plugin support(Lightroom excepted again); and input/output in at least a dozen file formats. And the price is right - $90-150US (Lightroom is $300). So if you are new or more a casual photo editor, you should bypass standard Photoshop, and buy one of these robust and bargain priced photo editors. Or consider trying some of the free editors noted below.

However, if you are new to photo editing but determined to learn full Photoshop skills, then Photoshop Elements provides very good value plus "training wheels" for stepping up to Photoshop as required (see our recent Photoshop Elements review for a comprehensive table showing Photoshop's added feature over Photoshop Elements). One can be assured that such areas as color management and printing, image retouching and recovery, layering and image collages, Photoshop Elements is very usable. It may not always have a dominant position in all of these areas, but when you add integration with its Organizer, Photoshop Elements is a very good tool to work with while helping get users up to speed in standard Photoshop.

And this leads to the last major standard Photoshop advantage. Your photo and graphic design colleagues are more likely to be working with full Photoshop and/or other Adobe 2D graphic tools. You simply will be able to collaborate better with a wider range of fellow artists and clients. However, because of this, there are two added benefits. First, there is a very large Photoshop support community reflected in plugin vendors, service shops and websites catering to Photoshop advice and tips. Second, there are more books and courses on Photoshop than any other photo editor. These two benefits are vital to Photoshop as we shall see in the section on Photoshop's Learning curve.

In sum, especially with the new bundle pricing, Photoshop becomes highly attractive to users that already are invested in other Adobe programs - five for the price of two in the case of CS3 Design Premium suite. But for users, committed to working with graphics for a career - Photoshop CS3 may be an essential investment.

3)What is the value add of Photoshop Extended ?

Photoshop Extended is really targeted towards graphics professional working in 3D, movie and other graphic shops that have used Photoshop for high end image finishing work. Often these shops use Photoshop's Actions, Automation, and Scripting tools to increase their productivity and effectiveness. Photoshop Extended adds features to embellish their specialized tasks.

3D visualization and texture editing- allows importing 3D models including 3D Studio Max, Collad, Alias/Wavefront, Google Earth, either as a layer or a new 3D image file; change model position, lighting, or rendering; edit model textures; and easily composite models with 2D content.

Motion graphics and video layers - Edit a video on a frame-by-frame basis, or add a layer to the video and create edits that will appear in every frame. The Animation palette now includes a new timeline with keyframe capabilities in addition to the frame-based interface. Flash users will find this interface much, much different from what they have become used to.

Movie Painting Features- Rotoscoping comes officially to Photoshop! Quickly find and edit any frame of a movie file with Photoshop tools. Photoshop painting, retouching, and pixel-level editing is available for every frame of your movie file. This is really a part of the above Motion Graphics set of functions.

Measurement of image - Assign a measurement scale to an image and measure length, area, perimeter, density, or other values in accurate scale units. Record results in the Measurement Log as well as export the measurement data to a spreadsheet or database.

Ruler and Count tool - Measure distance across an image, or count features in an image or in a selection. You can count manually, count automatically, or use a script. This also can be automated using Actions or Scripts.

DICOM file support - DICOM is the most common standard for receiving medical scans. Open, edit, annotate or animate single-frame or multi-frame radiological images. View and edit metadata stored in DICOM files.

MATLAB support - Access Photoshop from the MATLAB (Matrix Laboratory) command prompt, run image-processing routines, and view the results in Photoshop. Support for this feature on MATLAB side is still a bit mixed.

Image stack processing- This is the extended feature that many photo-finishers will find of interest. Combine multiple images and apply advanced rendering options to produce enhanced composite images, eliminating noise or unwanted content. See Image Stacks (Photoshop Extended).

As one can see from the examples of Extended's major features, they are highly specialized and often cater to a specialist or technical market. However, consider that for some of these apps raw Photoshop has been a vital tool, so these capabilities will be highly valued for the time and effort they save. For graphic designers the Image Stack, 3D Visualization and Motion Graphics painting will be of interest. Below is an example of working with 3D models - in this case

this is a Google Earth model of the National Center in Sofia Bulgaria. I had to convert the 3D model into a Smart Object to allow some of the edits. Unfortunately not all the Help File's promised videos are available online at the Adobe website, so we were not able to come up to speed as fast as desired. But the essence is that users can apply prefinished textures (saved 2d Photoshop images) to various 3D surfaces. A very few color and edit commands are available to finish those surfaces, so obviously 3D model finishing in Photoshop Extended has a way to go to match Maxon's Body Paint.

In contrast, the Motion Painting capabilities allow a lot more basic Photoshop operations to be applied to video or animation sequences. However, there are two cautions here . First, you will need lots of CPU + graphics processor power plus RAM memory to make these operation move along nicely. Second caution, Flash users be prepared for a completely different layer based paradigm for managing your frames.

In sum, Photoshop Extended brings 8 advanced features to a very diverse set of specialized graphics users. Half of these may be of interest to general graphic artists - I suspect image stacking and motion graphics painting will be the first two to be used by the general photofinishing community. Bottom line, invest the extra $350 in Photoshop Extended only if you can use and get immediate payback from at least two of Extended's features. Also be prepared for a substantial learning curve.

4)How big of a learning curve is there associated with using Photoshop ?

I have just warned about learning in Photoshop Extended above and Photoshop Elements users to be prepared for a substantial learning curve too. Photoshop Standard edition is no different. Sheer numbers tell the story. Take a look at the comparison of Photoshop Elements versus Photoshop Extended here. Photoshop Extended has hundreds of commands; and if you count the Organizer, so does Photoshop Elements. And there are few redundant features - just about every command unlocks another capability in the programs. To master all these capabilities is no easy task.

But Adobe has done a lot to make it easier. The Help system is better organized. There are lots of online tips including how-to videos. The Help command has 12 basic "How to" menu items. Each of those bring up about a dozen specific topics in the Help system so you don't have to search all over for them. Many of the dialogs and panels have their own specific Help buttons, so if you get confused you are taken immediately to the right help topic.

Next Adobe Photo Elements' Photo Editor is a good set of training wheel for using full Photoshop. Also there are a wealth of 3rd party books and training courses on Photoshop. Some of the O'Reilly and Peachpit Press books can be highly recommended and so reviews are planned for these. Also there are a ton of good Photoshop websites, the competition is worth checking out.

But the bottom line is plan not on days but weeks of dedicated work to come up to speed in Photoshop. Take advantage of free courses/sales pitches offered by Adobe or community learning to be found at Meet Up. Finally, colleges and art schools offer courses as well - but check to see if they offer the topics and latest techniques that you are interested in. Photoshop is so big, half term courses can be easily devoted to layering and composition alone. Finally, keep visiting this site - we are constantly adding tips + reviews and all our material is free with illustrated examples every time.

5)Are there some free, but good photo editors to learn image editing first on ?

If users want to start out at the lowest possible cost, there are some very good free photo editors. Checkout About and Freecountry for the broadest lists. Meanwhile I will comment on the tools I have used and have found to be effective in my preference order.

GIMP- used to be a Linux only program, since there were few photo editors on Linux. GIMP has improved to such an extent that it has moved to other platforms including Windows. And the only thing keeping me from including GIMP in the list of low end rivals is the disconcerting masking/selection tools, the sometimes awkward layering, and very mixed filters/effects. However, GIMP supports the widest range of graphic filetypes, has top notch color and exposure adjustment tools, solid printing support, and very good brushes and image transformation tools. In sum, this is a full photo editor and 2.4, to be reviewed, is rumored to be packed with goodies.

Google's Picasa- is more a photo organizer and browser than a full fledged photo editor like GIMP or Photoshop Elements. But Picasa does have basic crop, rotate, color editing, and other photo editing capabilities.

IrfanView - is like Picasa, but more oriented to single image browsing. But it has support for more photo editing features than Picasa including crops and straightening plus support for 3rd party Adobe plugins. Nifty extras - Irfanview produces standalone slideshows and displays video files.

Pixia- is a free draw program from Japan that has some very nice brush painting features. The unique style of the program reminds this reviewer of the Virtual Painter plugin.

Serif PhotoPlus - is a complete photo editor with some unique features. What Serif software is doing is giving away for free (no time limits) an earlier edition of Photo Plus in the hopes of getting users to upgrade to their $10 latest version. Sounds like a bargain too good to be true. Well I have tried Photo Plus 6 and found it to be solid, with some top-end features. Good enough such that I will buy the $10 version 8 and review it here.

The bottom line is that free versions of photo editors may very well do the trick for many users so try them out along with the 30-day Free Trials of all the major programs available from Adobe and most every other software vendor. The trick in the latter case is to make sure you really work out the software after you download and install it. So plan ahead 2-3 photo editing tasks, then download the free software. This will give you incentive to try it out - and get good insights on how effectively the program works for you.

Summary

Adobe's line of Photoshop products are very compelling. For high-end 2D and some 3D bitmap graphic editing - Photoshop Extended at $1000US is the best in the business. There is a substantial learning curve though associated with both standard and Extended versions. Photoshop Elements at about $100US provides a wide range of features including a very good Image Organizer, top notch Photo Editor, and a good set of Image Share tools with only the Creative tools (especially for slideshow and online gallery) showing some bumpiness. But as well Photo Elements' Photo Editor provides great training for the step up to full Photoshop. Finally, Adobe Lightroom is a superb workflow editor for photographers handling 50 or more images per week - Photoshop Lightroom at $300US is so productive its hard to do without when working with a constant stream of new images. Lightroom is like a Light Table, indispensably professional.