In our ongoing coverage of the CS3 Beta we now get to the main show, Photoshop. In this part, we examine Vanishing Point, Printing, PDF and Zoomify.
Vanishing Point
Vanishing Point is now on the way to supporting multiple, connected planes with angle adjustments so that planes do not need to joint at 90 degrees. In practice I feel this part still has a long way to go. It works well but, at least to me, it feels massively limited by not being able to clone in from another image. I’d call this a work in progress.
Printing
This is great. It puts everything you need in one place and provides a meaningful preview to show you exactly what you will get.
As it comes up it shows the color management area on the right
You can configure this exactly as you wish
The Output options give you all sorts of facilities, from crop marks to colored backgrounds.
These options even make it easy to print digital negatives for those printing using traditional photographic processes, like gum bichromates.
Once you press print, the Print dialog comes up where you choose paper type, etc.
The new Print dialog is a huge benefit in putting everything in the one place. I love it.
PDF Presentation
PDF Presentation (Automate menu) adds more options, including using more File Info data, to make your presentations more useful.
Zoomify Export
This is new and great for those who use PS to put their images up on the web. Accessed from the File > Export menu, Zoomify Export makes use of the free Zoomify facility to allow you to create a web page which displays an image in a zoomable, pannable window. The page uses a small Flash viewer and lots of small JPEG files that are tiled by the Flash program to produce the zoom and pan effects. There are limited configuration options in this free version, but it is still a very useful facility and a great add-on to PS.
It creates the following folders and files, in the same way a web gallery does. You move these over into Dreamweaver or whatever and upload them to your web site.
A discussion on the Adobe Labs forum covers how to modify the files so that multiple Zoomify pages can share the same Flash file to save space and download times. It requires modifying a couple of lines in one of the html files.
All round, I am very impressed with the CS3 Beta. It works well for a Beta and has a great set of features that should satisfy any Photoshop user. I’d say the CS3 upgrade, when it comes out, will be one most people will want to take.