When Adobe Photoshop was first introduced to the world by ILM's John Knoll back in 1990, it was designed to import and manipulate images from a scanner (a rare device in those days). It went on to set the standard for manipulation of digital images, and has become the first choice of countless professionals in various fields of visual art all over the world. While the options it has offered graphic designers, photographers, and others in the digital field of art are still unsurpassed by other programs, Photoshop has been very limited in what it can directly offer the digital filmmaker. Until Photoshop CS3 Extended, that is.
With this new release we see many powerful features for special effects, 3D imaging, and image control. Plus, several of the most beloved features of CS2 have been upgraded to give better performance and more options. While there are many new features that are introduced in Photoshop CS3 Extended which relate to things like the architectural and medical fields, we will be focusing most specifically at how it relates to the field of filmmaking. With that said, let's look at some of the specifics.
Ease of Use
With this new version you will find that there are probably a lot of selections that you haven’t seen before. This isn’t surprising, seeing that everyone from photographers to game developers can use this program, and each one has specific needs. This is why the enlarged Workspace drop down menu is more useful than ever, with its constant improvements and additional workspace options, like the new Video and Film layout. Along with these improved workspace options comes the streamlining and cleanup of the workspace real estate, to the point of challenging the prevalent mindset that you need two monitors to run Photoshop efficiently. This is done by compressing the palettes into icons that live on the side of the screen. Once the icon is clicked, the dock is expanded to make the needed selection easily accessibly. This helps immensely, when importing and working with many video layers, especially if you don’t have the budget for a second monitor, are working on a laptop, or need to use your second monitor to preview video by itself.
Now, with all these improvements in the overall ease of use for Photoshop in general, I will warn you that Photoshop CS3 Extended has a fairly stiff learning curve, but not because it's designed badly. It's difficult because it gives you SO many options that all kinds of different artists will use. You really will need to do your homework to learn what it can do. (Luckily, Total Training is releasing an online version of their best-selling training sets later this summer which covers the new Adobe CS3 products; this should make it much easer to learn the homework needed to use all of the new features in this latest installment.) While this may sound like a lot of work, know that it's well worth the extra effort.
Depth of Options
As I mentioned earlier, many of the new features that PCS3 Extended has are in regards to video and animation. While these aren't designed to replace a video editing program like Premiere Pro or FCP or the more specialized motion graphics program like After Effects or Shake, these abilities instead give you the professional, discreet control of Photoshop over an imported section of video. This can allow you to achieve anything from painting special effects (like blood splatters) in individual frames, to creating complex looks for a dream-sequence with the new Smart Filters.
