Adobe Announces Photoshop CS3 Beta

[MacRumors]

True to rumors, Adobe has announced a Photoshop CS3 Beta program available to customers with a serial number from either Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Creative Suite® 2, Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio, Adobe Design Bundle, Adobe Web Bundle or Adobe Video Bundle.

Packed with new features, Photoshop CS3 beta also includes a pre-release version of a major upgrade to Adobe Bridge, as well as a preview release of the all-new Adobe Device Central. Photoshop customers can use Adobe Device Central to design, preview, and test compelling mobile content, created specifically for smaller screens. This new tool, integrated in the Photoshop CS3 beta, simplifies and accelerates the creation of mobile content through a preview environment and built-in device profiles.

"This is an exciting time for the Mac, and Adobe wanted to ease the move to new Intel-based systems with a preview release of Photoshop CS3," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe.

The beta version will be available Friday morning from the Adobe Labs website. The Mac version is a Universal Binary, and system requirements call for a 1+ GHz G4 or G5 or any Intel-based Mac with 512MB of RAM. A Windows version is also available.

Adobe says the beta will expire soon after the formal release of Photoshop in Spring 2007. Final pricing is yet to be determined, however Photoshop CS2 currently is offered at $649 (full version, $169 upgrade).

 

[Cinematographer]

Great. And this is going to boost MacPro sales of course.

 

[amac4me]

Sweet .... looking forward to the benchmark results.

I expect Mac sales to rev up as most Photoshop users have held out on purchasing an Intel Mac until a Universal Binary was released.

 

[fivetoadsloth]

oooh!
I cant wait, im dieing with photoshop on my macbook...

 

[LostPacket]

By "mobile content" do they mean cell phones and such? Are there that many "mobile designers" out there to justify a whole new feature module based on this?

 

[freeny]

looking forward to being a guinea pig.....

The Adobe site should crash sometime around 10:30am Eastern time.....

 

[jimsowden]

I cannot wait to see how this preforms. It's ingrained in by being that Phothsop is now an ass slow program on my MacBook Pro, load times are getting up to a minute on some larger one page files.

 

[kainjow]

Check this out:

A Quick Look at the New Features in Photoshop CS3, Public Beta Preview

Screenshots included

 

[codo]

Oh my! Thought this day would never come. So overwhelmed.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Let the benchmark results commence.

 

[Bern]

Damn and I only have Illustrator CS2, I sold my copy of CS2 suite

 

[Doctor Q]

What exactly does the "Quick Select" tool let you do?

By the way, Adobe's page says

Without a serial number, users can still download Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta, with the product expiring after two days.

 

[Creative Mac]

im looking forward to the mobile side of cs3 i build mobile games for java handset and this should make my life easier..............

 

[bousozoku]

Nice to see that they're getting somewhere but it doesn't sound like the speed increases they should have seen. I'd think, had they done it right, they'd be seeing more than 100 % increases, considering multiple processors and new efficiencies, but something is better than nothing.

...
Though still a beta, Photoshop CS3 features substantial speed gains for Intel Macs, according to Adobe’s Nack.

“I upgraded to a MacBook Pro and Photoshop just screams on that,” Nack said. “We are seeing an 40 percent increase in speed in addition to the 30 percent speed increase in what Rosetta was able to do with the 10.4.8 update.”
...

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/12/14/photoshopbeta/index.php

 

[nagromme]

I really HOPE Adobe allows older (pre-CS2) versions of Photoshop to upgrade for less than full retail price.

Whatever was considered the oldest upgradable Photoshop at the time of Apple's Intel announcement should STILL be considered upgradable--since it only makes sense to have stopped upgrading at that time.

For instance, I was using PS7 still when Apple's Intel news came. I do every other upgrade, so I skipped PS8 (aka CS) and was ready to buy PS9 (aka CS2). But with the Intel news, I held off, waiting for PS10 (aka CS3).

Hopefully, even though I skipped TWO versions, my PS7 will still qualify for upgrade pricing next year. Seems only fair, since buying CS or CS2 for my Intel Mac would have been a waste. (I can understand paying a higher upgrade price than a CS2 user though.)

 

[mduser63]

I really HOPE Adobe allows older (pre-CS2) versions of Photoshop to upgrade for less than full retail price.

Whatever was considered the oldest upgradable Photoshop at the time of Apple's Intel announcement should STILL be considered upgradable--since it only makes sense to have stopped upgrading at that time.

For instance, I was using PS7 still when Apple's Intel news came. I do every other upgrade, so I skipped PS8 (aka CS) and was ready to buy PS9 (aka CS2). But with the Intel news, I held off, waiting for PS10 (aka CS3).

Hopefully, even though I skipped TWO versions, my PS7 will still qualify for upgrade pricing next year. Seems only fair, since buying CS or CS2 for my Intel Mac would have been a waste. (I can understand paying a higher upgrade price than a CS2 user though.)

I wonder what the upgrade options for educational versions will be. Apple was really good about that with the Universal version of FCS. Anyway, I'll still be a student when CS3 comes out (I think) so I should be able to get it at a steep discount anyway...

 

[shigzeo]

where is the negative?

im waiting... there is usually a negative argument... damn, we sucks

 

[Creative Mac]

well being a uk bod i just checked the time difference it should be available for us lot on this side of the pond around 8ish onwards tomorrow...typical when im ramed in a london tube you lot will be hammering adobe's site..lol

 

[Pressure]

I look forward to trying it

Although it is a beta...

 

[kainjow]

im waiting... there is usually a negative argument... damn, we sucks

I don't think there is anything negative about this. Yes, it will cost money, but everyone knows that. The educational version of Photoshop now is $288, so I'm sure it'll be the same for CS3. I'll just be looking forward to having it run natively.

 

[ChrisA]

you do NOT have to be a registed CS2 user

Quoted from Adobe's announcement.

Without a serial number, users can still download Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta, with the product expiring after two days. ​

It seems you do NOT have to be a registed CS2 user to try this out

 

[Creative Mac]

ok so you get 2 days, not exactly enough, but yes to make a point you dont need cs2 to download, whats the betting adobe gets spammed with loads of fake serial numbers....lol rev up those serial number generators..lol ****** Disclaimer***********
not that i agree with that sort of thing as i own a real copy...he he

 

[SiliconAddict]

Nice to see that they're getting somewhere but it doesn't sound like the speed increases they should have seen. I'd think, had they done it right, they'd be seeing more than 100 % increases, considering multiple processors and new efficiencies, but something is better than nothing.

gah. Where to start. First off its a beta. Anyone care to guess how much debug code is probably still in this thing? Secondly 40% on a LAPTOP is nothing to sneeze at. Can you imagine what a desktop is going to be able to do? Third even Apple had issue out of the gate with the Intel transition. If people think Adobe is having a better transition then Apple I would say think again. My guess is that performance is going to increase over the next few patches....once it actually ships that is.

People really need to keep things in perspective.

 

[Bibulous]

system requirements call for a 1+ GHz G4 or G5 ...

WTH Adobe? But I'll download it anyways...

 

[ChrisA]

I really HOPE Adobe allows older (pre-CS2) versions of Photoshop to upgrade for less than full retail price.

Asobe's current policy is to allow you to upgrade to the current version from ANY previous version. The price does not go up if you skip a version. Currently the upgrade price on the Adobe on-line store is $169. (Photoshop, not the bundle) They say that if you have a very old copy of Photoshop that you need to call because the serial number system has changed since version 3 (I think it is 3 but maybe 2) I checked. I have a old floppy disk version of PS that ran on an M68000 based Mac (a IIci, I think) this machine was just recently retied to the city's re-cycle plant. But I will upgrade to PS CS3 the day it is released.