Over the past week I have come across quite a few discussions about Adobe’s announcement of the Photoshop CS3 Beta availability. The actual release will not be until next year sometime, but they are giving everyone a peak pretty early. Afterall, this is Version 10.0 of perhaps one of the most significant advancements in photography in the past few decades aside from the dawn of digital imaging itself.

I started using Photoshop at version 2.5 for Windows – which I still have on the original 3.5 inch floppy disks. I hang on to them just for posterity sake, but who knows – maybe they will sell on Ebay for $600 in 2020 as a collectors item. But given I have seen Commodore 64’s selling for $1 each at some garage sales, I won’t hold my breath on the worth of old technology in the future. I haven’t invested in every single upgrade they have had since then, but I will say every one I have done has been well worth the money. And, depsite using it for so long, I still believe I have only scratched the surface of its capabilities.
Photoshop means a lot of things to different people, both good and bad. Certainly the term of an image being “Photoshopped” has taken on a general perception of negativity. For others, it has perhaps opened doors they never thought possible. And those in the middle view it as simply another tool available to them to bring their vision to life, which is where I tend to be.
What continues to amaze me is the fact for every task you want to accomplish in Photoshop – there are usually about a dozen or more ways of doing it. Of course this then tends to lead to thousands of discussions, arguments, and even business opportunities to prove this way is better than that way. Many software plug-ins are simply this – they automate and simplify the path of perhaps a more complicated or tedious route by native functions within the program.
A new release of Photoshop also tends to mean you are about to test the limits of your current computer hardware. I believe it is pretty common for a surge of RAM sales, even new PCs, to follow a new release of the program. One of the more interesting things to watch for this release will be perhaps a surge in the new MacPro systems that are capable of running both Windows and MacOS. A lot of people are pretty frustrated with the PC/Windows world, including myself – and this definitely gives them an out without worrying about so many cross-functionality issues.

Here is a link to an interesting video of some of the new features in the beta release.