14 DAY TRIAL // More than one year ago, Think Secret revealed the first details about the future release of Adobe's flagship graphics application, and I am talking about Adobe Photoshop CS3, of course. At that time, CS2 was just released, and those details were only some of the ideas to be incorporated into this future product. A few days ago, Think Secret did it again, and their sources got some hot information about the current development status.
It seems that now we're into the last months before this release expected by everyone, and the features are the same as those originally planned, or that's what the sources know at this time.
As far as I know, Adobe Photoshop users that have Mac computers are delighted with the way this combination works; but, sometimes, having native support for the hardware an applications uses is the best of the best things to have, and it seems that the most important improvement offered by Photoshop CS3 for Mac users will be the native support for Intel-based Macs. Obviously, the interface will also be improved, and the application will work faster even on PowerPC hardware.
The overall interface look and feel are said to be close to Adobe After Effects 7, and the familiar two-column toolbar can be shrunk to a narrower single column one, if that's something that makes you feel better and work with more efficiency.
Leaving the interface behind, the features that you should expect include Live Filters that bring dynamic editing of Layer Styles to the Filters, and the filters seem to be much faster now, as Think Secrets' sources say. A feature that is only a speculation at this time - but which would be great to have - is the ability of the application to use the GPU or the video card to help the CPU with its processing work.
All these and a little more that's still a secret, of course, should be yours in the second quarter of the next year, since Adobe plans to launch CS3 in March or April, and there's nothing to delay it at this time. However, if something comes up, I'll let you know as soon as possible, of course!