Make Money With Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular imaging software packages around, but it's expensive! Here are five ways you can earn money using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements -- either as a business enterprise, for some extra money, or just to recoup your investment.

1. Offer a Photo Restoration Service. I'm sure just about everyone has a photo or two that hasn't stood the test of time all that well, especially really old ones. Using the Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, and Patch tools, you can make old or damaged photos look like new again.

2. Become a Photograph Doctor. Whether it's "red eye", "pet eye", poor exposure, or "finger over the lens syndrome" Photoshop can transform a ruined image into a pristine one. You can also use Photoshop to make a colour photograph look like a black and white one, or colour tint a black and white one to make it colour. Not everyone is a good photographer, so you need never be short of "patients".

3. Design Greetings Cards. With the photo enhancement and graphic design qualities of Photoshop, designing greetings cards has never been easier. You can enhance photos, make them into drawings or paintings, combine photos for humorous cards, the possibilities are endless. Birthday cards, get well soon cards, condolence cards, Christmas cards or cards for other holidays like Mothers' Day, the list goes on and on. You can easily find card blanks and envelopes from specialist suppliers.

4. Design T-shirts. Ever seen something and thought "that would look great on a T-shirt"? Well, you're not the only one! With Photoshop you can make it a reality. You can get transfers from stationery shops, and plain, cotton T-shirts can be purchased from low cost suppliers and even some supermarkets.

5. Web Design. Whether it's a full website, or just a few buttons or banners, web design is a skill that's in demand right now. You could take commissions, or design some generic "boilerplate" designs that people can download from a website and customise themselves.

Of course, you may need to get some extra equipment -- like a colour printer, scanner, and digital camera -- but you can usually pick this type of equipment up inexpensively on eBay or other websites. A DVD of royalty free images is also a must -- although check the terms and conditions to make sure you're allowed to sell products derived from them.

Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising, so ask friends, relatives, work colleagues, and other acquaintances if the need (or know anyone who needs) your products or services. You could also approach retailers with a portfolio of your work, and offer them commissions on any work they send your way.

How to Print Images With Photoshop

If you use Photoshop then you must be aware of its fine printing capabilities. People create images with Photoshop mostly for web design or printing purposes. Let's discuss how you can print an image through the Photoshop interface the right way.

When printing through Photoshop there's one thing you need to be aware of, the dots per inch (dpi). This refers to how many dots per inch of paper, your printer can print. If you want a clearer image then you want more dots per inch. The more dots a printer can print in an inch of paper the better the quality. Printers are clarified according to the dots per inch they print. A printer which prints more dots per inch is generally better and more expensive.

The most commonly used dpi value for image printing is 300 dpi. Meaning that the printer will print 300 dots per inch of paper. That is, if your printer can actually print in that resolution which is very likely, unless you own a really old printer.

You can set the dpi of an image through the Photoshop menu:

Image > Image Size.. > Resolution

In the Resolution input box enter the value you want for your image. Your version of Photoshop might not mention dots per inch but pixels per inch, which is the same thing.

Now let's talk about the quality of ink for your image. This depends on your printer type. Inkjet printers for example can be cheap and they use jets of ink that they spray on paper. Ink quality is medium. Dye printers are more expensive than Inkjet printers and use a system to melt dots of dye that can generate over 16 million of colors. Ink quality is medium to high. Laser printers are very popular these days and they print in good quality. Ink quality is high. Last but not least there are the Thermal Wax printers that use blocks of wax that melt on the paper.

Now let's say you want to print an image through Photoshop. Before doing anything else go to:

File > Print with Preview

A dialog opens. Through that dialog you can set all kinds of properties for your image. For example you can define the position of the image on the piece of paper. You can specify the space you want to be left blank from top or bottom or you can let Photoshop center the image by ticking the "Center Image" check box.

Then you can define the scale of the image, it's height and width. I use the "Scale to Fit Media" check box a lot, since it lets Photoshop automatically adjust the printable size of the image.

Depending on your image you might want to print on portrait or landscape. You can change that through the "Page Setup..." button on the right of the dialog. A new dialog will appear that also allows you to choose the type and the size of paper you will use for printing.

Well, that's about it. All you have to do now is click the "Print..." button. Depending on your printer, a dialog will appear that will let you customize printer properties. For example you might want to print three copies of the image or tell the printer to use more or less ink. It's really easy to print images through Photoshop. I use this software all the time mostly for the "Scale to Fit Media" check box I mentioned above.

Five New Features in Photoshop CS4

On the 23 September 2008 Adobe Systems announced the release of the highly anticipated latest version of Photoshop, Photoshop CS4.

Photoshop has long been the industry standard professional digital image manipulation program. It fact it would be hard to get a job as a graphic designer if you didn't have experience using Photoshop.

So lets explore the new features in Photoshop CS4 and then decide whether for $199 it's worth upgrading from CS3 to CS4. If you are still working on an older version of Photoshop such as CS2 or CS then I would definitely recommend upgrading. This article is going to focus on the top 5 new features in Photoshop CS4.

1. Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation

Working with bitmap images often involves editing pixel by pixel. The smoother zooming feature will give you much more control as you zoom in and out of your bitmaps. Plus the new rotation feature is very cool and is a huge improvement on the somewhat clumsy rotate image handles. I give these new features 9 out of 10.

2. New Adjustments Panel

This panel contains some of the most commonly used color and tone correction tools. Tools, which Photoshop users use every day such as Levels, Curves and Hue & Saturation are now all located on this single panel. Photoshop allows you to edit in a non-destructive mode using an Adjustments layer. Even though this feature is not new per se, this new Adjustment panel makes it easier to work with many of these stable Photoshop tools. I give this new feature 5 out of 10.

3. New Masks Panel

This is a very cool new feature. The new Masks Panel is really powerful and it gives you full control over both pixels and vector masks. You can adjust mask density and feathering, easily select non contiguous objects, and much more.

You can still create layer masks in the old fashioned way but this new panel is much more powerful and will make learning masking easier for new users of Photoshop. I give this new feature 8 out of 10.

4. Content-Aware Scaling

This is my favorite new feature in Photoshop CS4. This new and revolutionary Content-Aware Scaling feature is used when re-sizing images. Users can select an area of an image that you do not want to lose when resizing and Photoshop will protect it, by removing other areas first.

Content-Aware Scaling automatically recognizes skin tones to keep people from being squeezed when you resize an image. So as you resize an image, people in the picture may move closer together or further apart, but they will remain properly proportioned whilst the background changes. I would have to give this feature a 10 out of 10.

5. Many enhancements

My final new feature is really just a whole bunch of cool improvements to existing features in Photoshop CS3. These include:
1. Improved color correction with re-engineered Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools
2. Improved auto-blending of images.
3. New preview feature on the Clone Tool.
4. Better raw image processing. I give these new features a 7 out of 10.

So in conclusion, Photoshop CS4 introduces some very new and exciting features such as fluid canvas rotation and content-aware scaling, a few new panels such as Mask Panel and Adjustments panel which help to improve your workflow, and a whole bunch of enhancements to existing features.

Overall I would have to say that $199 investment to upgrade is a no-brainer. Enjoy!

The first step - making the bar

This is quite easy. First, make a new document with a width of 400 pixels and a height of 60 pixels.

Create a new layer with the icon in the Layers palette. Select the rectangular selection tool and drag out a selection in the centre of the image, 330 x 35 pixels in size. (To make this process easier, select Options in the Navigator, Info, Options palette, select the Options tab, for Style: select Fixed Size and enter 330 for Width and 35 for Height. Then drag in the image window. Don't forget to switch the Style back to Normal afterwards!)

Using the Fill command from the Edit menu, fill this rectangle with 50% gray.

Now for the rounded ends. Create a new layer. Select the Elliptical Marquee selection tool and position the pointer right in the centre of the left-hand edge of the rectangle. Holding down Shift+Alt (Windows) or Shift+Option (Mac), drag out a circle until the top and bottom edges of the circle lie exactly on the top and bottom edges of the rectangle (it may help if you zoom in a bit first). Fill this circle with 50% gray also.

Now drag this layer ("Layer 2") down to the New Layer icon in the palette to duplicate it. Hold down the Control key and, in the image window, drag this duplicate circle to the right of the rectangle, until it half-protrudes from the right-hand edge. Again, zoom in to position the circle exactly. Now hit Control+E three times (or select Layer > Merge Down three times), so that you end up with one layer ("Layer 1") containing our rounded menu bar:

Double-click on the layer in the Layers palette and rename it "Menu Bar". Hit OK.

Now's a good time to save your image! Call it something like menubar.psd.

Making the text options

Now to make the text buttons along the bar. Select the Text tool (the big T!) and choose your favourite font. Type in the menu options you would like, with each option separated by 4 or 5 spaces. Click OK to place the text on your image, then move the layer about until the text is centred nicely on the bar:

Rename this new layer "Menu Text", by right-clicking on the layer in the Layers Palette and choosing Layer Options....

Getting that sandstone effect

Let's make our menu bar nice and bumpy, like it was made from sandstone. Select the Menu Bar layer and Control+click on the layer in the Layers palette to select all the opaque pixels (this will stop the effect "leaking out" the edges of the bar). Select Filter > Noise > Add Noise... and enter an Amount of 35. Make sure Gaussian and Monochromatic are selected (we want sandstone, not confetti!). Click OK.

Now to smooth the texture out a bit. Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... and enter a Radius of 0.5 pixels. Keep the selection around the bar.

Making it 3-D

Now comes the fun part. We're going to use the wonderful Lighting Effects filter to turn our 2-D bar into a 3-D one!

We want two things to be bevelled - the bar itself, and the areas around the text links, so that the text looks "indented" into the bar. We use the selection tool to tell the Lighting Effects filter which bits to bevel. We've already selected the bar (if you've kept the selection as mentioned above!), but now we want to subtract the areas around the text from the selection.

Becuase our text is all on one layer, this is really easy. Hold down Control+Alt (Win) or Control+Option (Mac) and click on the Menu Text layer in the Layers palette. Hey presto! Our new selection has had the opaque areas of the text layer cut out of it.

Now to make the bevel nice and smooth, go to Select > Feather... and enter a Feather Radius of 1 pixel. Now save this selection as a new channel, so that we can use it in Lighting Effects. Choose Select > Save Selection... and make sure New Channel is highlighted. Click OK. You can now hit Control+D to deselect.

Go to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects. With the DEFAULT style selected, select your new channel from the bottom of the Texture Channel drop-down list (it will probably be called "#4"). Experiment with different light positions and settings until you get a nice 3-D bevelled effect - these settings worked well for me:

Hit OK and take a look. If you're not happy with the results, hit Control+Z (Undo) and go back and have another go. In the end you should end up with something like this:

Making it even more 3-D

We can enhance our 3-D effect further with a drop shadow. Drag the Menu Bar layer to the New Layer icon to duplicate it, double click on the layer in the palette, and name it "Drop Shadow". Hit OK then select Edit > Fill, pick Black from the Use drop-down box and make sure Preserve Transparency is checked. Click OK.

Drag the Drop Shadow layer below the Menu Bar layer in the palette. Hold Control and press the Right arrow and Down arrow> keys twice each to shift the shadow down and to the right a bit. Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... and enter 3.5 for the Radius. Hit OK.

Kind of blue (great album!)

Say I'm listening to Miles Davis while I'm making this bar, and I'd like to give it a touch of the blues to make it more refined and interesting. Make sure the Menu Bar layer is highlighted in the palette, then choose Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation.... Select Colorize and enter values of -160 for Hue and 10 for Saturation. Hit OK.

Making the highlights

We want our options to highlight in red as the mouse is moved over them, so let's make a new layer containing the highlights. First Control+click on the Menu Text layer in the palette to select its pixels, then click on the New Layer icon to create a new layer on top. Choose Select -> Modify -> Expand... and enter a value of 2 pixels. Now pick a nice bright red (e.g. 255,0,0 or the first swatch in the default Swatches palette) and select Edit > Stroke. Enter a Width of 2 pixels, select Center for Location, set Opacity to 100% and Mode to Normal, and turn Preserve Transparency off. This will make a solid red border around the text on our new layer.

Rename this layer "Highlights".

This effect is a bit harsh, so let's soften it and make it more realistic by changing the blending mode. With the Highlights layer still selected in the palette, pick Screen from the blending mode drop-down box (the one which currently says Normal). To mellow the effect a bit more, choose 80% on the Opacity slider to the right of the blending mode box.

Saving space

Our menu has some unnecessary white space around it, so let's crop the image a bit. Using the rectangular selection tool, drag out a rectangle that covers all of our image, including the drop shadow (if in doubt, allow extra space around the drop shadow, as it can be difficult to see where the shadow stops). A selection of 380 x 55 pixels should do the trick. Then select Image > Crop:

Cutting it up

Now for the clever part. We need to make 10 separate images from our main image - 4 for each of the text options unhighlighted, another 4 for the highlighted (rollover) versions, and two for the round end stubs of the menu bar. Luckily, Photoshop has the Guides feature, which makes this process a lot easier.

Turn on the Rulers using Control+R or select View > Show Rulers. Click in the ruler along the left-hand edge and, with the mouse button held down, drag to the right. That vertical blue line is a guide, and it will help us with selecting the bits of our image to chop up. Drag it so that it is mid-way between "home" and "about me" and release the button. If you got it a bit wrong, hold down the Control key and drag the guide around until you get it right.

(You may find as you drag that the guides "snap" to the edges of the pixels on the current layer. This is handy for aligning guides right on the edge, but it can be a bit of a pain in this case. To avoid this happening, select the Background layer in the Layers palette, as there's nothing on that layer for Photoshop to snap to.)

Repeat this process for the other two gaps between the menu options, then place two extra guides, one to the left of "home" and one to the right of "links". Remember - to create a new vertical guide, simply click in the left-hand ruler and drag to the right. You should end up with something like this:

Now that we've marked out where to chop up our image, the rest is easy. Choose the rectangular selection tool. Make sure Snap To Guides is highlighted in the View menu. To make this task easier, drag out the image window so that there's some grey around the image, or else zoom in a bit. Working from left to right, cut out each of the sections between the blue guide lines as follows:

• Drag out a rectangle that extends from the top left corner of the section to the bottom right. Make sure all of the section is selected. The Snap To Guides option makes this easier by snapping the left and right edges of your selection to the guides.
• Press Shift+Control+C (Copy Merged) to copy all of the layers under the selection as one layer. Press Control+N and hit OK to accept the default settings. Press Control+V to paste our merged selection into this new image:

• Now choose File > Export > GIF89a Export and save the image. Call them whatever you like, but we recommend: left.gif, home_on.gif, about_on.gif, cat_on.gif, links_on.gif and right.gif.

That's six of our 10 images done. The other four will be the non-highlighted, or "off" versions of our menu options. Turn off the eye icon next to the Highlights layer in the Layers palette, and repeat the above process for the four menu option images. Call them home_off.gif, about_off.gif, cat_off.gif and links_off.gif.

Your images should look like these: (If you screwed any of them up, you can always cheat and grab them from here!)

Shake it, baby!

Now we want to make that menu move. It will help you a lot if you read our JavaScript tutorial on rollover buttons first, as this menu uses the same principle.

First, place the images in a row in your web page. Provided you use style="border: none;" the images should sit snugly up against one another, forming a seamless menu bar. Give each image a name with the name attribute, and place tags around each image, including the onmouseover and onmouseout JavaScript event handlers.

Of course, you don't need the stuff for the two end pieces!

Here's the code for the "home" button to get you going. Have a look at the source of this page if you want to see the rest.

onmouseout="button_off('home');"
onmouseover="button_on('home');">
style="border: none;" width="72" height="55" name="home"/ />

Next, we need to create our JavaScript image objects at the start of the Web page, and point each object to the GIF files for the image (both the on and off versions). It's a good idea to include the image width and height in pixels when creating image objects - you can find this out by dragging your GIFs one by one into Photoshop, then Alt+clicking (PC) or Option+clicking (Mac) on the status bar where it says "Doc:".

Again, here's the example for the "home" button:

home_on = new Image ( 72, 55 );
home_off = new Image ( 72, 55 );
home_on.src = "images/menubar/home_on.gif";
home_off.src = "images/menubar/home_off.gif";

Finally, we make our two JavaScript functions, button_on() and button_off(), add the sniffer code and the tags around the JavaScript, and we're cookin'! Take a look at the source code for this page, which should be fairly self-explanatory.

You should now be able to take these techniques and create wonderful menu bars for your own websites! If this tutorial has helped you make a groovy menu, please tell us - we'd love to see it!

Using the linear gradient tool

The linear gradient tool is the shaded rectangle icon, just below the text tool ( ). The Tools palette will change to show the Gradient tool options:

Let's run through the features of this tool. The Normal drop-down box allows you to select a blending mode for your gradient; the default, Normal, replaces whatever was underneath with the new gradient, but try playing with different options for different effects. The Opacity slider determines how much of the original image will show through the gradient after it is applied.

The Gradient box contains a list of 16 preset gradients, and you can add your own gradients to the list.

Mask controls whether the transparency mask for the gradient will be used. Some gradients are partially transparent (e.g. the Transparent Rainbow and Transparent Stripes presets), but deselecting Mask will make those gradients completely opaque.

Dither creates a smoother gradient effect by dithering the gradient to reduce colour banding (noticeable on big images with low colour depths).

Reverse swaps round the start and end colours of the gradient. This isn't reflected in the gradient in the dialog, but it takes effect when you actually apply the gradient.

Filling with a gradient

So how do you actually use a gradient? Simple. After selecting your options from the palette above, simply drag in a document window to mark the start and end points of your gradient. When you release the mouse button, the gradient will be drawn onto the current layer:

Drag...

and let go

Here we used the Transparent Rainbow gradient, which means that the edges of the gradient are transparent. If you use most of the other gradients, you will notice that they fill the whole layer. You can prevent this by making a selection first; then the gradient will only fill the selection.

Making a new gradient

Let's create a new gradient. Click on the Edit... button in the "Gradient Tool Options" palette to bring up the Gradient Editor. From the list at the top select the Red, Green gradient:

Let's make a copy of this gradient and modify it to include the colour blue as well. Select Duplicate and enter Red, Green, Blue in the Gradient Name box.

See the green square, just below the red/green gradient strip, on the right? It has a triangle above it, pointing up towards the gradient strip. Drag this square to the centre of the strip - the triangle turns black to show that this colour is being edited:

Now click below the strip on the right hand side, where the green square was before you dragged it. Another green square appears! You can have up to 32 of these colour stops on the strip. The gradient will move smoothly from one colour stop to the next.

Drag this new square to the right until the Location box below it says 100%. Then click on the green rectangle to the left of Location and pick a blue colour (e.g. R=0, G=0, B=255).

Congratulations! You've made a new gradient. Try playing with the other settings in the Gradient Editor. The F and B buttons turn the current colour stop into the current foreground or background colour. This means that the gradients will depend on the user's current colour settings. Also, the diamonds above the colour strip mark the midpoints between pairs of colour stops. You can drag these midpoints around to ease in or ease out the gradient flow between the stops.

Finally, as we mentioned previously, you can make parts of the gradient transparent. Click on the Transparency radio button next to Adjust: to modify the transparency settings. Here you have colour stops exactly as before, but each stop has an opacity rather than a colour. This way you can make gradients of transparency which allow parts of the original image to show through.

3D fun with gradients!

Now that you know the basics of the Gradient tool, let's look at a couple of practical uses.

Let's make a very easy 3D button. Drag out a rectangle with the selection tool, pick a gradient (e.g. Black, White), and drag out a linear gradient from the bottom-right to the top-left:

Now contract the selection by 4 pixels ( Select > Modify > Contract...) and feather it with a radius of 2 pixels ( Select > Feather... ). Finally, drag a new gradient from the top-left to the bottom-right:

There we have it - a quick and easy 3D button. Nice! :)

Now let's make a 3D sphere.

Create a new document, make a new layer, and drag out a circle with the Ellipse selection tool (hold down the Shift key to constrain the selection to a circle). Then click on the Default Colours icon ( ), or press Shift+D, to reset your colours to black and white. Flip the colours using the icon, so that your foreground colour is white and your background colour is black.

Click and hold the mouse on the Linear Gradient tool icon in the Tools palette, and a row of alternative gradient styles will pop up. Select the icon to the right of Linear Gradient. This is the Radial Gradient tool.

Select the Foreground to Background gradient in the Gradient tool options palette. Now drag a gradient in your circular selection. Start it from near the top-left of the circle, and drag it down to the bottom right at a 45 degree angle (you can use the Shift key to constrain the line to 45 degree angles). Voilà - an instant sphere!

You'll probably want to add a drop-shadow to make the sphere stand out from the background:

Bullseye!

Here's a really simple way to make a target using gradients. Create a new image and make a new layer on it. Select the Radial Gradient tool and choose the Transparent Stripes gradient. Pick a suitable foreground colour (e.g. red). Now drag in your new layer to make a target!

Captivating chrome

The built-in "Chrome" gradient is great for making that chrome-object-in-a-desert look.

Let's try making a chrome sphere. Make a circular selection like you did for the sphere above, then fill it with a linear Chrome gradient. Start near the top of the circle and drag below the bottom, so that the "horizon" is below the centre of the sphere:

Now use the Spherize filter (Filter > Distort > Spherize...) a couple of times to bend the "horizon" into a spherical shape:

You can add a highlight to this "sphere" by creating a layer above it, making a sphere in that layer using the Black, White radial gradient like we did earlier, and selecting a blending mode of Lighten for that layer. A drop shadow completes the effect:

New features

Although the new feature list for CS3 isn't quite as lengthy as CS2 was, there are quite a few radical changes in there - a redesigned interface, the wonderful Auto-Align Layers command, and the clamoured-for Smart Filters, to name but a few. Let's explore all these new features.

Brand new streamlined interface

The first thing you notice when firing up CS3 is the new user interface. For one thing, the toolbox has been slimmed down to a single column of buttons, rather than the pre-CS3 two-column design. This allows you to keep the toolbox out of the way on the side of your screen - great for freeing up horizontal space. You can easily flip back to the two-column version by clicking the double arrow at the top of the toolbox window.

Speaking of slimming down, Adobe have really gone to town with the palettes. The new collapsible palette docks let you reduce all your palettes down to tiny icons when you're not using them - see the screenshot on the right - which is a wonderful space saver. It takes a while to memorise the icons, but once you do you'll be flipping between palettes in no time. You can keep your commonly-used palettes, such as the Layers palette, open all the time, and collapse the rest to icons until you need them, freeing up more space to work on your images. However, if you prefer the old style interface, you can always drag your palettes out of the dock, and have them floating free again.

There's also a new Maximized Screen Mode - available by clicking the icon at the bottom of the toolbox, or by pressing F - that expands the document window to fill the available screen space between your toolbox and palette docks.

Universal Mac application and speed improvements

At last, with the release of CS3, Photoshop becomes a Universal Mac application, allowing it to run at native speeds on the new(ish) Intel Macs. In fact CS3 is generally zippier than CS2 was, with brushes and filters feeling that much more responsive than in CS2; the application is much quicker to launch too. It's nice to know that more features don't always mean more code bloat!

Smart filters

This has to be Photoshop's number one requested feature: "live" filters that you can go back and edit on the fly. These types of filters have been available for a long time in other image editing software, and it's great to see them make their Photoshop début in CS3.

They're a tad clunky to use, it must be said - you have to convert your layer to a smart object before you can apply a smart filter to it - but it's a welcome addition nonetheless. In use, smart filters behave much like layer effects in the Layers palette, as you can see in the screenshot. You can reorder the filters by dragging them in the Layers palette; this lets you control the order that the filters are applied in.

You can also set a blending mode for each filter, which is a really powerful feature.

Quick Selection tool

CS3's new, super-easy Quick Selection tool is like the Magic Wand tool on steroids. Rather than carefully clicking areas of your image to select them, like you do with the Magic Wand, you just casually "paint" around the edges of your selection using a brush size of your choosing. Photoshop then automatically selects the object you're "painting" on as it goes.

It's incredibly quick to use, and Photoshop often gets the selection border spot-on. If it gets a bit carried away, you can of course paint with Alt/Option held down to remove areas of the selection, or use the fabulous Refine Edge command. Speaking of which...

Refine Edge command

Refine Edge groups most of the commands available under Select>Modify, such as Smooth, Feather and Expand/Contract, into one handy dialog. This is great, because you can now fine-tune your selection all in one place and preview the results as you go. It works with any selection, whether made with a selection tool, or created via the Quick Mask.

Auto-Align and Auto-Blend Layers

The wonderful new Auto-Align Layers command automatically lines up several different photos of the same scene, even if the photos were taken from different angles. It's almost like a non-panoramic version of the Photomerge command.

For example, say you've taken three photos of the same scene, but with different people in. Simply stack the three photo layers on top of each other, select them, then run Auto-Align Layers. Photoshop rotates, squeezes and distorts the photos so that they all line up with each other. You can then copy and paste the people from the different photos into the one final image.

This is a pretty powerful feature, and it nearly always does a great job at aligning the images. It works best if your photos were taken at nearly the same angle though, and even then it sometimes gets it wrong. If in doubt, use a tripod!

Auto-Blend Layers, the perfect complement to Auto-Align Layers, adjusts the brightness levels of the aligned layers so that they're consistent, and also creates layer masks for the layers to mask off the ragged edges, leaving you with a nice square finished photo. Of course, because the layers stay as layers, you can still edit the individual photos if you wish.

Speaking of Photomerge, this stitching command - first built into Photoshop CS - has seen a major overhaul in CS3. The Auto-Align Layers technology is now integrated, which produces a much better result than in previous versions. It's even a fully automatic process now, though you can still go in and tweak the panorama manually if you like.

Black & White adjustment

Another oft-requested feature, the new Black & White adjustment command - also available as a new adjustment layer - lets you produce great black & white conversions of colour photos.

Although you've always been able to convert a photo to black & white simply by choosing Image > Mode > Grayscale or Image > Adjustments > Desaturate, these commands do a pretty poor job of it. This is because they don't give you any control over the conversion process.

For years, photographers have got around this by using various tricks, such as gradient maps, multiple hue/saturation adjustment layers and all sorts of other voodoo. The Channel Mixer adjustment has arguably been the most useful of the bunch; enable the Monochrome option and you can control the amount of red, green and blue that goes into the final black & white image.

The new Black & White adjustment builds on this by giving you six sliders: Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues and Magentas. This gives you much greater control over the mix of colours that makes it into the final image. It's also more forgiving than the Channel Mixer; the values don't have to add up to 100%, and it's much harder to clip your shadows or highlights. (Speaking of which, Adobe have thrown in a Total display in the Channel Mixer dialog, so you can check that your channels add up to 100% without getting your calculator out.)

It's an improvement in other ways, too. There's an Auto button that sets the six sliders to produce the best mix (from Photoshop's point of view, of course), and there's also a range of built-in presets to simulate various lens filters. Finally, you can add a tint - for example, a sepia tone - to the end result. This seems to produce a much nicer effect than messing around with a Hue/Saturation adjustment after the fact.

Exposure adjustment layer

It's a small change, but worth mentioning anyway: If you're a fan of using the Exposure adjustment command to correct in-camera exposure problems, you'll be cheered to know that Exposure is now also available as a non-destructive adjustment layer in CS3.

New blending modes

Another minor change in CS3 is the addition of two new blending modes: Lighter Color and Darker Color. They're simply composite versions of the existing Lighten and Darken modes.

In English, this means that they work by comparing the overall brightness levels of the two layers, rather than working on a per-colour-channel basis. Their effect, as you might imagine, is similar to Lighten and Darken but, because they don't affect the colour channels separately, they preserve the original colours in the layers.

Device Central

Device Central is a new satellite program that ships with CS3. It's designed to help you create content for mobile devices, such as phones and PDAs. You choose the device you want to create for, then Photoshop gives you a template document to use that's the right size for the device's screen. You can then preview your work on a virtual version of the device, by clicking the Device Central button in the Save for Web & Devices dialog (see below). You can also create and preview Flash, video and Web content.

It's very much beta at this stage though - it only contains generic devices rather than specific makes and models - but it'll be interesting to see how this looks in the final release.

Export to Zoomify

CS2 featured an option to export large megapixel images to a Web viewer called Viewpoint ZoomView, which lets you quickly zoom in and out of large images and pan around, Google Maps-style.

With the advent of CS3, Adobe have eschewed ZoomView in favour of Zoomify, which basically does the same thing, albeit without some of the advanced features of ZoomView. However, Zoomify works with the standard Flash browser plugin, so it doesn't need a separate plugin like ZoomView does. A big plus.

Improvements to current features

As if all those new CS3 features weren't enough, those clever-clogs at Adobe have been working hard to improve existing Photoshop functionality too.

Save for Web

The trusty Save for Web command now has the tongue-twisting name of Save for Web & Devices. It's very similar to the CS2 Save for Web, but the Edit in ImageReady button in the bottom corner of the dialog has been replaced with the Device Central button for previewing your image on an emulated device.

So why no ImageReady button? Simple: ImageReady is no more! It's gone to software heaven. The more useful ImageReady features - animation, slices and so on - have been absorbed into Photoshop itself; other features, such as image maps, have been dropped. Personally I think this is a great thing - it was always a bit cumbersome constantly flipping between Photoshop and ImageReady to do stuff like animated GIFs (which, let's face it, aren't as popular as they used to be anyway).

The dialog also contains controls for previewing an animated GIF and choosing repeat options. You now create the actual animation directly in Photoshop, using the Animation palette (Window > Animation, shown to the right). The old ImageReady features are all there, such as setting frame delays and adding tweened frames.

Cunning cloning

Many of the cloning tools, such as the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools, now let you preview what you're doing before you do it. To do this, hold down Shift+Alt (Win) or Shift+Option (Mac); an overlay appears, showing you what's directly under the mouse cursor. This is wonderful for avoiding those cloning accidents - I'm forever cloning a feature of the image that I didn't want to clone!

You can also now sample from the current layer combined with all layers below, rather than simply all layers, by choosing Current & Below for the Sample option in the options bar. You can also choose to ignore the effects of any adjustment layers when sampling - to do this, click the appropriate icon in the options bar.

Finally, there's a new Clone Source palette available (Window > Clone Source) that lets you store up to five different sample sources - from different images if you like - as well as scale and rotate the sampled pixels before cloning them. This is fantastic if you have a perfect area of the image to clone from, but it's at the wrong angle or size. You can also control the preview overlay from this dialog, including its opacity and blending mode.

Eyedropper tool

The Eyedropper tool, used for sampling colours from a document, has had a small update: you can now sample bigger ranges than 5 by 5. Much more useful in the day of 20 megapixel images!

Vanishing Point

Adobe have improved the incredibly handy Vanishing Point command, first introduced in CS2, with a couple of great new features.

Firstly, you can now Alt/Option+drag a resize handle on a plane to rotate that plane about any angle relative to its neighbour. In other words, you're no longer restricted to creating planes that are perpendicular to one another. This gives you a lot more flexibility and control over the types of perspective shapes you can create.

Secondly, whereas the CS2 Vanishing Point limited you to moving your selection over one plane at a time, in CS3 you can stretch your selected image over multiple planes; the image hugs the contours of each plane, twisting and turning as it goes. Perfect for making package mock-ups and so on.

Curves

The Curves adjustment dialog has had a bit of an overhaul. If you modify the curves of individual colour channels - great for correcting colour casts - you can now see the individual channel curves superimposed on top of the composite curve. This means you can see the whole adjustment on the one graph, which is handy.

Adobe have also added a histogram, as well as black and white point sliders below the graph, meaning that you can now easily do Levels-type adjustments within the Curves dialog.

Other useful additions include some great built-in presets for various colour correction scenarios, and a more obvious way of switching between brightness levels and ink levels. You can also view which parts of your image you're clipping, much like Alt/Option-dragging the sliders in Levels dialog. Finally, there's no longer a button to expand the size of the dialog - it's permanently "expanded" now. This seems like a good move; the old smaller Curves dialog always felt a bit cramped anyway.

Brightness/Contrast

Let's face it - the Brightness/Contrast adjustment has never exactly been the professional's tool of choice. With its somewhat "rough and ready" approach, and its enthusiasm for clipping images, posterising and destroying shadows and highlights, it's generally been relegated to the "special effects" department.

Adobe have addressed this with the new Brightness/Contrast; it's now much tamer. Brightness now adjusts the spread of the brightness levels across the shadows, midtones and highlights; it's a bit like using the gray point slider in Levels. Contrast adjusts the contrast across the midrange - the equivalent of using an S-curve or inverted S-curve in the Curves dialog. It's much harder to clip your image now. If you're really keen to muck up your image though, you can always check the Use Legacy option in the dialog to return to the old-school method.

Camera Raw

The Adobe Camera Raw plugin lets you open raw, unprocessed image files from many digital cameras - they're the digital equivalent of a film negative, in many ways - then process them, adjusting white balance, exposure, sharpening and so on, before opening them in Photoshop proper.

In CS3, Camera Raw has seen some major improvements. The most significant is probably that you can now open regular JPEG and TIFF files and process them in Camera Raw. Other welcome additions are the Recovery slider - for clawing back blown highlights created by dragging the Exposure slider - and the wonderful Fill Light slider, which is just great for adding punch to the lower midtones of an image.

Adobe have also overhauled the user interface, with more intuitive grouping of the sliders, and introduced a couple of new tabs, such as the HSL/Grayscale tab, which lets you control hue, saturation and luminance across eight colour ranges, as well as perform a black and white conversion right in the dialog. There's also the Split Toning tab, for adding a touch of colour to your shadows or highlights.

If you want to perform really precise, detailed adjustments to your images - whether they're raw files, JPEGs or TIFFs - the new Camera Raw is definitely the way to go.

Slightly better HDR support

High Dynamic Range, or HDR images contain a much wider range of brightness levels than standard images, allowing you to capture both your dark shadows and bright highlights without clipping. Usually this is done by taking multiple photos at different exposure settings - known as bracketing - then using Photoshop's Merge to HDR command (File > Automate > Merge to HDR) to merge the photos together into one HDR image.

CS3 features some minor improvements on the HDR front. Its Merge to HDR command lets you load and save camera response curves for later use, and it also uses the new alignment function from Auto-Align Layers to better align the photos. Having said that, it did a pretty bad alignment job when I tried it on a test image (shown here). It aligned the clouds in the image fine, but - presumably because the clouds moved between shots - the rest of the image was all out of alignment. CS2 was actually better in this regard! Hopefully things will improve in CS3 final.

In addition, more functions within Photoshop now support 32-bit HDR images, such as the Levels and Hue/Saturation adjustments, and the Emboss filter. It's still quite a limited range, though - hopefully HDR support will improve in future versions of Photoshop.

Better PDF handling

Adobe have made a small enhancement to the way Photoshop opens PDF files: You can now specify an exact width and height when importing a PDF page, rather than just specifying the resolution.

Improved printing

Printing from CS3 is now much simpler, with a single Print dialog handling both previewing and printing itself. The print preview window is also bigger, and Photoshop now integrates more tightly with certain printers.

Adobe Bridge

Adobe's Bridge software, bundled with Photoshop, lets you view, manage and organize your images, Photoshop documents and other graphics files. The latest version sports a new, snazzy-looking dark grey look - you can change the colour if it doesn't appeal - and various other improvements to the interface. For example, there's a wider range of views to change from, including a vertical filmstrip, and a Light Table view.

The new Bridge also features a Filter pane, letting you filter by an impressive range of criteria, including landscape or portrait orientation, and even aspect ratio. Another nice touch is the ability to group selected images together in a stack, for easier organisation. The new slideshow view is quite snazzy too, with Ken Burns-style sliding of images - though frankly it made me a bit queasy after a while!