Adobe to Debut Photoshop 'Extended'

Although it won't officially announce Creative Suite 3 until March 27, Adobe said Thursday that it will deliver not one, but two editions of Photoshop CS3, the company's tool for professional graphic and Web designers.

The standard Photoshop CS3, which has been available in beta for Macintosh users since December, will be joined by Photoshop CS3 Extended. The new edition brings integration of 3-D and motion graphics, image measurement and analysis. It also adds new workflow capabilities designed for professionals in architecture, engineering, medical and science.

Using Photoshop Extended, film experts can build 3-D models and edit textures within video frames, while animators can embed 3-D objects into 2-D compositions. Web designers will be able to create animations from static images that can be exported into both QuickTime, MPEG-4 and Flash Video.

But the new product will go beyond just design. Users will be able to extract quantitative and qualitative data from images using Photoshop CS3 Extended. This functionality has been specifically targeted at the medical and science industries, which can use Photoshop to monitor patients and create animations of medical images.

"We never imagined that Photoshop would someday help make major motion pictures, let alone save lives," said John Loiacono, senior vice president at Adobe. "Whether it's a video producer texture editing the backdrop of a movie or a researcher counting hundreds of cancer cells, diverse industries are already relying on the professional standard in digital imaging."

Adobe will detail pricing and packaging details of Creative Suite 3 on March 27, and says it will ship the final product this spring. Both Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended will be available for Windows and as a Universal Binary for Mac OS X.