[Grapho]

Thats just it, I do work with 3D, not much video (at least not professionally). I guess this is also dependent at what package I would be using and more importantly how well threaded is it for multiple cores. I know that what I have dose use both my G5 processors, but I don't know if it would recognize 4 or more.

[moose_n_squirrel]

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Thats just it, I do work with 3D, not much video (at least not professionally). I guess this is also dependent at what package I would be using and more importantly how well threaded is it for multiple cores. I know that what I have dose use both my G5 processors, but I don't know if it would recognize 4 or more.

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http://blogs.adobe.c...06/12/photoshop[/u]and_multicore.html

[samrod]

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Photoshop CS3 Extended takes image alignment even further by enabling you to align and process multiple images to remove digital noise

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Are you kidding me?! I requested this yeas ago and they did it?! Yeah, I'm sure I was the only one asking for it. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif
But seriously, this just blows Photoshop's creative potential through the roof! If it's using actually canceling the noise by averaging the signal across multiple shots, this will do wonders for long exposures for astronomical photography, long exposures at night, and using high ISO's.
I'm curious how far this can be pushed. Say you try to merge together 16 images of the same star field that are so noisy that you can't distinguish between the noise and stars in any single image. Will Photoshop completely eliminate the noise from the the resulting merge, leaving a clean, black sky in the background with stars previously invisible to the naked eye?
What if you merged together 16 tiny crops of the same area of larger images? Will Photoshop merge multiple images of low resolution into one of acceptable quality? I know this may be a stretch and I'm asking for a lot, but I'm curious.
OR, is the noise cancellation merely fancy noise detection and softening?
In what way are the new HDRIs better in CS3 than CS2?

[whitedog]

I've seen the noise reduction demonstrated and explained. The process does not average in the conventional sense. What it does is look for elements (pixels) that stay the same from picture to picture and keep them; pixels that change - moving objects like people, for instance, or picture noise, are removed. It's quite impressive. It should indeed work for astronomical images, assuming they are taken in a relatively short span of time so the movement of the sky would be undetectable, though such an image was not part of the demonstration. The usual caveat applies, of course - your mileage may vary. But combined with CS3's ability to align layers - which you apply first - this function has great potential, and not just for noise removal.
Features like this, in the Extended version of Photoshop, which are useful in the standard workspace, are a good reason to get the extended version, whether or not you will be using it on 3D and video.

[Jim Heid]

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There seems to be an error in the article, BTW. CS2 and much earlier versions of Photoshop's Curves dialog box have had black, gray and white point droppers. So I'm not sure what Mr. Heid is referring to with that reference to a new ability to set white and black points.

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I'm referring to the new black- and white-point adjustment sliders, which mimic their counterparts in the Levels dialog box. Yes, you could use the black- and white-point droppers in earlier versions' Curves dialog box, but the addition of adjustment sliders makes the Curves dialog box all the more useful now.
Jim Heid, Senior Contributor

[ncj37]

I've upgraded to Photoshop Extended and tried the auto-align function on some pictures of the moon (stacking the images to pick up earthshine). Sad to say, it appears that the auto alignment doesn't work at all on astro pictures. I suspect that they (Adobe) are using a VERY simple alignment method and it just can't pick up small objects on a relatively featureless, dark background. With the moon shots I'd say that the crescent moon took up about one half to one third of the frame and when I stacked five images it couldn't even begin to align the images (and it gives no status, it just puts up the busy cursor for several seconds and then when it's "done" nothing has been aligned). To do the auto alignment I suspect that you need well exposed images with large, strong detail and contrast across the entire frame. So, forget about trying to auto-align stars, planet images, or even shots of the moon (unless, I suspect, you have a high contrast shot of the moon that covers the entire frame).
However, the new average (mean and median) function works pretty well on images after you manually align the layers. But I would NOT say that it's dramatically better than the old-style blending modes using opacities of 1/n where n is the number of layers in the image stack).
I'm going to do some more testing, but I suspect that the auto-alignment performance is still pretty weak in Photoshop CS3. It may still be better to use a true photomerge program or do the alignment manually (manually align each layer using the difference blending mode -- where "perfect" alignment is indicated when you get a completely black image).
In any case, the new video support in PS Extended is pretty interesting. In no way is Photoshop now a true video editor, but I suspect that you could do some interesting work using Photoshop's filters on video sequences (in addition to the drawing and text).

[ncj37]

I just did a quick five image pano (indoor shot, NOT some astrophotography) and Photoshop CS3 seemed to do a fairly good job at aligning the images into a wide panorama. So, it may just be the astro images that are going to have problems with alignment. That's kind of what I expected, but I'd still like to do some more testing before I've decided one way or the other.

[john-d]

Alas, ImageReady, we knew ye well. What a super handy program that was. Looks like I'll have to learn Fireworks, a program that has stymied me every at every attempt. Maybe they'll have Photoshop-ed the illogical FW interface.
Anyway, all good news for PS users and MacTel users.

[ncj37]

I still can't get the auto stacking function to work with astro photographs (I suspect that this is due to the large areas of black in the astro images). However, the panoramic stitching in Photoshop CS3 seems to work very well. I also did some auto stacking of images that I took hand-held in good lighting out-of-doors and that works well also (stacked and used the mean function and the series of shots I did at EI1600 looked like they had been captured at a much, much lower exposure index, maybe like EI400 or even near to EI200).

So, in my hands still a big question mark about auto stacking astro images, but the other auto stacking and panoramic shots look very good.

[vudutu]

The NEW 800 pound Gorilla is Adobe. I for one am in sticker shock. I do IT for a small art school, academia budgeting and trying to keep up is difficult, everything is a year or so behind. I purchased CS2 last summer and deployed it only seven months ago, and ever since then I have had to put up with the path and other bugs in Illustrator, emulation and slow performance on my Intel machines. NOW they want me to buy ANOTHER, buggy, I am sure, version.
My purchase price last August was $11,345 for 40 seats, $190 a seat. Now, after putting up with all these problems , Adobe want's to sell me a license again, no pro-rated upgrade, for $23,529! $588 a seat! If I drop the web publishing bundle and only get Design Premium it's only $14,127. Heck of a price for the privilege of training students to go out in the world and buy more of their products, I am sorry but no, CS2 will have to do. If Adobe had come to us with a reasonable upgrade price I would have considered it, this is NOT a reasonable price.
Worse yet last fall I mistakenly agreed to join with my Adobe software reseller in offering Adobe products to students at a substantial discount, less than my seat price, little did I know it would be used to try and force me to purchase CS3. Earlier this month I found out the reseller was calling and emailing my faculty, pushing them to CS3 and offering students discounted CS3 prices. Since we have CS2 installed here at school, we don't want students to buy CS3 until we upgrade, we don't need them taking CS2 files home and opening them in CS3 , bringing them back here and not being able to open, we don't want them pushing us to upgrade. This ploy of using students and faculty to drive me to buy overpriced buggy software messes with my budget and tends to irritate me. I do not appreciate Adobe not offering me a reasonable upgrade on software I bought seven months ago, expecting me to come up with $24 K I have no budget for.
Adobe has worked themselves into a bad antitrust position, they have beaten up or bought competition, you now have no choice, there are few to no alternatives, welcome the new Gorilla... and we thought Quark was bad.

[zombilly]

My question is, if photoshops cs3 is native to the intel processors, why is it when looking at it in the activity monitor it says its kind is powerpc while the rest of the suite is listed as intel?. Is Photoshop cs3 fully native?