ImageReady: Dead

I posted a question on the new Photoshop CS3 Beta forum about the status of ImageReady, Photoshop's long-time web companion. I was told by Jeff Schewe that ImageReady is dead!?! I couldn't believe it, as others couldn't either.

I noticed that the Jump To menu in Photoshop CS3 didn't have anything to jump to and the bottom of the toolbox did not contain a Jump to button. I was surprised but not so surprised seeing that Fireworks is a really capable, lightweight web imaging program that can do almost everything that ImageReady can do.

This is also a testament to the direction Photoshop is heading, which in my humble opinion, is for Photographers and digital imaging in general. What I'm going to miss most is the ability to quickly cut up a navigation system and then output rollOvers. There are some ImageReady features built into Photoshop CS2 and CS3, but this isn't one of them.

For those of you who are going to be forced to migrate to Fireworks, take a look at this tutorial, which gave me a little hint of what was to come.

PS CS3 Videos from Russell Brown

The wacky Russell Brown has produced some video tutorials on the new Photoshop CS3 Beta. You can find them here.

Photoshop CS3 Public Beta

Adobe has released Photoshop CS3 Beta for intel-based Macs (there's also a release for XP). I discounted this Beta as something for that purpose alone, but after checking things out, I'm incredibly impressed at the direction Photoshop is going in.

The entire interface has been modified. It's a flexible interface with docking capabilities. It feels more like a Macromedia product now. The Palette Well is gone and there are collapsible docking areas for placing palettes wherever you wish. Palettes, when collapsed, look like buttons and afford you a lot more room when working with high-res images. If you hide the palettes (Shift + Tab) they come back when you hover over the area that displayed them.

There is a new tool that will turn heads. The Quick Selection tool. Finally, Adobe has caught up on the science of selections. All you have to do with this tool is click and drag over an area with a brush and it's selected! The results are remarkable. The Refine Edges button can help you re-define the edges of the selection and preview it on different backgrounds. You might never use the Extract Command again!

There are too many other features to mention so check out the NAPP Photoshop CS3 Beta Preview movies by the Photoshop Guys and Deke McLelland's preview at Lynda.com.

Photoshop CS3

Adobe is set to release Photoshop CS3 as a Beta, according to many Adobe blogs. Martin Evening has a great preview here. There are some interesting enhancements to the interface and some cool new features and tools. PS CS3 is set to be released some time in the first quarter next year. This release is targeted to Intel based Mac's, but Adobe is obviously taking the opportunity to beef up the king of image editing apps.