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WITHOUT doubt a lot of artists, technologically-enlightened graphic designers and those involved in pre-press work prefer using Adobe Photoshop rather than any similar application in their daily production of artwork.

  The reason is Photoshop is a flexible and powerful image processing program which can be used by anybody, from high-end photo-retouchers to professional illustrators and multimedia authors.

  It is also not difficult to learn.

  Photoshop allows users to create original images using advanced painting functions, retouch and edit photographs and other scanned-in digitised images, make colour corrections and produce four-colour separations.

  But now users can expect even more from the program as Adobe Photoshop 3.0, the first fully native PowerPC version of Adobe Photoshop, has just been released.

  It comes with a set of new features and exciting face-lifts.

  It is believed to be a major upgrade for graphic professionals and it is likely to continue to dominate the software market as an all-around image creation tool.

  What makes Photoshop 3.0 different from its predecessors is it offers users the power of multiple image layers, significant enhancements to the user interface, many new creative tools and stronger production controls.

  The industry-standard image manipulation package is also good news for existing users.

  It provides identical features and cross-platform inter-operability for both the Macintosh and Windows versions.

 Above all, one of the most exciting enhancements is the new user-interface which removes many tasks from the depths of menus and sub-menus, and brings them out onto groups of palettes floating on the desktop.

  Each palette has a tab and can hold several different types of control.

  You can combine or arrange the floating palettes in any order to suit the available desktop space and your needs.

  When you try to drag the palettes around, they tend to snap to the edges of the screen or align with other palettes.

  If your screen space is not large enough, you can have just one palette which includes all things, like colour pickers and paintbrushes, and flip between them as required.

  This effectively helps reduce screen clutter.

  To speed up repeatedly performed tasks, the Commands palette lets you assign function keys to regularly used tasks and palettes so you have quicker and easier access, and, therefore, save time.

  Unlike earlier versions of Photoshop, 3.0 supports multiple layers which allow you to move images and text and apply effects without affecting the underlying backgrounds.

  The multiple layers also allow users to manipulate elements of an image on separate layers, much as they would use separate sheets of acetate when using manual techniques.

  Users can control the transparency of the image elements on each individual layer with a slider in the Layers palette which allows users to draw, edit or use effects and filters on different layers.

  You can also attach a layer mask, which lets you apply effects to a layer, vary the opacity, and use channels calculation commands on it without destroying data.

  Photoshop 3.0 also comes with new colour correction tools. They let you adjust the amount of ink in a given colour plate in absolute or relative values and improve the process of getting colour fidelity when adjusting images for CMYK output.

  You can also create masks based on specific colours, and correct colour by adjusting hue, saturation and brightness.

  Several new plug-in filters with the ability to allow lighting effects, help image restoration, remove dust and scratches from scanned images and encourage the development of new special effects have been added in version 3.0.

  Most of the filters have automatic previews built-in, so you can choose which portion of image is featured .

  The other important feature of version 3.0 is a new CMYK preview option which provides a soft proofing capability which lets users preview what their file will look like in CMYK mode without first converting the image.

  The new drag-and-drop feature lets users quickly copy and paste images between documents or layers without using menu commands.

  Photoshop 3.0 is a great program which is worth buying, but there are still some drawbacks.

  Its text handling capabilities are still limited.

  If you want to fit text to a given space on the image, you still need to render it, delete it if its size is too big or small, and keep trying at different point sizes until it fits.

  Also thumbnails are RAM-hungry when they are re-drawing.

  As a result users are advised to turn them off. By doing so they will notice a little speed gain on larger files.

  When compared with version 2.5.1, version 3.0 runs slightly faster on Power Macs but slightly slower on 68k Macs.

  In general 3.0 needs a couple more megs of RAM than 2.5.1, so if you run both with exactly the same amount of RAM you may find 3.0 seems slower because it's hitting the disk.

  The program needs a Macintosh computer with 68020 or better processor, including Power Macintosh, Apple System Software 7.0 or greater, and at least 20 MB of free hard disk space for virtual memory.

  A minimum of 11 MB of RAM (with System Virtual Memory off) is required for a Power Macintosh.

  On the other hand, 6 MB (with System Virtual Memory turned on) is required for Macintosh 68020-68040.

  Photoshop 3.0 is still a RAM and hard disk-hungry program. It can run in 6 MB of RAM, but not well.

  You can only edit small files with that. If you are serious about imaging, you will need to add more RAM to the cost of the programme.

  Although the QuickEdit feature reduces memory needed for some retouching tasks by allowing a section of a large file to be opened, edited and saved back into the original, it only works with Photoshop 2.0, Scitex CT and uncompressed TIFF files.

  Photoshop 3.0 for Macintosh/PPC is now available at major retail shops for a list price of $6,980.

  The PPC native upgrade version is also available for $1,560 (from any Limited version/Audition) or $1,170 (from any retail version).

  The program is distributed in Hong Kong by PacRim Technologies. They can be contacted on 2832 9322.



Photoshop gets a face-lift