Beta is the young pitch blackness for Adobe , and it fits them well . In the 72 hours after its surprisal announcement , Adobe reportedly had more than 100,000 downloads of the Intel - native beta of Photoshop CS3 . As a result , the Web has been abuzz with first tone and tutorials ( Ben Long wrote a CS3 first look for us last Friday . ) I have been playing with the beta for a while now , and it ’s been a blast . I feel like a youngster on Christmas daybreak with a new toy .

While I ’ve been playing , the guys in the Macworld Lab — Jim Galbraith and Brian Chen — have been meddling testing Photoshop CS3 on a few Intel Macs and some of the last contemporaries of PowerPC - based Macs . As you would expect , Photoshop CS3 shows some pretty significant speed increases over the Rosetta - emulated CS2 on the Mac Pro and MacBook Pros .

We scat three canonical tests : •   Launching Photoshop CS3 with a 50 MB file cabinet ; •   Running our standard cortege of 14 written undertaking on that 50 megabyte file ; and •   Running a batch cortege that executed three project ( rotate , resize and save ) on 100 stock exposure images .

In all the test . the Intel Mac ( Mac Pro and MacBook Pro ) beat its corresponding PowerPC cousin ( Power Mac G5 and PowerBook G4 ) , although the four PowerPC cores on the Power Mac G5 kept that machine pretty close in overall speed to the New Mac Pro .

Adobe Photoshop CS2 and CS3 Tested

BEST RESULTS INBOLD .

All tests were run on Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta and Adobe Photoshop CS2 translation 9.0.2 . All systems were running Mac OS X 10.4.8 with 1 GB of RAM , with CPU performance sic to Highest in the Energy Saver preference pane when applicable . The Startup test involved spread Photoshop with a 50 MB file . The Photoshop Suite test is a set of 14 scripted tasks using a 50 MB file . Photoshop ’s memory was set to 70 per centum and story was coiffure to Minimum . The Batch test execute three automate undertaking on 100 stock photos.—Macworld science lab testing by James Galbraith and Brian Chen

It ’s obvious that the real carrying out benefits of the CS3 beta will be felt strongest among portable user . I ’ve unquestionably noticed an betterment , especially when running functioning like complex sharpen tasks on big images . But I ’ll be honest when I say that , aside from launch fourth dimension , Photoshop CS2 was pretty usable for me on my MacBook Pro . But then again , I really was n’t pass the majority of my imaging meter with Photoshop .

The item that I had n’t been spending that much time in Photoshop has enamour me as I have used the CS3 genus Beta . I have spent so much time using Apple ’s Aperture over the past twelvemonth that I actually went for long periods of time without using Photoshop at all ( I have also been playing quite a bit with Lightroom , another solid Adobe genus Beta ) . I ’ve had conversations with other photographers about whether the rise of products like Aperture and Lightroom — which are much more focused on asset management than deep image manipulation — mean that Photoshop will ultimately become a product with a more limited appeal .

After a few daytime with the beta , I ’m recognize that this really is n’t the right question to ask ( I know , it ’s kind of sappy , actually ) . The question is really , “ How are all these app going to work with each other ? ” I have it away that , for the foreseeable future , Photoshop will be a better seat for image handling beyond simple tonal rectification . Add to that the fact that neither Aperture nor Lightroom have any selection tools , and Photoshop remains a must have . But what Aperture and Lightroom have show us is something that I have been arguing about for year : the substantial task is pull off our digital assets . In the end , for the vast legal age of photographer , industrial - speciality image manipulation is a secondary ( but no less important ) purpose . It does mean , though , that we ’re not give out to trim down the bit applications that we utilize . I ’ll take that over bloated software any Clarence Day .

Over the next class , it will be interesting to see what develops as Adobe and Apple continue to revise their key applications . Apple really does need to mould Aperture to fit better as the center of a workflow with Photoshop . It ’s satisfactory decently now , but it still need work ; sometimes it seems as though Apple would just prefer that Photoshop run away , and that ’s not going to materialise .

For Adobe , the strengthening of Photoshop , as evidenced by the CS3 genus Beta , raise some outcome about their whole Lightroom scheme , especially with the improvements in Bridge CS3 ( which is part of the Photoshop beta ) . Is Lightroom really Bridge , or frailty versa ? I jazz the Lightroom team is working hard to produce a really great coating for lensman , and I really do n’t want a bloated “ PhotoLightroom ” ( excuse me , “ Photoshop PhotoLightroom ” ) , but I think there need to be a bit more profoundness to Lightroom if it want to compete with Aperture ( I do it , I bed . It ’s genus Beta ! ) .

As I noted in November , this competition in the photo space is a great thing for exploiter . I like the fact that the quondam warhorse , Photoshop , can still show a few new antic , and make us realize why it ’s such an important lotion in this outer space .

[ Dec. 20 , 12:09 p.m. : fixed typo in benchmark chart , bring correct speed of Power Mac G5 Quad system of rules . ]