Kinda crossposted @Carrot Revolution.
I finally had a chance to sit down with Photoshop CS3 the other night and get to know it a little better. It began with awkward introductions and inevitable clumsiness associated with expectations based on prior relationships with other graphic design programs (including more than a few of CS3′s predecessors). However, once we got the basic get-to-know you out of the way and got into the deep soul-searching ‘what are we here for’ conversations, I realized that I have truly found true love again in graphic design.
The big thing that attracts me to CS3 is the ease at which you can add effects to and rotoscope video. I’ll say that again, in case you missed it. You can manipulate video in CS3 with the same ease that you can work with still images. Sure it might take a bit longer (depending on what your doing and if you’re working frame by frame), but the potential here is amazing.
Its not that you can suddenly do stuff that you couldn’t do before. Certainly anything that you can do in CS3 you could previously do with programs like After Effects or Shake (just to name a few). However, now, anyone with a skill set in Photoshop can do some pretty fantastic stuff in video as well and only learn a few new tricks.
Maybe its just the rose-colored glasses that new love inevitably brings, but I’m thinking that CS3 might just signal a big change for what students will be doing -sooner- in video classes.
Now, that being said, I also have to admit my attraction to two other graphics programs (that sounds much worse than it actually is).
The first is Splashup A fantastic online editor, which is a tad more limited than Adobe Photoshop Elements (the painting functions don’t work so smoothly, there arent’ as many filters), but has two distinct advantages. Its online, and its free. Because you can easily grab images from your Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook account (as well as grab an image from your computer or a URL of your choosing), you can now edit your photos anywhere at anytime.
The second is Vector Magic. This amazing website allows you to quickly convert any image from raster to vector. For those of you who are using illustrator for design, this free online app is a huge time saver!
If its a little hard to see the difference in this scaled-down image, click on it for a better view. Ahh, there. See what I mean?
Oh, CS3, don’t be jealous! You are still first and foremost, my graphics program of choice, now and forever.
…until CS4, at least.
David Gran is an art and technology teacher at the Shanghai American School. He is also the head honcho of the 
