Adobe, the unrivaled leaders in the design and image editing field for 2-D graphics, are ready to begin incorporating 3-D image creation and editing into their robust collection of graphical programs. Today, Adobe announced that the next version of their powerful Creative Suite will come with two flavors of Photoshop: Photoshop CS3 and the brand new Photoshop CS3 Extended.

While the popular and successful 2-D Photoshop will return with some excellent new features and tools (check out the beta if you have CS2), Photoshop Extended will allow designers, architects, engineers, and those that work in medical and science fields to create and edit 3-D objects and motion graphics.

And, along with the powerful 2-D Photoshop tools that are compatible with the 3-D and motion based content comes the addition of full-fledged video editing. Texture editing, painting, cloning, and multiple frame renderings are now possible in Photoshop Extended. After editing images or adding finishing touches to video, users can export projects in formats such as Quicktime, MPEG-4, and Adobe Flash Video.

According to the press release, more features for both Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended will be formally announced on March 27, 2007. After Adobe releases more information about Creative Suite 3, they expect to ship it within the Spring 2007 quarter.

If it’s free it’s for me! In the next few months Adobe Photoshop will be moving online and will be free of charge. It will be a stripped down basic version but if you don’t own or don’t want to pirate a copy, this is a great alternative. It’ll also be a great way to try it out if you’re just getting into the whole photo manipulation thing. It follows in the footsteps of numerous companies moving to an online format, where I’m already able to do word processing and spreadsheets on Google and the like.
Said Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen:

“That is new (for Adobe). It’s something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises.”

[Via DailyTech]