Adobe releases Photoshop CS3 beta

Adobe is set to release today a beta version of Photoshop CS3, an update of the company's photo-editing application written to run natively on Intel-based Macs.

The software will be available from Adobe Labs, the company said on Thursday. People need a serial number from Photoshop CS2 or other Adobe bundles, including Creative Suite 2, to access the Photoshop CS3 beta.

The final version of Photoshop CS3 is due in spring 2007, according to Adobe.

Adobe will make the beta available as a universal binary -- meaning it will run on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs -- for the Macintosh, as well as for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The release will include an early version of an upgrade to Adobe Bridge, an application for managing files. The beta will also include a new tool, Adobe Device Central, for creating content for mobile devices.

"We still have some surprises in store, but this beta gives customers an early chance to see the power of another great Photoshop release, optimised and tuned to run natively on the latest hardware and operating systems," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of the Creative Solutions business unit at Adobe.

Separately, the company said it intends to launch today a Web site called CSS Advisor to help Web designers debug Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) problems. It also plans to release a beta of its Ajax Web development toolkit called Spry framework for Ajax 1.5.

The Spry framework, which is aimed at designers, includes a set of widgets and code samples meant to speed up creation of common user interface elements, such as animations.

The software maker intends to include Spry in the next major release of its Web authoring tool Dreamweaver, which is due next spring, said Kenneth Berger, Adobe's project manager for Dreamweaver.

That Dreamweaver update will also include links to CSS Advisor. The Web site is meant to be a place where designers can access and contribute information on common problems, particularly in regard to cross-browser compatibility.

Adobe has found that the No. 1 problem faced by Web designer customers is when different browsers display Web pages in a slightly different way, Berger said.