1. Interface
Besides being the most apparent change when you launch Photoshop CS3, the new interface builds on the strengths of Photoshops past. Part of the beauty of the new interface is that although it’s familiar, there are some important changes that make it more efficient. The Palette Well is gone, and the Workspace menu appears right in the Options Bar. The palettes can be collapsed to small icons, and if you press Shift+Tab to hide all the floating palettes, the palettes will reappear when you hover over the right side of the work area. This new interface is all about giving you a larger work area and from what I can tell, it takes the average user around 47 seconds to love this new interface

2. Smart Filters
I’m a big believer in building very flexible Photoshop documents, using methods that give me a lot of opportunity to change my mind. Up until now, applying filters was one of the least flexible Photoshop functions because there’s no going back once a filter is applied and the document is saved. Thanks to Smart Filters, filters now join the likes of adjustment layers and layer masks as the most flexible way of working. After converting a layer to a Smart Object, any filter that you apply appears in the Layers palette. At any time–even after saving–you can double-click on the filter to edit its settings, hide a filter, or delete it. There’s even a layer mask that applies specifically to the filters you’ve applied.

3. Quick Selection/Refine Edge
Making accurate selection quickly and easily has always been one of the most important skills you can develop in Photoshop. Photoshop CS3 introduces two new functions for making selections–two of the most important innovations in the world of selections in a very long time. First is a new selection tool called the Quick Selection Tool. Simply choose a brush size and then drag over the area you want to select. It works pretty darn well and takes a lot less effort than the Magic Wand (with which you have to change the tolerance to change the area that’s selected).

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