
True to rumors, Adobe has announced a Photoshop CS3 Beta program available to customers with a serial number from either Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Creative Suite® 2, Adobe Creative Suite Production Studio, Adobe Design Bundle, Adobe Web Bundle or Adobe Video Bundle.
Packed with new features, Photoshop CS3 beta also includes a pre-release version of a major upgrade to Adobe Bridge, as well as a preview release of the all-new Adobe Device Central. Photoshop customers can use Adobe Device Central to design, preview, and test compelling mobile content, created specifically for smaller screens. This new tool, integrated in the Photoshop CS3 beta, simplifies and accelerates the creation of mobile content through a preview environment and built-in device profiles.
"This is an exciting time for the Mac, and Adobe wanted to ease the move to new Intel-based systems with a preview release of Photoshop CS3," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe.
The beta version will be available Friday morning from the Adobe Labs website. The Mac version is a Universal Binary, and system requirements call for a 1+ GHz G4 or G5 or any Intel-based Mac with 512MB of RAM. A Windows version is also available.
Adobe says the beta will expire soon after the formal release of Photoshop in Spring 2007. Final pricing is yet to be determined, however Photoshop CS2 currently is offered at $649 (full version, $169 upgrade).