Adobe unwraps Intel-ready Photoshop

CS3 beta is first universal binary version of Photoshop.

Adobe has released the first beta versions of Photoshop CS3 for Windows and MacOS.

The CS3 beta will be the first version of Photoshop to run natively on Apple's line of Intel-based Macs.

Current Mac versions of the popular image-editing software were written for the PowerPC architecture, leaving Photoshop unable to take advantage of the new multi-core Intel chips.

Users with PowerPC Macs will not be left out, as the Photoshop CS3 beta also supports G4 and G5 chips 1GHz or faster, running MacOS 10.4.8 or 10.5.

The Windows version supports Vista and XP SP2. Windows users will need an Intel Centrino, Pentium 4 or Xeon processor.

The Intel compatibility comes as welcome news for photographers and designers, many of whom run Macs and require Photoshop for their jobs.

"This release is probably one of the most anticipated in a long time," wrote Photoshop Lab blogger Tommy Maloney.

"If you rushed right out and bought an Mac-Intel machine, you were probably pretty disappointed with the way your Adobe applications ran."

Adobe said that users must own Photoshop CS2 in order to run the beta. The firm hopes to officially launch Photoshop CS3 by the spring of 2007.