The New Version of Photoshop and an Automated House Design Program

Happy New Year! Hope you had a relaxed and restful holiday break and 2009 is off to a good start for you. AECbytes starts off this month by exploring the new version of Adobe Photoshop, which was released in October as part of Adobe’s extensive CS4 suite of applications. The last release of Photoshop that I reviewed back in April 2007 was the first to include an Extended version with several 3D capabilities specifically designed for professionals in fields requiring advanced digital imagery such as science, healthcare, film, video, and AEC. Photoshop CS4 Extended continues to build upon these capabilities, including the ability to work on 3D layers directly and convert 2D images to 3D objects in various ways. It also includes several enhancements for 2D imaging tasks that have been engineered in the standard version of Photoshop CS4, including easier re-editable adjustments, better masking, intelligent content-aware scaling, and more seamless panoramic composites. This review takes a detailed look at both types of enhancements and determine whether they add up to make Photoshop CS4 Extended a compelling upgrade for AEC firms.

The start of a new year is a good time to explore some forward-looking technologies. AECbytes has looked at several of these in recent years as part of its Building the Future series, including the design optimization technology of SITEOPS, the innovations being developed at Autodesk Labs, the online virtual reality world of Second Life, and others including Visual Estimating, automated code checking, and automated rule-based design. This month, we will take a look at the rule-based design technology of Bluethink House Designer, an application developed by Selvaag Bluethink, the technology arm of the Selvaag Group which is one of the largest home building companies in Norway. We will see how this application automatically applies embedded knowledge to support design and analysis, resulting in reduced design time, improved design quality, and lesser likelihood of expensive changes during construction.

The product review of Photoshop is nicely complemented this month by a Tips and Tricks article showing how to use Photoshop CS4 Extended for creating architectural animations. A second Tips and Tricks article focuses on the new release of Google SketchUp and highlights one of its updated features, which is how to break up edges more easily when required in SketchUp 7.

Last but not the least, be sure to check out the AECbytes Blog for reader comments and the VendorHub to get information about the technology providers in AEC, both of which have seen some additional activity over the holidays.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > January 2009