by , 4:30 PM EST, December 14th, 2006

Adobe announced on Thursday that it is launching a public beta test phase for Photoshop CS3. The final version is slated to ship in spring 2007, but until then users of Adobe's digital image manipulation application can get a taste of what's in store, and help ferret out issues before using it in their regular workflow.

The public beta is a Universal Binary application, allowing it to run natively on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs - something Mac users have been begging for ever since Apple introduced its Intel-based systems.

In addition to support for the current crop of Macs, Photoshop CS3 also includes Non-destructive Smart Filters, a Quick Selection tool, a Refine Edge tool, automatic layer alignment and blending, Vanishing Point with multiple adjustable angle perspective planes, Black and White conversion, a preview tool that shows how images look on portable devices, and more.

The Photoshop CS3 public beta is available to Photoshop CS2 users with a valid serial number, and includes English localization only. It requires a G4, G5, or Intel-based Mac, at least 320MB RAM (512 if you are also using Adobe Bridge), 64MB video RAM, and Mac OS X 10.4.8.

Although Adobe released a public beta of its image management application Lightroom, offering a public beta of Photoshop is unprecedented. To date, Adobe has never offered such an open preview of a future version of Photoshop.

You can download the Photoshop CS3 public beta from the Adobe Labs Web site starting on Friday, December 15, but keep in mind that it is beta software and should not be used with critical projects.