Today, Adobe updated its Creative Cloud suite with a surprise for 3D-printing enthusiasts. The company's flagship program, Photoshop, now has 3D printing integration with MakerBot, Shapeways, a New York-based company that will print your creations and ship them to you, and other popular desktop printers.
Photoshop isn't exactly known for CAD modeling. Although you can create basic 3D models in the program, Adobe sees Photoshop as a go-between that allows users to tweak and polish designs before printing. "The new 3D print capabilities in Photoshop CC take the guess work out of printing 3D models for everyone," Adobe's Winston Hendrickson said in a statement. "Before today there was a gap between the content produced by 3D modeling and what 3D printers need in order to deliver high quality results. Now, by simply clicking 'Print' in Photoshop CC, creatives can bring 3D designs to the physical world."
Along with MakerBot's CES announcement last week, when the company added the consumer-focused Mini to its 3D printing lineup, the integration of Photoshop is making three-dimensional rendering and printing even more democratic. "With the huge adoption of Adobe Photoshop CC, this announcement means that a massive influx of people will now have access to 3D modeling tools," MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis said in the press release.
According to TechCrunch, the new update will mean that Photoshop can take any 3D model format, including STL, OBJ, 3DS, KMZ, and Collada, and prepare them for printing. As the Adobe video describes above, the program adds the necessary physical scaffolding to make sure every print is successful.
You can try your hand at Photoshop 3D printing for free. Since it launched the Creative Cloud, Adobe has offered a free 30-day trial of PhotoShop, Illustrator, Muse, and InDesign. The company is even resetting the free trials to try to pull in as many people as possible, so even if you've already used up your free trial, Adobe will give you another.
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.
