Newest Photoshop update allows 3D Printing
When many people think of the popular photo editing program Adobe Photoshop, they think of anything from the manipulation of images to make images look nicer to creating (sometimes painfully obvious) fake photos. However, what few people know is that it is possible to design and make finishing touches to 3D models inside of the program itself. While new updates to the program are usually smaller things such as bugs or the rare inclusion of minor features, the addition of support for 3D printers marks a significant change for users, Adobe, and the future of 3D printing alike.
Currently, one of the only ways to be able to manipulate and print a 3D model is to use much more complicated CAD programs. There is a smaller percentage of people that know how to use CAD programs such as AutoCAD than Photoshop. As a result, the inclusion of 3D printing tools in Photoshop will allow 3D printing to be much more accessible to the common user.
Despite the fact that Photoshop itself is mainly geared towards professionals, Adobe expects 3D printing within the application to be relatively easy. The redesigned toolset in Photoshop is simple enough so that newer users can easily pick up and use tools to edit premade designs. However, Photoshop is still powerful enough so that more advanced users can make full use of all of what 3D printing has to offer. In addition, Photoshop also generate support structures for the model automatically, to ensure that the printer will produce complete and accurate results in the long term. Finally, Photoshop will also be able to support different materials, such as different metals, ceramics, and sandstone. Currently, many commercial and consumer 3D printers only support printing using ABS plastic, due to the fact that it relatively cheap to obtain and has the best results. While there aren’t a lot of 3D printers that support other materials, the support for other materials will hopefully encourage companies that create 3D printers to expand their support as well.
This is also a big step for Adobe as well. The inclusion of 3D printing to Photoshop shows that Adobe is willing to embrace newer, more promising technologies. Conversely, this also shows that more and more companies are starting to see 3D printing more as a viable piece of technology rather than something of a gimmick. With companies such as Adobe starting to increase support for 3D printing, along with the actual cost of 3D printing going down, we will most likely start to see 3D printers become as accessible as regular printers.
