No sooner did Adobe announce Photoshop CS3 Extended than we started seeing developers pop up with interesting new solutions.  Among those just announced:

• Strata has announced three new plug-ins for Photohop Extended, all demonstrated in this four-minute video.
  • Strata Design lets you drop 3D objects into 2D photos, matching perspective and lighting.  The trick is that it leverages Vanishing Point’s new ability to export perspective planes as 3D objects.  From there the plug-in can drop in models, move them around, and do a high-quality rendering pass to make the models fit the scene.
  • Strata Photo can transform a series of photos (taken of an object sitting on a specially printed piece of paper) into a 3D model for use in Photoshop.
  • Strata Live connects Photoshop with Acrobat, exporting 3D models for viewing inside PDFs.  (Did you know that Acrobat does 3D?)
• 3Dconnexion (a part of Logitech) has announced that their SpaceNavigator for Photoshop.  Here’s a video demonstration in which marketing mgr. Tad Shelby shows the device controlling a 3D model in Photoshop Extended.  At less than a hundred bucks, it seems like a steal for any serious 3D user (and it works for 2D, too).

More good stuff is on the way as well:

• NewTek has announced LightWave Rendition for Adobe Photoshop, bringing LightWave’s lighting and rendering tools to Photoshop (I’ll link to more details when they make ’em live);
• eFrontier, the folks behind Poser, plan to release a free exporter to make their models compatible with Photoshop;
• Daz 3D is cooking up some great stuff as well;
• And various other parties have irons in the fire as well (more details to come).

All in all, it’s really exciting to see developers already building upon the 3D story in Photoshop Extended.