Adding to the program's existing 3D capabilities, the latest version of Photoshop CC will import files with user-selectable scales and dimensions.

Watching 3D printing evolve reminds me of the nascent days of desktop publishing -- now complete that deja vu with Adobe jumping into the market. The company thinks 3D printing is on the cusp of going mainstream and sees a coming inflection point in the consumer market once full-color printers, full-color content, and a robust marketplace for third-party downloadable models emerges. Adobe sees its role as providing the tools for helping generate the full-color content -- that makes sense given its users and applications.

Yes, Windows 8.1 now has built-in support, but here's the rub: the 3D API in Windows 8.1 expects a well-formed model. Per Microsoft, "The 3D model and texture data are considered an opaque stream by the API, and there is no validation or parsing of any kind." Basically, it's treating 3D printing the way it treats modern 2D printing, but 3D printing is still at the primitive state 2D printing was when one needed to understand PostScript to figure out why things weren't working.

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