A few months back, I made it my mission to get to the bottom of the 3D features in Photoshop CS5 Extended. After all, I am presently probing those very features in my four-part video series titled Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One: 3D for lynda.com. And as you might imagine, I was (back then, and even slightly now) intimidated. There is precious little in the way of definitive here’s-how-things-work information on the topic. Lots of demo tuts, but while often amazing, they only take you so far.

So I did a deep dive and found a vast network of functionality. I might even go so far as to characterize 3D as the single biggest upgrade to Photoshop over each of the last three versions. Crazy as it may sound, what many of us regard as a photo editor is gradually transforming into a 3D editing environment.

For example, consider the image above. It includes three photographic images. Otherwise, it’s 100% Photoshop. Don’t you just want to reach out and touch it? And then put it on and pretend you’re Marshall of Dodge City.

Yes, you could find this antique chunk of metal and photograph it. You could polish it to reveal its flaws. And light the scene and get it ready to go. Or you could just make the damn thing from whole cloth. Which isn’t so hard because, at heart, it’s just a star with some text and a few circles. All extruded into 3D space using Repoussé (one of the innovations in Photoshop CS5 Extended).

And once you’ve made the 3D object, there’s no end to what you can do with it. Below, I added what Repoussé calls an “active constaint”—or what a 2D artist would call an inner path outline—and summoned forth the center of the star. And added a reflective sphere. All in a few minutes. What the hell it is, I have no idea. But it looks awesome.

The fact is, with 3D—as with all computer-enabled design—you can make your artwork anything you want it to be. The wonder of 3D is that the results appear so gorgeous realistic, even if (in this case) conceptually otherworldly. And it’s all there waiting for you in Photosop CS5 Extended, as I’ll do my best to reveal in the coming months.