Photoshop 7.0 is the outstanding new flagship
product from Adobe Systems Incorporated that is a must have upgrade
for every graphic artist and serious digital photographer. It’s a
feature packed application which stands out among all other graphic
programs when it comes to creating images for print or web design.
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Previous users will feel quite at home working within the Photoshop
7 environment. As a matter of fact, a quick glance at the interface
doesn’t reveal much of a difference between this and earlier
versions. However, digging a little deeper reveals some new and
innovative tools which will certainly enhance your creativity.
For me, the most obvious addition to Photoshop’s well-known toolbox
is the new Healing Brush. At first glance it may appear that this
innovative tool works just like the familiar Clone Tool. However,
there is a difference. When applied, the Healing Brush will clone
from one area of your image to another while preserving the
underlying shading, lighting and textures. This imparts a more
natural and appealing appearance to your picture and is an excellent
aid for touching up digital photos.
Within the same fly-out as the Healing Brush, we find Photoshop’s
new Patch Tool. This device is similar in action to the Healing
Brush but works somewhat differently. Unlike the Healing Brush
which clones from one area to another, the Patch Tool works by means
of creating a selection area. The idea is to select a good area of
your image with any of the available selection tools (as well as
quick masks and channels) and then drag the selection over a poorer
quality area. Photoshop then automatically corrects the shading and
toning within this selected area. It’s quite remarkable to see.
Another exciting feature found within Photoshop 7 is the new File
Browser. Imagine searching for your files visually rather than just
by file name. It’s a breeze with File Browser. Scroll through
thumbnail images of all your graphic files. Locate them. Organize
them. Even rotate them before bringing them into the Photoshop
workspace. The viewer is customizable. The default view shows
four panes. (1) The tree view is used to navigate folders and files
on your hard disks or CDs. (2) The thumbnail pane displays
thumbnails of the image files within a selected folder or disk. (3)
The preview pane displays a selected image larger than the thumbnail
pane view. (4) The metadata pane provides information about a
selected image beyond what’s displayed in the thumbnail pane. The
metadata pane shows keywords associated with a selected image as
well as captions, resolution, and bit depth. The metadata pane also
displays EXIF information about images created with digital cameras
such as creation date, exposure settings, image size, and
resolution. Managing graphic files in Photoshop has never been
easier.
Customizing Photoshop is a dream. New within Photoshop 7.0 is the
ability to let you customize any tool and save your preferred
settings as a new, unique tool for easy recall. For instance, you
can create your own unique brushes and save them as tool presets.
Access your presets instantly from the Tool options bar or from the
new tool Presets palette, which lets you conveniently view presets
for all your tools in one place. The new Workspace option in
Photoshop 7.0 lets you create a personalized desktop with a
preferred layout of palettes and save it as a workspace for future
use.
Other improvements abound. Photoshop has always been an industry
leader with its color correction tools. With Photoshop 7.0, you have
a new option, the Auto Color Command, which provides even more
reliable color correction. A new painting engine lets you create
exceptional imagery that you couldn’t achieve before in Photoshop.
Simulate traditional painting techniques (including pastels and
charcoal) with dry and wet brush effects and use brushes to add
special effects, such as grass and leaves. Scan paper or canvas
materials to create your own distinctive Photoshop canvases or use
the canvas textures that ship with Photoshop. In addition to
delivering entirely new creative possibilities, the Photoshop
painting engine gives you more precise controls. Using the Brushes
palette, you can adjust dozens of settings for shape, tilt, spacing,
scatter, jitter, diameter, texture, shading, and other attributes
and save those settings as custom brush presets. A limitless number
of painting effects can be created by combining two different
brushes.
With the new Pattern Maker plug-in, you can create patterns simply
by selecting a section of an image. The enhanced Liquify plug-in
provides enhanced image warping control with zoom, pan, and multiple
undo. The new, built-in spell checker allows you to search and
replace text; check spelling in multiple languages within the same
file; and correct spelling on one text layer or across all text
layers in the same document.
Included within the Photoshop 7.0 package is a new feature rich
ImageReady 7.0, an application for creating high quality web
graphics. Both applications give Photoshop 7.0 the most
comprehensive toolset on the market with new capabilities to meet
any creative demand and the ability to handle the widest variety of
image-editing tasks in the most efficient way.
Jeff
Blye is the Co-Chairman of the PhotoShop SIG of the The Long Island
PC Users Group. There meetings are held at the Bethpage Public
Library, Bethpage NY, just west of Rt. 135 at the Powel Ave exit.
Meetings are on the seconded Wednesday of each month at 7:30 PM
