Photoshop 7: worth the update?
04/11/02 @833 | Arno | comments (23)

Worth the update?

Adobe is bound to release version 7 of its flagship Photoshop. But is the package worth its money. With only a few add-ons and changes it does not seems to be a big change from version 6. Let's take a look at some new features.

The new look

Interface
First of all the interface has been upgraded to fit the current Mac aqua and Win XP style, al those new 3d icons the toolbar are a real pleasure for the eye, and that is great considering most of you look at it a reasonable amount of your non sleeping hours. Where you might feel lost upgrading from 5.5 to 6, in Photoshop 7 everything is just where you expect it to be. That is, if you have been using version 6 before. If you're looking for the Airbrush tool you will have to look in the new advanced brush tool.

Resizing
The thing that most frustrated me in PS6 was the resizing, when pasting large images into a much smaller canvas, the resizing handles were very hard to find, after much zooming out you would eventually find the handles, but those frustrations are over now. In Photoshop 7 the resize handles are placed into the canvas and the result of the resizing immediately shows. 

The Healing brush and Patch Tool

The Healing Brush and Patch tool the ultimate cloning and retouching tool

The new Healing brush lets you effortlessly remove artifacts such as dust, scratches, blemishes and wrinkles. Unlike to Clone Stamp tool, the Healing Brush automatically preserves shading, lightning, texture and other attributes when cloning within one image or from one image to another.
The related Patch Tool lets you be even more precise by working with selections. You can use any of the basic selection tools, including channel operations, to first define your selection. Photoshop 7 will then automatically heal the area defined by that selection while matching the lightning and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixel. The combination of these tools is extremely useful for retouching photos.

Pattern Maker
The new pattern maker plug-in is a useful tool that allows you to create patterns simply by selecting a section of an image. Although I'm not much of a fan using patterns in web backgrounds and such, this tool might come in handy when creating textures for games. The tool claims to seamless tile the image, but you have to be very careful with your selection. Try various selections when using this tool and save every reasonable texture you might come across. Creating textures by hand is more time consuming, but it gives you the best result.

Liquify Filter
The Liquify filter has moved, it has gotten itself a nice spot in the filter menu. Added is the Turbulence brush that is perfect for creating swirly distortions. Nice is that Adobe added multiple undo's within the Liquify interface. If you like what you have done you can now easily save your distortions. This would come in handy when working on high resolution images, first see the result on a low resolution image and then easily apply it to your high resolution image; this will save a lot of rendering time.
For those not very familiar with the liquify filter, you can establish all sorts of distortions with it. Most people would like to call it the Power Goo of Photoshop.

The new painting engine

New Paint engine
The new painting engine lets you create exceptional imagery much faster then before. Simulate traditional painting techniques (including pastels and charcoal) with dry and wet brush effects and use brushes to add special effects such as grass. With a scanner you can make your own distinctive photoshop canvases by simply scanning various paper or canvas materials. With the precise brush controls 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. Take full control of your Wacom graphics tablet's pressure sensitivity, including tilt and airbrush thumbwheel features, for even greater control over brushstrokes.

With the precise brush controls you can adjust dozens of settings

File Browser
The File Browser together with the new painting engine are in my opinion the best new features that this version has. The File browser lets you easily browse through your files. I find it even quicker then the view thumbnail in windows XP that is actually terrible slow with a large number of files. You can view your files in 5 various ways; Small, Medium, Large with rank and detail. The large with rank shows the files in the order you have putted them in by ranking the files with A to Z.

The file browser let's you easily navigate your files. The metadata pane on the left site is ideal for digital photographers.

The metadata pane provides information about a selected image beyond what's diplayed 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 camera's such as creation date, exposure settings, image size, resolution, Resizing, focal length, etc. etc. The metadata pane is extremely useful for those using digital cameras.

WBMP
A bit late but nonetheless it might come in handy. The save for web function allows you to create wbmp graphics for use with the Wireless Application Protocol also called WAP. Where in the past you had to mess around with al sorts of java applets and plugins it's now a standard feature.

Don't forget to customize your wacom tablet for Photoshop

Conclusion
Adobe Photoshop 7 is not just another update, it has some new features that will make working with Photoshop just a little bit easier. The file browser makes the viewing and categorizing of your files much quicker, and the EXIF information is ideal for the Digital Photography fanatics. Digital Painters will feel right at home with the more extensive brush features, being able to completely customize the brushes to their needs. If you don't care much about these new features I would suggest you stick with your old version of Photoshop, but I have to add that as soon as you have used these new features you will see that upgrading is actually worth your money.

Adobe Photoshop is set to ship somewhere mid April 2002, so expect is soon!
Happy Pixel pushing!
Love to hear what you think of it as soon as you had a change to try it!

Arno Drost