Amazon.co.uk Review
With each new version of
Photoshop Adobe never fails to come up with an awe-inspiring mix of great new features, productivity enhancements and tweaks and treats. Version 7 is no exception.
The major difference between this and earlier versions (for Mac users at least) is that Photoshop 7 is Mac OS X compatible. For everyone else the main points of interest are a new healing brush that gets rid of facial wrinkles and other surface blemishes with incredible ease, a long-awaited file browser that allows you to view image thumbnails and metadata, enhanced Web features, automatic colour correction and even a spell checker.
One of Photoshop's many strengths is the versatility of its tools and this has been stretched to new limits. Filter previews are bigger, the liquify tool has been enhanced, brush parameters have been extended and commonly used tool settings can be saved as presets. This means you can virtually do away with the toolbox--instead selecting tools with exactly the settings you need from the presets palette.
Image Ready, Photoshop's Web-authoring and export module remains a separate, linked application. Creation of rollovers is simpler and a new "selected" rollover state takes some of the repetitive strain out of nav bar production.
New output options include Picture Package, which allows you to print multiple images on a single page, and new templates and security watermarking for Web galleries.
All-in-all this is an upgrade guaranteed to keep Photoshop at the cutting-edge of professional image editing.--Ken McMahon
Product Description
PhotoShop 7 features: File Browser to visually browse and retrieve images Healing Brush to effortlessly remove artifacts such as dust, scratches, blemishes, and wrinkles while preserving shading, lighting, and texture Web output enhancements to easily apply transparency or partial transparency to Web page elements, including seamless edges that blend into any Web background Single, enhanced Rollover palette to manage Web page rollovers, animations, and image maps more easily New selected rollover state for creating more sophisticated Web site navigation bars without hand-coding Customizable workspace for saving the arrangement of palettes and settings for tools, and instant access to a personalized Photoshop desktop New Auto Color Command for reliable colour correction New Painting Engine to simulate traditional painting techniques Pattern Maker plug-in to create realistic or abstract patterns such as grass, rocks, and sand simply by selecting a section of an image Enhanced Liquify (distorting) tool to allow you to view other layers, zoom, pan, and undo multiple steps - even save custom meshes and apply them to other files Password protection to limit access to Photoshop PDF files, helping to secure image integrity Built-in Spell Checker for search-and-replace operations and spell-check in multiple languages within the same file Enhanced Picture Packages to allow you to print multiple images on one page, choose different page sizes, and add custom labels, such as copyright notices or captions More Web Gallery templates to easily show work online by posting a gallery page of images, and include watermark and copyright information to protect images Full compatibility with Mac OS 9 and support for the newest enhancements of Mac OS X and Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP XMP support for embedding metadata in application files to easily repurpose, archive, and automate files in a workflow
