Adobe Photoshop 7.0 - It's All Good - Page 2

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Organize Your Files
Being creative with your work is one thing, but with complex projects requiring multiple elements to get up and running, it's nice to see that Adobe have spent some time tweaking and improving the management and organization tools of Photoshop.

Organize images
If your intranet resources include several folders of digital pictures-thousands of shots taken for catalogs, perhaps-and you've ever wasted time opening one picture and then another trying to find the one you need, then you'll appreciate Photoshop 7.0's File Browser.

The File Browser lets you scan through your images visually, by creating thumbnails of a whole folder. To open it, select File/Browse from the pulldown menu. The File Browser is initially in the palette well in the upper right corner, so you'll want to drag in into the center of the desktop. Resize it to offer more coverage. You'll see your folders displaying in a tree hierarchy in the upper left corner, with the contents of each folder in the larger page to the right. Select a thumbnail and an extremely complete list of it EXIF properties will display in the lower left corner.

The File Browser gives you a few more options than simply viewing your files, though. You can rotate them, so those that are sideways will show correctly, or rank them A through E. To do either, right-click or click-and-hold on an image then select rotate or ranking options. If you've ranked your images, you can display them in their ranked order by opening the Sort By option in the bottom of the Browser window and selecting Rank.

• Figure 1. Photoshop's new File Browser will be a time-saver for those with huge image libraries. Use the file tree diagram in the upper left to find the file you want; images display as thumbnails on the right side. Select an image to view it at a larger size on the lower left, with EXIF metadata below it.
  

  Click here for a hi-res image

WebDAV
The ability to connect to WebDAV servers isn't new with Photoshop 7.0, but it's taken such a giant leap forward, that it's finally usable. WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) lets you set up a central folder of resources for your team, then control the checking-in and checking-out of files so that no two team members can work on the same file at the same time. Photoshop's previous attempt at WebDAV support was hampered by the inability to handle long URLs or to let users move easily between files.

To set a server for your workgroup, select File/Workgroup/Workgroup Servers from the pulldown menus. Set management preferences by choosing either Edit/Preferences/File Handling (Windows and Mac OS 9.1) or Photoshop/Preferences/File Handling (Mac OS X). To open a managed file, go to File/Workgroup/Open and select your server.

Custom workspaces
We can think of two good uses for the new ability to create custom workspaces in Photoshop: one is if you work in a small office and have to share your computer with someone working a different shift, and two if you simply want different palette arrangements for different tasks.

To create a custom workspace, arrange your palettes as you prefer them, then select Window/Workspace/Save Workspace from the pulldown menus. Give that arrangement a name, when prompted. To call it up in the future, all you'll need to do is select Window/Workspace, then the name you've assigned it.

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