Photoshop 7.0 - The Pro's Perspective

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We asked intranet professionals who are familiar with Photoshop 7 and the various prior versions for their opinion on the newest version of the worlds favorite graphics application. The bottom line: Adobe has a hit on its hands, although this isn't the most exciting version of Photoshop ever released. Also, our intranet pros weren't shy about telling us what features they'd still like to see included.

At First Sight
These being designers, the first thing that most of the developers we talked to noticed was the interface. That says a lot about their powers of perception and heightened sense of aesthetics-because the interface is almost exactly the same as the previous version.

Not so, says Barnaby Claydon, Technical Project Manager at Web-survey application-maker Perseus Development Corporation (www.perseus.com). "The GUI has been modernized to fit more with the modern fashion of flat buttons and mouse-activated color changes, which is a nice touch," he says. "The old, segmented toolbars were starting to show their age."

Gerard McGovern, who works for Inkiboo Networks (www.inkiboo.com), agrees: "Sure, Photoshop has always had a very functional and easy-to-use GUI, but version 7.0 just seems to fit together so well, especially if you're running under Windows XP. Dare I say it, but it almost feels Mac-like under Windows."

Getting Organized
Claydon needs to organize and use thousands of different media files on the Perseus intranet, so Photoshop 7.0's new visual File Browser interested him the most. He's not all that positive about it, however. Claydon's responsibilities at Perseus include automating customer-service and departmental interaction tools and information for the consulting and research groups. Because workers can log on to add or update information, he says, "we tend to have an awful lot of media needing to be whipped into shape. We find Adobe Photoshop invaluable for this."

"The operation of the File Browser is quite handy, Claydon says, "although I have to question its necessity. The primary function is to display thumbnail images of any directory the user navigates to via a handy directory tree presented to the left of the thumbnail area. The supported image types are comparable to the formats Photoshop is able to edit, the thumbnails load quickly, and the Browser creates a cache-file to save time during future browsing.

"Now, this is all well and good, but at $609 you have to wonder how many people there are whom are willing to spend such an amount that don't already have some method of organizing their digital media. When I first discovered digital arts back in the 80s, one of the first pieces of software I looked for was a File Browser to organize the pieces I had admired and saved, and with that in mind, the value of adding this feature seems somewhat small as I'm sure virtually every other artist, designer, or illustrator out there has similar needs for organization.

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