Photoshop 7.0 - The Pro's Perspective - Page 3

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A Fistful of Brushes
The enhanced Brush controls, which are like those offered by high-end painting applications, also caught Claydon's eye.

"With the new Brushes Palette and the new painting engine, I can easily categorize my brush collection and apply brushes to numerous tools quickly. I can't say that the painting engine has exposed its full value to me yet, but I think it could within the next couple of months. I'm pleased to see that all the default brushes were included-as opposed to being given as extra files that users have to manually import. Also, the brushes display an actual path as a sample, and not simply the brush head alone, which is much more informative."

How Big a Jump?
While there are certainly worthwhile improvements to Photoshop 7.0, are there enough of them? Two of our subjects commented that the changes and additions didn't appear significant enough to warrant a full release, and seemed more like an upgrade to Photoshop 6.0.

"As good as this version 7 is," Claydon says, "I really don't think it should be a x.0 release, it is more of a version 6.5 release."

The necessity of rewriting code for Apple's new operating system, OS X, has made other company's recent upgrades less feature-heavy than they should have been. Microsoft Office X, for example, had no significant new features, but was OS X-compliant, which from a software development perspective is no small task.

That could have been the reason Photoshop 7.0 seems less feature-packed that other releases, Claydon says. "Perhaps the main cause for an x.0 release is the porting to Apple's latest incarnation, OS X, which is certainly an achievement, and could be the sole reason for upgrades by some, features not withstanding," he says. "However, an OS X upgrade patch would have been more than sufficient, instead of adding in a scattering of new features and re-labeling the version."

Fox agrees that Photoshop 7.0 doesn't feel like as big an upgrade as it should have been. "It's not as huge an upgrade as between other versions," he says. "But is it worth the upgrade price? I'd say yeah."

Layer Palette
Photoshop 7.0 will have some people longing for version 8.0, already. Claydon notes that some of his wishes weren't answered with the new version.

"Something I was hoping for within this new version of Photoshop, which wasn't included, was a less-linear Layer palette," he says. "If you look at Macromedia's latest creation, Flash MX, layers and objects are handled slightly differently. I believe there needs to be a capability to separate different objects, which remain on a single layer, as well as the layers themselves.

"The introduction of Layer Sets to group different layers was a step in the right direction in version 6.0," he continues, "but it's still too linear and quite complicated to manage if your images exceed 150 or so layers. My general idea would be a form of Tree View with multiple, easily accessibly branches. I can't say that I have actually seen a graphical app perform what I'm requesting, so perhaps a GUI revolution is needed. In any case, my fingers will stay crossed until version 8.0."

Call to Action
When asked what features he wanted in Photoshop 7.0, but didn't get, McGovern quickly answers, "The actions! They've hardly changed since they were first added to Photoshop."

The actions could definitely use some updating, he says. "More often than not, if I need to make a small change in one action it will require me to start the whole thing over; not exactly very productive," he adds.

In the end, Photoshop 7.0 is a step forward, though certainly not as big a step as some would have wished. Still, there should be plenty of new toys-er, features-to keep designers happy until the next release is ready.

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