Adobe Photoshop v. 7.0

[Phil St. Romain]

Description on Apple web site (http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/photoshop/)

I haven't bought it. In fact, 5.5 has been adequate for my needs, but, then, I'm not a graphic designer.

How about some of you who've used 7.0 share your impressions?

[lerkfish]

it would have to be beta testers at this point as its not available yet to my knowledge.

[meancode]

i got a beta, but i am not a beta tester. if you want me to write up something like i wrote up for dreamweaver mx (in other thread in this subforum) i can.

i have used PS7 betas for about 4 months now. i am growing quite used to it. it got a lot of nice new features.

the new file browser kicks ass. the new brushes are almost painter like, only somewhat better than painter in a way. its great if you have a wacam palette. the check spelling and find and replace are really handy, i find myself using that all the time as i am a very bad speller.

Phil - how can you live with the text tool of photoshop 5.5, the text tool in PS 6 was its best new feature.

there is a preset manager, one place to manage all your presets, such as brushes, shapes, gradients, etc. thats handy.

PS7 now has even more AppleScript support, also can be scripted with JavaScript and VBScript (on windows) if you choose to install this feature. scripts can be run through the File -> Automate submenu.

you have complete control over any transparent colors you want in imageready. some tweaks to imageready but not a lot that i can tell.

thats all i can think of off the top of my head.

[Andrew LaGow]

Ken, what's the speed like in OS X? Is it any faster than, say Photoshop 6 in OS 9 or Classic?

Andy

[meancode]

well, this is beta 62. i am told it is the GM. but i dont believe it. it does not seem fast enough to be a "final" release. for stuff ofther than filters (wich i will not test since you have asked about performance) it is on par with PS 6 in OS 9, or PS 6 in Classic (i did not see much difference with PS 6 in 9 or running through Classic FWIW). let me check filders out. for everything else it seems to be on par.

#time_lapse#

using the brushes in PS 7 laggs seriously behind. and i got 512 MB of RAM. man the new brushes are cool. but not fast enough to be practicle. not yet. Gaussian Blur did excellent on a 300 dpi image. it previewed very quick, and took no time to render the effect (no progress bar at all, pretty impressive) undo, redo of multiple intense filters was also very quick, instinatious. my main beaf is with the brushes. its no spinning beach ball of death, but it just takes too long for photoshop to render all the brush strokes. radial blur on best quality, zoon took some time, but WAS faster than OS 9, PS 6.

lighting effects were also much faster in OS X, PS 7. (all these tests with a 300 dpi image, 8.5x11 photo.) i am real impressed with how fast lighting effects render.

[brodie]

-and although the healing brush is a fantastic tool, its extremely slow.