Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Upgrade

Photoshop's new vector features provide even more control when compositing photographic images. You can use the vector drawing tools simply to create polygons and custom shapes, but they can also act as layer clipping paths--vector masks that hide or reveal image areas in underlying layers.

Editable layer effects such as drop shadow and glow were introduced in version 5.5; in version 6, they have been renamed layer styles. New options include satin, stroke and color, gradient, and pattern overlay. The layer styles dialogue box provides much more control--bevel and emboss has five style options, as well as adjusters for technique, depth, direction, size, soften, angle, attitude, gloss, contour, highlight mode, opacity--and that's not all of them. As the name suggests, layer styles can easily be saved and applied to other layers.

You can enter and edit text directly onto the layer and set style attributes from the new tool options bar. Photoshop 6 seems to have benefited from some of InDesign's superb typographic tools, with character and paragraph palettes providing precise control. Web imaging tools have been revamped, with layer-based slicing now available from within Photoshop itself, and a major overhaul of ImageReady introducing weighted optimization, rollover styles, and tweened animation.

If you want the best image editing software that money can buy, look no further. For users of 5.5, there never was a more compelling reason to upgrade. --Ken McMahon

Amazon.com Product Description
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 software introduces the next generation of imageediting with powerful new features that offer something for every user. Delivering a broad and productive tool set, Photoshop helps you explore your creativity, work at peak efficiency, and achieve the highest-quality results across all media. Combine vector drawing tools and new layer design features that greatly enhance your creative options, output razor-sharp text and shapes from Photoshop, and take advantage of an expanded Web tool kit that includes the new ImageReady 3.0 software for advanced Web processing. Use text warping and image distortion tools to manipulate and experiment. Photoshop's timesaving features help you break new ground and still beat your deadlines. Master the power of Photoshop faster with user-interface enhancements that help you to get to work quickly and make it easy to take full advantage of the comprehensive tool set.

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Industry standard... except for automated features   July 15, 2001
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

Nothing can match Photoshop 6.0 when it comes to image editing. I still have yet to uncover all of the features that the program has to offer. With ImageReady included, one certainly gets that for which one pays and then some. If I could give this product four and a half stars, I would. The only thing that leaves me to want is in the area of automation. I am semi-professional photographer and many times I will cover events for friends at cost of equipment. I scan up to six rolls of film on a flatbed film scanner (a tedious, but bearable process), then batch process the files to web-jpg format using a custom action. Photoshop does outstanding up to this point. I then automate a Web Photo Gallery to create a viewable version for all of those who attended the event. The "Web Photo Gallery..." gets the job done, but allows very little alteration to be done to the batch formatting of indexes and so forth. This leaves the gallery pages mundane and trite. I'm sure the program that creates these web pages is quite simple and could be upgraded should Adobe find the need, but I worry that they are trying to catalyze sales of other products. I fear that the automated web photo gallery might disappear in future versions of this wonderful product.


Smoother, Quicker, and More Features!   June 27, 2001
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Using Adobe Photoshop 5.5, I would get aggravated trying to do some very simplistic graphics. Since PS 5.5 didn't have some options I needed to use right away while using the software, I would have to open ImageReady to get the features I desired. Having these two products open on a 600mhz computer with 256 megs of RAM was horrible. I had the worst time with ImageReady as it took up so much of my computer's resources.

When upgrading to PS 6.0, I was amazed that all the tools I was in search of were and were normally in the separate program ImageReady, were put together in this one software. I was so happy that they included new tools AND improved previous tools. The program overall runs a lot smoother than the previous version and the interface changes were positive, they allowed for me to further put into use my creativity using less steps. I would definitely recommend this to all graphics and photo editing professionals!


Filters   June 25, 2001
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I still believe that the use of the many filters that photoshop can use is it's best quality. You can now in photoshop 6 adjust th amount of memory you want photoshop to use from 1% - 100%. This allows for more addons and quicker loading time, although it is still much slower in loading than it's prior versions. Once you get through the loading process it's all downhill from there. Make sure you are running at least 64 megs of ram in your computer to use this. Even with it's fantastic ability to adjust the ram, if you are running under 64 megs than you may experience difficulties with response. Both my wife and I are designers and we love 6.0. The versatility of it is outstanding. Hope that helps. If you're going to get this product head over to...and download there trial version of eyecandy and xenofex filters. 2 must have filters.

nake


Improvement with obscurity   February 25, 2001
David Walker (Melbourne, Australia)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful

Adobe Photoshop has until recently been a full-timer's tool. Like Oracle or Unix, you either lived in it and loved it, or you didn't use it at all.

But the Photoshop user base is changing. The Web has boosted the demand for bitmap graphics, and created a new breed of multimedia developers who use a huge range of tools for content creation and publication. And the rise of digital cameras and scanners has opened bitmap editing to consumers.

So Photoshop is changing from its traditional position as part of Adobe's imaging solution, a tool to be used alongside Illustrator and Web-aware tools like ImageReady and ImageStyler. Now it's eating features from the rest of Adobe's imaging line.

* Photoshop eats Illustrator: Photoshop 6.0 has sprouted serious text-editing tools. They end the old routine of importing Illustrator text to Photoshop. Decent control of letter spacing and justification appears for the first time. And Photoshop text is now editable on the page, a mere six years of so after the under-rated and now sadly wasted Corel Photo-Paint first performed this trick.

* Photoshop eats ImageReady. The new ImageReady 3.0 is bundled with Photoshop 6.0, just as its predecessor was biundled with Photoshop 5.5. And Web tasks such as JavaScript rollovers and animations still require you to jump to ImageReady, an inconvenient process. But ImageReady 2.0's simple shape-creation tools have made it to Photoshop this time around. ImageReady's on track to disappear completely into Photoshop at about Photoshop 7.0.

* Photoshop eats ImageStyler. ImageStyler 1.0's slightly gimmicky but sometimes useful "styles" appear in Photoshop 6.0 too, letting you create buttons and, um, more buttons. There's little chance of a separate ImageStyler 2.0.

So Photoshop now does most of what a Web developer would want it to do. It has garnered mostly laudatory reviews, both for its continuing power and for implementing features that other programs already had. But there are prices to be paid. There's the money: at around $A1400 street or $A400 for the upgrade, Adobe gives the Mastercard a beating it won't soon forget. There's the speed; version 6.0 runs slower than any before it. And there's the famous Photoshop learning curve, which is becoming a problem as Adobe aims Photoshop at that wider audience.

The loyalists won't acknowledge it, but Adobe has an interface problem. The program works like Unix, letting power users into an exclusive club while alienating everyone else. It has added a new context-sensitive toolbar to version 6.0. Yet it still buries powerful features and eschews basic interface devices like a Save button in favour of memorable keyboard combinations like Control-Alt-Shift-S (that's the command for saving a Web-ready graphic, so Web developers should keep their fingers flexible). The new shape-creation tools have aspects that are obscure even by Adobe's standards. So an increasing number of mid-level Photoshop users - especially Web development shops and individual users - are paying for power they can't access. They've bought a BMW, but they can't get it out of second gear.

This interface problem, though, seems unlikely to end Photoshop's dominance. The program's new audience is following the high-end professionals' lead. They want industry-standard tools. And amongst bitmap graphics professionals, Photoshop remains the industry standard.

If you do Web development, know Photoshop, own fast hardware and you're currently with version 5.0 or earlier - or if you create substantial amounts of bitmap text or simple button-like shapes - Photoshop 6.0 is a worthwhile investment. As long as you can afford it, and as long as you're prepared for its sometimes unnecessary difficulties.