Pros: Graphics industry standard; plethora of features & tools, huge 3rd-party support
Cons: Expensive; steep learning curve
The Bottom Line: Photoshop is definitely the ultimate graphics editor, but not everyone needs that, as it is quite expensive and complex for the casual user.
rfox01's Full Review: Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Full Version for PC (23101604)
Whether you work in the publishing industry or just dabble in digital graphics, most likely you've at least heard of Photoshop.
Photoshop is the de facto industry standard for professional graphics design.
I've been a long time Paint Shop Pro user who has also occasionally used Photoshop Elements (a "lite" version of Photoshop). Since I've never used any previous versions of Photoshop, I can't tell you what's new or improved. Rather, I'm writing this review based on the product as it stands.
The Product
System Requirements (Windows Version):
* Pentium III or 4
* Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, or XP
* 128 MB RAM (192 MB Recommended)
* 280 MB HD
Box Contents:
* Photoshop CD in jewel case
* Video Workshop Training CD in cardboard sleeve
* 400+ page User Guide printed on heavy glossy paper stock
* 6-sided Quick Reference Card
* misc stuff: registration card, license, tech-support info
Cost:
$600 Retail (Ouch!)
$300 Academic License
$149 Upgrade (No, Photoshop Elements does not qualify)
If you need other Adobe products as well, Photoshop is cheaper as part of their "Collection" software packages.
Photoshop Overview
The box actually comes with 2 applications: Photoshop and ImageReady. On the surface, they both appear to be very similar. They both sport the same interface, and most of the editing tools and filters are found in both programs.
However, they serve 2 very different functions.
Photoshop originated as a graphics tool for print media, which has a vastly different set of protocols and standards than what is needed for Web graphics, which in turn have their own special guidelines.
While Photoshop serves as your all-purpose graphics editor with advanced tools useful for designing print graphics, ImageReady is specialized for all your Web graphics needs.
Features--The Good
Features on both programs include tons of pre-defined filters, styles, brush strokes, patterns, textures, actions, etc, and you can create and add your own as well.
There are all sorts of drawing, painting, transforming and retouching tools, and they are all customizable.
The versatility of control over all the tools is one of its biggest strengths, as I greatly appreciate customization options. Take the brush tool as an example: You can bring up the customization palette and adjust the brush stroke, density, size, shape, color, texture, scattering, and dynamics. There's a small preview window that displays a sample of the customize brush before you even use it, and you can save the customize brush as a preset for future use.
And of course, there are reset commands all over the place to reset tools back to their factory defaults.
I'm a typeface fanatic, and Photoshop's type tool is everything I could want in a type tool. In many graphics programs, you type in text into an image as a non-editable raster image. In Photoshop, text blocks are vector objects that you can manipulate: You can edit, re-format, change font/colors/textures, rotate, skew, and warp into all sorts of angles and shapes. And when you've manipulated the text into all sorts of styles, you can still edit it.
Other useful conveniences include an extended history palette for undoing and redoing multiple steps, an info palette mapping your cursor coordinates and color codes, an navigator palette for easy zooming and thumbnail view of large images, and a file browser to view and sort images in your hard drive.
Of course, there are also your typical essentials such as layers, masks, batch processing, various color manipulation and image adjustments.
Features--The Bad
One major complaint I have is the selection tool. There are a lot of different selections tools, even a "magnetic selection tool" that tries to guess edges for you. But it doesn't seem to be as easy to use as the selection tool on Paint Shop Pro, which is simpler but easier to handle. Three things I miss is the easy all-pixel selection, contract an entire selection, and a single click to de-select. Also, selections aren't always constrained. Changes made to a featured selection bleed outside of the selection area.
Color replacement takes a little getting used to as well. Instead of selecting one color to replace another, you are presented with a preview window where you alter the hue, saturation and lightness via slidebars. It gives you more control over which colors get replaced, but the replacing color is harder to define.
While all the tools have resets, the filters reset is flawed. You can reset current filter changes, which is the same thing as hitting the Cancel button, but there is no way to reset filters to their factory defaults.
And as a small disappointment, there is no screenshot feature.
Web Design Tool
The web layout option in Photoshop is an interesting addition to a graphics program. This may be useful if you're creating splash pages where you can slice large images into smaller sections, or if you want to create demo mockups, but it is absolutely an atrocious way to develop web sites.
Other "web effects" include image rollovers may be useful for testing before production, but with such effects that require Javascript programming, web designers wouldn't relegate to a graphics editor to control.
ImageReady, on the other hand, is perhaps a web graphics designer's dream come true. Since web graphics need to be as small as possible without sacrificing too much image quality, ImageReady displays different optimizations of your images, allowing you to compare quality, image size, and download speeds. There's also a "Save for Web" option on the Photoshop menu that allows you to perform limited Web graphics optimizations as well.
The other convenience is the easy handling of imagemaps--just outline your map area, and ImageReady will map out the coordinates for you. Enter the linking info and save the info as an HTML file for inclusion in your web page.
ImageReady also allows you to create animated graphics.
Performance & Usability
Photoshop installed without a problem, and I have yet to encounter a fatal error. The Photoshop program doesn't adopt Window's color scheme, on which I get differing viewpoints as to if it's a bug or an intended feature. Curious thing is that ImageReady does adopt the Window's color scheme. This is important to note if you have light text on a dark background, as you will have a hard time seeing the Photoshop black text on your dark background.
Photoshop is a resource hog. It takes a noticeable pause to load all the plug-ins into memory, and I assume the more you have, the longer it will take. Loading in extremely large, complex images takes a moment too.
It runs smoothly on a 2GHz machine, but the system definitely pauses for few seconds on a 1GHz P3.
Interface & Usability
My biggest complaint with the program is the interface--it's not very intuitive. Photoshop is an extremely feature-rich and highly customizable problem. But that just adds to its complexity.
There are icons, toolbars and palettes all over the place. The first time you try using it can be extremely overwhelming--not only because there's so much there, but half of the time, you can't even figure out where to find that specific feature you wanted in the first place! And yes, I've read the thick manual from cover to cover.
Because there are so many features and options, to avoid cluttering the workspace even further, they have to stick commands in numerous "hidden" sub-menus all over the place.
There are key command equivalents to many of the commands, but there are hundreds of them, using different key combinations. There's no way anyone can remember all of them unless you've worked with the program for a very long time.
Miscellaneous Stuff
The included training CD is comprised of several interactive videos that demonstrate some of the key new features of Photoshop 7. While they are informative, they are in fact only a teaser sampling of the commercial training material you have to buy.
On the plus side, I'm totally impressed with the printed manual. In an age when printed manuals have become scare, Adobe provides you with an excellently detailed User Guide that explains every single feature in Photoshop and Imageready, printed in high quality heavy glossy paper stock!
If you look in the Photoshop CD, you'll also find the User Guide in PDF form, which apparently is the unabridged version. While the printed manual (~430 pages) is printed in black+white and contains all the essential information for using the program, the PDF version contains color examples plus a number of chapters that are equally useful in understanding graphics development.
Support
Because Photoshop is such a widely popular program, there are a lot of third-party support, add-ins, plug-ins, and tutorials. The Adobe web site can also be helpful. Searches through their tech support documents can be frustrating, but their message forums are quite active and you're bound to get some kind of response from someone.
Conclusion:
There's definitely a steep learning curve with Photoshop--not only regarding graphics in general, but with the complexity of the program as well.
Casual users may want to reconsider if they really need such a program, as it is quite expensive. For $100, you can get either Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements, both of which performs most of the essential features needed, but with less control.
If you are a graphics professional or need to a high-end image editor, you're most likely already familiar with Photoshop and without a doubt will want the latest version as it has practically everything you need in a powerful, features-rich graphics editor.
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