Photoshop 7.0

In this day and age, graphic artists don't admit to not using Photoshop. Photoshop has long been the industry standard; not being versatile with the program is paramount to professional suicide. Now please don't send me a bunch of hate mail, we all know this is true, even if we don't like to admit it. Personally, I'm a user of the competitors product. I've used Photoshop in the past, but didn't care for it. I could do the job quicker and more efficiently with a different program. But... and here it comes... with the release of Photoshop 7.0 I'm sold. I'm a believer and doubt anything else will satisfy me now that I've played with this new release.

The improvements, the new features and enhancements all go into making this the most exciting upgrade of an already powerful program.

So what's in this upgrade to cause a die-hard like me to make the switch? There's a new file browser that does everything but make your morning coffee. New Palettes, the ability to create your own workspace and tool presets, new tools to wow you, (check out the healing brush), a multi-lingual spell checker, and more. Not to mention, the upgrade is compatible with Mac OS X/Win XP!

The File Browser

With the new File Browser you can search for images visually, as well as retrieve images from your hard drive, external drives, CDs and disks. Need more? Within the file Browser menu, there are a variety of options for opening, selecting, naming, rotating, and viewing images. Manage your files and folders, create, rename, delete, open, move, copy, and more! Rename multiple files using the Batch Rename, rotate one or multiple images with the rotate feature.

The File Browser displays four panes, which you can adjust to your own preferences.

• Tree Pane:
  The Tree Pane shows the files, folders and drives of your system making it easy to navigate and locate images.
• Preview Pane:
  Displays a larger image of the selected thumbnail.
• Metadata Pane:
  The Metadata Pane displays detailed information about the current selection. An image’s file name, date created, image format, plus any information entered in the File Info dialog box will be displayed, as well as EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) data, (information about images created with a digital camera), if it's available.
• Thumbnail Pane
  Displays thumbnails in a variety of ways, including by size, rank, and text detail. Thumbnails may be viewed with five different size options: Small, Medium, Large, Large with Rank, and Detail. The Large with Rank displays a large thumbnail along with the image's rank while Detail provides information about each image shown, such as file name, date created and modified, copyright, file format, color mode, image size (in pixels), file size, and rank. Images may be moved to another folder simply by clicking a thumbnail and dragging it to another folder within the Thumbnail Pane or on the Tree Pane view!

The Rank By and Sort By menus are great for (you guessed it), ranking and sorting your images! Create a rank for your images, such as 'proof' or 'final', and sort your images according to their stage of completion! The File Browser lets you sort images by file name, file width and height, file size, file type, resolution, color profile, date created, date modified, and copyright.

Creating a workspace

A tremendous time saver is the new ability to create workspaces to save palette groups and locations for later use. Drag tabs out of their palettes, combine them with other tabs, create your own customized workspace and palettes for specific tasks! All of your palettes are neatly saved under the Window/Workspace menu, waiting patiently for you to use them or delete them.

Tool Presets

Display all of your presets at once, or check the current tool only check box to view only those presets for the tool that is currently active.

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