Description:
Mixed-media professionals such as photographers, Web designers, and graphic designers will not be disappointed with Adobe's latest incarnation of Photoshop. While the major difference between this and earlier versions is that Photoshop 7.0 is Mac OS X compatible, this version also successfully addresses the issues of file management, easy photo retouching, and smarter output for the Web. In addition, new, improved tools such as painting and an enhanced brush palette allow Photoshop to build on its reputation as the leading tool for image manipulators. New-school designers of wireless applications will smile when they discover that Photoshop 7.0 finally offers support for WBMP-format graphics. Photoshop 7.0's new file management system comes in the form of a Windows Explorer-like file browser that allows users to easily sort and locate their images within various projects. Users can now organize projects by name, date, resolution, and a number of additional parameters. The enhanced brush palette allows users to create custom brushes and save them as a preset that can be accessed from the Tool options bar. Users can easily vary different aspects of the brush by changing the hue, opacity, or flow of the brushes for pastels, oils, and charcoal. Photoshop 7.0 also introduces a new Healing Brush and Patch Tool. With this tool, users can easily "heal" their images by removing scratches, blemishes, and other imperfections while also preserving shading, lighting, and texture attributes. Adobe has taken great strides in revamping Photoshop 7.0 to be more Web-ready than ever before. With the help of its companion software, Image Ready, users can now easily create rollovers and complex navigation bars with selected state by using the new Rollovers palette. Additional Web-ready features include enhanced Web export functions that allow designers to preview images designed for PDAs and mobile phones in the WBMP format. Users can easily create a slide show of their images and post online using the new Web Gallery. For those concerned about posting their images online, they can secure their images with the new password protection feature before sharing them. A long overdue spell checker has finally been introduced, with wicked multilingual spell-checking capabilities. A new search-and-replace feature allows users to search and replace across different layers in the same document. While Photoshop 7.0 introduces an impressive array of features that allow photographers and Web and graphic designers to work more effectively with Web and wireless devices, Photoshop still remains the leading tool for anyone serious about digital imaging. No other software package provides users with the ability to create such high-quality images. --Rich Ting
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