Adobe takes Photoshop to a new level - image-editing software - Software Review - Evaluation

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 15, 1994 by Chris Bristow

Adobe Photoshop has been virtually unchallenged in the image-editing software market since its introduction in 1990. With its latest incarnation, Photoshop version 3, Mountain View, California-based Adobe Systems has added a whole new level of sophistication to the industry standard, ensuring its continued desktop dominance.

Improved interface; better layering

Users familiar with Photoshop will immediately notice many nifty enhancements. Even with 21[inches] monitors, all those open palettes in earlier versions left little space for the image. In Photoshop 3, floating palettes can be easily collapsed, expanded and separated for improved screen-space management. A customizable Commands Palette lets you assign a button to frequently used functions.

Have you ever applied a filter only to find it was not the right setting? Never again. Another new feature provides a proxy view of the image, which lets users see a filter's effect in a small window or on the entire image at screen resolution before actual application.

A common complaint with Photoshop 3's predecessors was the brush cursor's insistence on remaining the same regardless of the size and shape of the line you have chosen. Now, thankfully, the Brush Size Preview option turns the cursor into an outline of your chosen brush at the size it will render, so that strokes can be applied in exactly the right place.

These few interface improvements alone will save time and improve productivity, but the new version is more than just a pretty face.

We rarely think back to the benefits of traditional working methods, but trying different designs fearlessly using separate sheets of acetate was a real plus. So Adobe has incorporated an acetate metaphor to let users experiment with image manipulations. By drawing, editing or using effects and filters on different "layers," users can try various combinations without discarding original image data.

Add to this powerful feature an 8-bit alpha channel mask on every layer, and the possibilities that have opened seem endless. As with most layer controls, you choose which levels can be viewed and/or edited. This makes it easier to work on part of an image without the distracting fear of changing other elements.

Note, however, that every layer greatly adds to the size of the working file. For example, a 10MB CMYK TIFF file can easily grow to 30MB as layers are built. Layers are temporary, though, and the file will return to its original size upon saving--unless you changed the size and resolution. When you save in Photoshop format, the saved file will be as large as the working version.

A good method if you go through a long approval cycle is to proof directly from Photoshop, and save the master version in Photoshop native format. This maintains all the layers you've built and will save hours when you have to make alterations--you can simply make the relevant changes using the still-active layers in the master version.

Something for everyone

The layers option meets the needs of designers and production staff alike, but Adobe didn't stop there. It also added several new filters and plug-ins.

Lighting Effects lets designers apply multiple light sources to an image, choosing from a range of colors, intensities and angles to create the illusion of shadows with varying degrees of lightness, darkness and color cast. Like several other filters, this feature is available only in RGB mode. But two other features, CMYK Preview and Gamut Warning, help RGB users keep tabs on what their printed images will look like and show which colors cannot be printed.

The new Dust & Scratches plug-in is an easy way to remove dust and scratches from scanned images. The Mezzotint filter could save the cost of having grayscale or colored mezzotint effects produced at a reproduction house.

Adobe didn't neglect production staff either. Color Range gives users maximum control in building anti-aliased masks based on image colors. Just select the color you want with an eyedropper tool or choose pre-defined color ranges, such as Reds or Blues, fine-tune your selection with the Fuzziness slider and watch your mask grow.

Other new functions using the same selection method are Selective Color Correction and Replace Color. Selective Color Correction allows you to adjust the ink amounts of individual color channels in the selected area by entering absolute or relative values. This will be a great boon to color separators responding to customer requests such as "reduce the cyan 5 percent" or "bring up the red 2 percent." Replace Color lets you create masks based on specific colors, then correct or change the color by adjusting the hue, saturation and brightness values.

Speed is the final frontier

If there is a downside to all this, it is speed. New products such as Live Picture from HSC Software and the upcoming Xres from Fauve Software are starting to challenge Photoshop's position in the high-end imaging market--especially for work with files larger than 100MB. Compared to these two programs, Photoshop is a slouch with large files, even though it is now Power Macintosh-native and much faster than the previous version. It also lacks the others' multiple undos.