Adobe Systems Inc. today announced the availability of Photoshop 7 for Mac OS X. Perhaps one of the most sought after applications for Apple’s newest operating system, Photoshop was first unveiled on February 24, 2002.
While maintaining a familiar user interface for creative professionals, Adobe also added new features to the latest release of Photoshop. Among the most talked about features are the Healing Brush and the Patch Tool.
The Healing Brush is designed to clean-up images by removing dust, scratches, blemishes and wrinkles often found in images. What’s different about the Healing Brush is that it will automatically preserve shading, lighting, texture and other attributes when cloning within one image or from one image to another.
The Patch Tool lets you be even more precise by working with selections. You can use any of the basic selection tools, including channel operations, to first define your selection. Photoshop will then automatically heal the area defined by that selection while matching the lighting and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels.
But there’s more to the new version of Photoshop than these two popular features. Adobe also added the File Browser, customized workspaces, Auto Color Command, a completely redone painting engine, and much more.
“There are so many additional new features that most people will take a while to discover just how big this upgrade really is,” Jeff Schewe, a professional Photographer & Imaging Artist from Chicago, told MacCentral. “Add to that the fact that Adobe has done a masterful job of making Photoshop native for OS X while still making it behave just like Photoshop and yes, I think it more than lives up to what professional Photoshop users expect from a major new version.”
Adobe’s Photoshop team has added two new features since its introduction in February. Adobe Photoshop Scripting Support is a free plug-in available for download from Adobe. The plug-in enables Photoshop 7.0 users to write and run scripts in AppleScript and JavaScript on the Mac, and in Visual Basic or JavaScript on Windows. Scripting eliminates the hassle designers experience when performing non-creative production tasks by automating the manipulation of a single selected object or multiple documents, according to Adobe.
Adobe has also included new exporting capabilities into the shipping version of Photoshop 7.0. Photoshop now incorporates Viewpoint Corp.’s ZoomView technology, which allows customers to link to a site and deploy large, print-quality images online. Viewpoint is permitting Photoshop 7.0 users to obtain free ZoomView licenses for any non-commercial uses and specific commercial purposes.
“Photoshop 7 adds a number of features that will have creative professionals wondering how they lived without them, Tony Henning, Senior Analyst, Imaging Infrastructure Future Image Inc., told MacCentral. “The file browser alone is worth the upgrade as it lets you browse both images and associated metadata from within Photoshop, plus create and rename folders and rename and organize files. Photoshop 7 also adds much needed management capabilities like embedding metadata by saving to XMP, and automates workflows by saving personalized workspaces and, most important, by integrating with Adobe’s new Image Server, AlterCast.”
Many longtime Mac users held off switching to Mac OS X until applications like Photoshop were available natively — now that it is, how will Photoshop affect the adoption of Mac OS X by creative professionals?
“The advances of Photoshop 7 and OS X have now made it possible for the pros to seriously consider OS X for the first time,” Schewe said. “With Adobe’s suite of graphics apps now all pretty much OS X native, one can consider working in an all OS X environment.”
Schewe went on to say, “both OS X and Photoshop 7 will still depend upon third-party developers following through and doing carbon versions of the vast array of Photoshop plug-ins the pros need.”
Photoshop 7.0 is now available in the United States and Canada for an estimated street price of US$609. Registered users of earlier versions of Photoshop can upgrade to version 7.0 for $149. For a limited time, a “Best of Photoshop 7.0” training CD will be included with full units and upgrades to Photoshop 7.0. Upgrades from Adobe Photoshop Elements are available directly from Adobe for $499.
Adobe today also updated its “Collections” software bundles to include Photoshop 7.
The Adobe Design Collection delivers a set of professional tools that enable designers to create original artwork with Illustrator 10; design layered images with Photoshop 7.0; assemble page layouts with InDesign 2.0; and streamline print workflows with Acrobat 5.0.
The Adobe Web Collection contains all the applications needed to go from content creation to Web site deployment in a single package. The Collection includes GoLive 6.0 for design, development and management of dynamic content for Web and wireless devices; Photoshop 7.0; Illustrator 10; and LiveMotion 2.0 for designing interactive Web content.
The Adobe Publishing Collection provides a set of tools to create professional quality business communications for print. This package includes Adobe PageMaker 7.0, Photoshop 7.0, Illustrator 10 and Acrobat 5.0.
The Adobe Digital Video Collection offers visual effects artists and motion graphics professionals the tools to produce film, multimedia, video and Web projects. The Collection includes Photoshop 7.0; Illustrator 10; Adobe Premiere 6.0 for nonlinear video editing; and After Effects 5.5 for compositing, motion graphics design and visual and audio effects production.
The Adobe Design, Web and Publishing Collections are available at an estimated street price of $999 and the Adobe Digital Video Collection is available at an estimated street price of $1199.