Preserved Topic: PS 6 PS 7?

worth upgrading just wanted your opinion i currently use PS6

mm... what's the estimated time out for PS8?
I wouldn't bother upgrading if you can just save the cash for a few months to get the newer version.

FAQs n' Bits: Michael

I believe the latest rumour is the last quarter of this year (03)

righto, then.
I still wouldn't bother upgrading.
Wait for 8 unless you're going to die without having 7.


FAQs n' Bits: Michael

i noticed in the info i read they mainly just changed the painting stuff?

Then even when 8 comes out you should look at the new features and ask whether it's worth it. I can guarantee that you don't know 90% of what Photoshop 6 can do. You might know 50% of the features (and that's a lot, since many of them are hidden, undocumented, or simply obscure), but you don't know 90% of what it can do.

For instance, when's the last time you used Apply Image? Or Calculations? Or "Blend When..."?

Photoshop 5.5 is still churning out good images for me. I am using PS 7 at work though and it is quite a nice program, it is moving more and more to mix vectors into photoshop, and is also working at streamlining itself, there is no more airbrush in PS7, only the paint brush.

But I would say upgrade when you have to. For the cost of the product it is fine to wait. If PS6 does the job there is no reason for you to go out and get PS7 PS8 or PS9.

off-topic...
PS7, airbrush:




FAQs n' Bits: Michael

If your going from 6, it's not that worth it. As there is only really stuff to make your workflow better. Meaning how you can work without other things needed (i.e file browser).

Quick run down of new stuff from 6 to 7 can be found here at adobe site (wish people would look up info first and try the demo, before asking these questions). If I was you and didn't need a file browser, I'd wait till the next version, but I'd die without my file browser .

But as nearly all the poeple here (thats me too) only use about 60% of PS features and power it's all down to what you use, need and how you work.

Get the demo and try it and see.

COPEY

Basic things that I see that are different in 7 (just from memory or use, not from the "official" list). To me 7 is just 6 with some refinements, not a major change like from 5.5 to 6.

1. This is the most obvious one, the brush system has been overhauled. Some nice additions. Since I mainly use just one or two brushes all the time, the fact they left the old brush picker in as an option is nice. Also, part of the new brush engine are several new (19 I believe) pressure sensitive options. If you own a graphics tablet you can now use pressure, tilt, or other imput methods of your tablet to control things like opacity, size, shape jitter, color shift, etc.

2. "tool presets" which personally I never use since only one or two tools do I ever leave the same and the rest are a case by case. Basically you can make a preset of any tool and it becomes a little button in this palate (also a pulldown from the top bar).

3. New blending modes. There are 6 new blending modes. All of them are kind of like in betweens for other modes from my experience. Also, all the color modes have been grouped. The lighening modes are together, the darkening modes are together, the color shift modes are together, the luminocity modes are together, etc. Also, the layer fill is available from the layers palate now instead of from ONLY the advanced blending options, which makes layer effects and dodge/burn tools easier to work with.

4. Healing tools. These were much touted tools for this edition. While nice, it's not worth all the hype for something that should have been an option for the stamp tool to begin with. And the patch tool... c'mon... does anyone find this any more helpful than just creating marquee selections and copying to a new layer? *shrugs* I guess it's there if you like it. They're now in the spot AirBrush used to occupy on the tool palate (since airbrush is now part of the monster-brush palate options)

5. This was a big one in the mac community. OS X native support. If you are working with OS X and use photoshop, this is a must. While I'm sure that PS8 will also be native OS X waiting that long might not be an option if you are in a production environment. Assuming there isn't anything crazy between now and then with the new mac architecture and the OS.

6. More control over file format options, compatability, and saving. Most people won't notice, use, or care about this.

7. Here's a big one. The new file browser. This is a very convenient, albeit not very well optimized, tool. You can now browse thumbnails with image data and rankings as well as directly open from within a palate in photoshop. If you're familiar with ACDSee or Graphics Converter, this is basically what it is.

8. This is a quickie, but long over due. A Spell checker. FINALLY!!

9. Things have been moved a little... liquify and extract are now in the filter menu while "fade filter" is not for some bizzare reason. It took me 20 minutes to locate the stupid "new view" in 7 now that they moved it. I can't even figure out WHY they moved it, seemed to make perfect sense in the VIEW menu *shrug*. Also you'll notice a promising plugin called "pattern maker" works similarly to seamless welder if anyone remembers that. I haven't experimented enough with it, but it doesn't seem to work as well as I'd like. I think a lot of the problem is that I don't like the counter-intuative interfaces Adobe uses for their mini-app plugins (extract, liquify, pattern maker). The interface is a little too hard to use in them IMO.

10. Here's a favorite of mine as I tend to work in production environments a lot with other artists. Workspaces. Okay, you sit down, get everything situated where you like it... got all your palates stretched just how you want and put in the right order... and someone comes along and messes with it... moves them all around, un-docks them from eachother... whatever. Well now, you can save your palate locations and default palates as separate users. You simply select "save workspace" and give it a name. So everyone can have their own workspace and all you have to do is choose the one you want and poof, all back like you like it. Also, you could use this to have different workflows. Set the palates how you like for each different project type (retouching, image creation, web, etc.) and it's an easy switch by just choosing the name.

11. Anothing BIG timesaver I like. Default document sizes. Part of the New Document window now includes a pulldown menu that allows you to choose default document sizes from a list. Common ones like 640x480@72, 800x600@72, 1024x768@72 are all in there as well as common print sizes like A4@300 or 8.5x11@300. Plus, joy of joys, you can add your own to the list. So if you always find yourself working with some bizzare sized document, you can just choose the dimensions and bitdepth from a dropdown now instead of typing it in. Yay!

12. ImageReady 7. When photoshop went to 7, they jumped the version of imageready also. It's basically just the next version. I don't have an opinion of IR7 worth going into at this point. IR still has all the strengths and weaknesses that it always had, mostly the seemed to move lots of stuff around. heh. Makes working with rollovers and animation a little easier since they are now in separate palates, but since I mostly just do animated gifs with it, I can't give an in depth review of what's new in IR7.

13. This seems like a small thing, but I love it none the less. Layer renaming is now a double click away. Rather than renaming in the "layer options" pop up window, you can type right into the layers palate like you would rename a desktop icon. Very nice. Saves tons of time in multi-layer documents.

Over all the interface seems to work a little more consistently. I can't put my finger on exact examples, but everything seems to work like you'd expect... none of those surprises that 6 used to throw at you where once in a while it just wouldn't want to work right. Like every version of photoshop, it takes just a LITTLE more resources to run and takes a little longer to boot up, but over all it seems more stable than 6 in my experience. I do have some issues running it while online though, it seems to have some bizzare memory conflict with MSN Messenger, but then, that's what I get for trying to use MSN on a mac. haha. I think this is isolated to OS previous to X (I use 9.2.2 mostly) and only a mac issue (pc's have their OWN set of issues. hehe).

Is it worth the upgrade? Well, it depends if you need those features. 8 Will be out within the year more than likely. If you're working on 4.0 or something and need to upgrade? Don't be shy about 7, it's solid and has some nice new stuff. 6 to 7? If 6 does it all, don't bother. If you need painting tools... maybe you should consider learning painter, it's more robust. If you're upgrading to mac OS X... Definately check it out... running 6 in class sucks. My suggestion is go to adobe, get the 30 day free trial version and compare features, that's what it's there for. This isn't much of an option for dialup users, but for anyone on broadband, it's no biggie.

Hope that's somewhat helpful...


It's only after we've lost everything...
That we're free to do anything...

Oh, so there it is... thanks Michael!

lalala... If you do much photo fixing... taking scratches out of photos... it is worth it.... just for the heal brush. But that aside, nope.

The screwed up all the brushes in 7 so I cant paint... and the file browser, although it is cool, is a bit slow. I use an old ACDSee that blows any of this newfangled stuff out of the water.

so... Nope.

                                   

I liken the buying of newer versions of PS to a mechanic that loves to buy new tools to put in his already stuffed roll around toolbox of tools that he already never utilizes all the tools in.....but someday probably will...

lol Boudga! know what ya mean, most (not all) since V5 has been (imho) a watering down of PS just so they can reach a wider customer base (i.e. web related). The core fundementals havent changed. ymmv

Yeah -- between 5 and 7, the only new things I really care about are the layer sets, WYSIWYG text handling, and the improving web functions of ImageReady. The rest of it is more or less fluff.

Bear in mind, of course, that Adobe has a "publish or perish" thing going on. The more upgrades they can get out there, the more money they can make -- plus, with ImageReady and Illustrator going toe-to-toe with Fireworks and Freehand, they need to look like they're still rolling strong. They can't be like Quark and come out with a new version every five years.

I wouldn't drop the cash unless you can justify spending that amount of money on the new features and other "improvements".

Personally, I only just upgraded from 5.0 to 5.5 and I only did that becuase the whole Imageready/PS interface was something I could really use.

eyez - yeah, that's what I was alluding to about the file browser. Very nice, but not well optimized. Its convenient sometimes to have, but I still just drag files onto my desktop iocn 90% of the time. hehe. I've never found an image browser better than the windows version of ACDSee for speed. I don't know what they did to get it that good, but it's instant load for almost everything. I have things with more features, but for pure viewing? ACD rocks.

For me, the switch to 6 was a must have, many improvements. 7 while nice, isn't the same deal. If you can wait for 8, that might be the way to go.

$0.02


It's only after we've lost everything...
That we're free to do anything...

I know one feature that they removed that I really miss is how the text is done. I can't remember if it was 6 or 7 that they removed this feature but I liked how when you wanted to enter text you could click and a box would come up and you could scroll very quickly through all your fonts to see which you want to use. Now you have to use your mouse and go from one to the next. Very time consuming so I got a font browser program to do that for me.

Josh

MinutRice:

Open a new document...write out some quick text...open your type palette...click on the font name and scroll....your type will let you preview the fontface.



Plus you can preview it right in the layout that you want....so it's a bit of a bonus.

yeah, i love how it treats text in ps 7 - especially that little gem that peter mentioned.
type on a path tho? i dunno. the warp features really aren't that spectacular either, in my opinion.