Any new Photoshop product launch is guaranteed to create
a stir in the graphic, artistic and photographic community.
Photoshop is the program by which all other graphics editors
are compared, and it has a popularity that spans everyone
from graphics and photographic professionals to enthusiastic
amateurs and everyone in between. Trying to be all things
to all people is a tough call, so you'll be curious, as I
am, to see how Photoshop CS2 stacks up as a tool for digital
photographers. Here's a look at what's new in Photoshop CS2
that is of particular interest to us as photographers:
Getting started
When you first install and launch Photoshop CS2 you will
find the interface is reassuringly familiar. There’s
not much in the way of cosmetic changes to be seen, but underneath
are new tools and filters as well as some new behaviours to
make digital photo editing easier.
Perhaps the biggest change you will discover is when you
choose File > Browse to open the Photoshop browser. Gone
is the old form browser and, in its place, you will see the
new Adobe Bridge, which is the central file browser for not
only Photoshop, but also other applications in the Creative
Suite, if you are using those.
The Bridge runs separate to
Photoshop and it has its own position on the taskbar as you
work. It displays the contents of your folders in a variety
of different views that you can select from the View menu.
Here also you can edit a file's meta data, rename your files
and search for them. Using the Label tool you can assign a
rating and/or a label to a file to make it easier to find
later on.
The new Adobe Bridge replaces the old browser
and offers a swag of viewing, editing, cataloging and file
renaming options, although it is very resource hungry and
slow.
The Bridge lets you view a range
of file types, including PDF files – and you can see
how many pages they contain and even browse through them on
the screen - all of which makes the Bridge a handy one stop
shop for previewing images.
All this comes with a proviso, and that is that without a
good fast computer with plenty of memory, you will find that
the Bridge operates very slowly indeed. A folder containing
some 900+ photographs takes a significantly long time to load,
before the cached thumbnail images become available to view.
This presupposes that you have previously browsed the folder
so that the thumbnails have been created. If not, it will
be even longer before you get to see reasonable size thumbnails.
The older your computer, the worse the problem will be –
one of mine is brand new and it was slow on that. On a 2 year
old machine, my "Type A" personality traits showed
through very quickly and I now bypass the Bridge and use another
program to find the files I want – dragging and dropping
them from there into Photoshop - the Bridge is just way too
slow for me to bother using.
In the Raw
Photoshop CS2 now has Camera Raw 3.0 support and, using this
you can edit and process more than one raw image at a time
so the changes you make to one are made to all those you have
selected.
Photoshop CS2 offers support for Camera
Raw 3.0 and the editing tools include the ability to make
fine adjustments using the Curves tab.
You can also edit one image
and then apply the changes to other selected images using
the Synchronize button, or copy and paste settings from one
file to another.
The tools for working with raw format images include Exposure,
Shadows, and Brightness and Contrast and all these now support
an Auto option which applies a quick fix to the image.
The Curves tab lets you adjust
the image's tonal curve, and this is a fully editable curve
reminiscent of the standard Photoshop Curves dialog. There
is also a Straighten tool in the Camera Raw editing toolkit
that lets you straighten images by dragging along a horizontal
line.
Selecting multiple images in the Camera
Raw dialog lets you apply the corrections to them all at one
time.
New Filters
Photoshop CS2 includes some new filters which will be of
particular interest to digital photographers. The filter that
is getting the most publicity is the Vanishing Point
tool because it is big in the WOW! factor. This tool lets
you create a perspective grid over an image and then make
various adjustments to the image based on the grid.
For example, if you have an image with severe perspective
distortion, you would use this tool to clone one area of the
image over another area – the filter makes adjustments
for the different relative sizes of the source and target
areas. So, when sampling bricks on a building – you
can sample those close to you and use them to paint over those
furthest away and Photoshop takes care of the sizing for you
automatically.
There are also some fancy but not blindingly obvious techniques
for using the tool to adding text or another object to an
image so it maintains the correct perspective for the image.
The (high Wow! Factor) Vanishing Point filter
adjusts perspective automatically when you clone or add objects
to an image.
You do this by making a selection
of the object or rasterized text and then copying it to the
clipboard. Open the Vanishing Point filter dialog, paste the
selection onto the image and then drag it over the area marked
out by the grid. When you do, it deforms to match the grid perspective.
If you frequently edit using the clone tool or if you like to
add text effects to your images or work in general with images
that have severe perspective distortion, then this tool will
save hours of frustrating work.
Adobe Photoshop CS2 includes a new
Lens Correction tool that can fix problems of distortion
caused by the camera lens including barrel and pincushion distortions
as well as offering a perspective fixing tool. When you're tying
to fix a problem image, having all the fixing tools in one dialog
can make it easier to achieve a good result.
The new Smart Sharpen
filter has been touted as a replacement for the Unsharp
Mask tool. Smart Sharpen not only works to sharpen an
image but it can also adjust for different types of blur such
as lens blur, Motion Blur and Gaussian Blur.
It has sliders for varying the amount of sharpening in the
shadows and highlights of the image to help you control the
halos that often appear on heavily sharpened images.
The new Smart Sharpen tool helps fix softness
caused by Gaussian Blur and Motion Blur, and has options for
controlling the sharpening in shadows and highlights.
The Motion Blur option goes
a long way toward successfully sharpening images that are
slightly out of focus due to camera movement.
Smart Sharpen is a tool that bears investigation and my bet
is that it will become your sharpening tool of choice very
quickly.
Snaffled from Elements
If you're familiar with Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 you
might have wondered why some of the tools in Photoshop Elements
weren't available in Photoshop. Photoshop CS2 has now snaffled
some of the tools from its younger sibling — Adobe Photoshop
Elements 3.0 — including the Spot Healing Brush.
This lets you fix small flaws in an image by simply clicking
on the area to fix rather than having to mark a sampling point
before you begin. This tool uses data from around the blemish
to fix the problem and, while it is not perfect and it won’t
work in all situations – it can save a lot of time messing
around with the Healing Brush. I've used the tool in
Elements for some time now and I'm pleased to see it's now
in Photoshop CS2, although I expect to sometimes have to resort
to the Healing Brush or Clone Stamp tool for fixes
it just doesn't do easily.
Adobe Photoshop CS2 also includes the one click Redeye
Fix tool that is a feature of Adobe Photoshop Elements
3.0. This tool goes some way towards offering a quick redeye
fix but, it's far from as intelligent or customizable as the
tool in Paint Shop Pro for example. Consider it a quick
and dirty solution for human redeye, but remember it's totally
unsophisticated and, for animal eye problems, it's next to
useless.
Other cool tools
In the grab bag of tools that photographers can use but may
or may not choose to, is the HDR or High Dynamic
Range tool which allows you to import a series of bracketed
exposures, which it then merges into one high dynamic range
image. To do this, you will, of course, have to have shot
the required images at the varying exposures and to do so
with a tripod to ensure that the images will merge correctly.
This feature has been around in other programs for a while,
for example Photo Impact 10 has a similar feature but
with more ability to customize the results than the Photoshop
equivalent. Although this is touted as a specialist tool,
it can be used to good effect by any photographer who understands
when it would be of benefit and who has the foresight to shoot
the required images when in the field.
The new Reduce Noise tool helps remove color
noise from digital photos while at the same time maintaining
sharpness, and includes a tool for removing JPEG artifacts.
Also of interest to digital photographers
is the new Noise Reduction filter which can remove some of the
digital noise, and in particular color noise, from digital photos
– particularly those shot in low light conditions. There
are a range of settings for this tool which allow you to remove
noise as well as JPEG artifacts from overly compressed images.
Another tool which fits into
the Oh Wow! category is the Wrap tool which you will
locate in the Edit > Transform menu. This tool has a number
of presets which are similar to those available for warping
text, or you can choose the custom option and create your
own warp shape by dragging on the grid lines to deform the
image. The tool can be used to wrap an image seamlessly around
an object like a soft drink can. It's perhaps of more use
to digital artists than digital photographers although some
photographers who create montages and collages from their
work will appreciate its power.
It’s the Little Things
Some of the enhancements and new features can be put under
the category of "small but useful." One of these
is the ability to control lining up layers in, for example,
a collaged image using Smart Guides. If you enable
Smart Guides then, when you move one layer close to the edge
of another layer, a guide pops up indicating when you have
the two layers aligned exactly.
Smart Guides, when enabled, show a marker
when you have two layers aligned by one of their edges.
The Font list now shows a small sample of
each font making it easier to identify the font you want.
The Font list now has a WYSIWYG
(What You See Is What You Get) feature that shows a
small sample of text in the font face making it easier to
identify what a font looks like when using the Text option.
When you work with Photoshop regularly you will find you
adjust the screen each time to suit your own needs. The menus
and workspace in Photoshop CS2 are customizable and you can
create and save a workspace setup so that, regardless of who
uses Photoshop in the meantime, the workspace always looks
like you want it to.
You can also color code menu
options, for example to highlight a menu option that you find
it difficult to locate, which is a feature I love.
In Photoshop CS2, layers can now be linked by Shift + clicking
on a number of layers to create a linked set. With these selected,
you can apply certain options to all the layers at one time.
However, these options do not extend to selecting a blend
mode for all the layers. It's a great feature for those of
us not so used to the old process that we'll miss it's absence,
(if that describes you, the Layer link icon is now at the
foot of the Layer palette).
Wish List
As with any release of a program like Photoshop CS2 you will
find that there are many new tools that will speed up or make
easier the tasks that you perform on a regular basis. But,
for each of us, there is still a wish list of features that
we would like to see but which have not yet been addressed.
On my wish list is the ability to apply filters to an image
without destroying the image or without having to permanently
alter the image in the process. To be able to apply a filter
in much the same way as you apply an adjustment layer would
be a significant forward step.
As a scrapbook designer and paper artist, I would also like
a better method for printing multiple photos on a single sheet
of paper. The Picture package option goes some way towards
providing a custom interface for arranging multiple images
on a page but nothing in Photoshop comes close to the flexibility
offered by, for example, Paint Shop Pro's multiple image printing
tool.
The verdict: Is Photoshop CS2 a "must
have" upgrade?
If you are shooting RAW images then Photoshop CS2’s
improved RAW image editing is a good enough reason to trade
up to this version. If you work with type on your photographs,
then the vanishing point filter and the new WYSIWYG font options
are a good reason to upgrade as well. Overall, everyone will
enjoy the better sharpening ability offered by the Smart Sharpen
tool and the Spot Healing Brush will make fixing minor blemishes
very easy indeed.
If you are using Photoshop 7 then Photoshop CS2 is a worthwhile
upgrade particularly when you have regard to the enhancements
that were introduced with Photoshop CS such as the Shadow
and Highlight tool. For users of Photoshop CS unless there
is anything compelling in the list of new features in Photoshop
CS2, you could consider saving your money and review the situation
when the next version is launched.
Program information
Requirements:
Windows:
Intel® Xeon™, Xeon Dual, Intel Centrino™,
or Pentium® III or 4 processor,
Microsoft® Windows® 2000 with Service Pack
4, or Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or 2,
320MB of RAM (384MB recommended),
650MB of available hard-disk space,
1,024x768 monitor resolution with 16-bit video card,
CD-ROM drive.
Macintosh:
PowerPC® G3, G4, or G5 processor,
Mac OS X v.10.2.8 through v.10.4 (10.3.4 through 10.4
recommended),
320MB of RAM (384MB recommended),
750MB of available hard-disk space,
1,024x768 monitor resolution with 16-bit video card,
