Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Upgrade-Mac [OLD VERSION]

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 presets that can be accessed from the Tools 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 these tools, users can easily "heal" their images by removing scratches, blemishes, and other imperfections while 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 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. People concerned about posting their images online can secure their images with the new password protection feature before sharing them.

Adobe has finally introduced a long overdue spell checker 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, Web designers, and graphic designers to work more effectively with Web and wireless devices, it also 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

Amazon.com Review
With each new version of Photoshop, Adobe never fails to come up with an awe-inspiring mix of great new features, productivity enhancements, and tweaks and treats. Version 7 is no exception.

The major difference between this and earlier versions is that Photoshop 7 is Mac OS X compatible. Other main points of interest include a new healing brush that removes facial wrinkles and other surface blemishes with incredible ease, a long-awaited file browser that allows you to view image thumbnails and metadata, enhanced Web features, automatic color correction, and even a spell checker.

One of Photoshop's many strengths is the versatility of its tools, and this has been stretched to new limits. Filter previews are bigger, the Liquify tool has been enhanced, brush parameters have been extended, and commonly used tool settings can be saved as presets. This means you can virtually do away with the toolbox, instead selecting tools with exactly the settings you need from the presets palette.

Image Ready, Photoshop's Web-authoring and export module, remains a separate, linked application. Creation of rollovers is simpler and a new "selected" rollover state takes some of the repetitive strain out of nav-bar production.

New output options include Picture Package, which allows you to print multiple images on a single page, and new templates and security watermarking for Web galleries.

All in all, this is an upgrade guaranteed to keep Photoshop at the cutting edge of professional image editing. --Ken McMahon

Amazon.com Product Description
Photoshop 7.0 boasts an extensive set of features that allow photographers and Web and graphic designers to work more efficiently, explore creative options, and produce high-quality images for print, Web, and other media. Create imagery with easier access to file data; streamlined Web design; faster, professional-quality photo retouching; and more. Support for WBMP format enables optimization for display on PDAs and other wireless devices. Plus, Web designers can apply extra compression to images and exercise greater control over how transparency is maintained online with Photoshop 7.0's added output enhancements.

Photoshop 7.0 delivers a comprehensive tool set that helps users meet both creative and production challenges. Its Healing Brush revolutionizes the process of retouching images. Remove dust, scratches, blemishes, and wrinkles effortlessly. Preserve shading, lighting, texture, and other attributes automatically. Photoshop 7.0's File Browser lets users locate, organize, and visually manage images quickly. You can even view EXIF data from digital cameras, including date captured, exposure settings, creation and modification dates, and more.

Native on Mac OS X, Photoshop 7.0 provides even greater multiprocessor support as well as superior interoperability with other Adobe applications. The software also offers a robust painting engine that lets users create custom brush presets, simulate pastels and charcoal, and add special effects, such as grass and leaves, while its Pattern Maker plug-in creates patterns, including rocks and sand. Photoshop 7.0's Liquify plug-in provides enhanced control over image warping with zoom, pan, and multiple undo capabilities. --Text refers to product description for Photoshop 7.0, Mac platform.

While v7 doesn't add a whole lot of new features ... it does improve on a number of existing ones ... and most importantly it is the first Adobe application to feature their new common user-interface design ... that will be shared with imageready and illustrator.

Since it is highly probable that one will be using one of these applications ... you may as well drop down the coin and purchase this upgrade now ... before they start restricting the versions the upgrade supports.


ROCKS!   October 11, 2002
altescape (NORTHCOAST OHIO)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

Just do it, 7.0 has few improvements but-folks
these are great ones!
I upgraded from 6.0.


PhotoShop 7 is Still the Reigning Monarch   August 22, 2002
paul gerstenbluth (East Greenwich, RI USA)
9 out of 13 found this review helpful

Ask most graphic artists and designers and they will tell you that their livelihood depends on their usage of Photoshop. PhotoShop 7 is worth the time to learn and use for your projects. Photoshop is still the reigning monarch for digital photos and graphic work.

PhotoShop 7's Healing Brush

The most publicized new feature in Photoshop 7. The PhotoShop's Healing Brush lets you remove dust, scratches, blemishes and wrinkles on your images. With the healing brush tool, you can preserves shading and lighting texture. You can use the Patch Tool for more precise graphic editing. Also, you can use the patch tool on selections or channels.

Controversy. Does removing wrinkles and facial defects destroy the character of the family member? Maybe that was one of the reasons that Native American Indians refused to have their pictures taken in fear of the photograph picture capturing and destroying their souls.

The Wall Street Journal's article on PhotoShop 7 commented on the moral aspects of using the PhotoShop 7's Healing Brush. The writer noted that Adobe Systems was masterful in creating the Healing Brush but was it ethical to use it?

PhotoShop 7 File Browser

The new Browse command opens a File Browser palette. This lets you view thumbnails of all your graphics files.

In the Expanded View the File Browser offers a Microsoft Internet Explorer style view. You will see a panel down the left hand side of your monitor containing a tree structure pane where you can choose which folder you wish to view.

Under the PhotoShop Hood

PhotoShop is a Deep Program. The layout of PhotoShop has three distinct elements: the menu, the toolbox and the palettes.

The PhotoShop menu has eight distinct entities: File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, View, Window, and Help.

The PhotoShop toolbox has four distinct entities: selection tools, painting and editing tools, specialty tool and navigation tools.

The PhotoShop Palettes has eleven distinct entities: Option Palette, Info Palette, Navigation Palette, Color Palette, Color swatches Palette, Brush Palette, History Palette, Actions Palette, Layers Palette, Channels Palette and Paths Palette.

What does the New ImageReady 7 do?

ImageReady is a separate companion application to Photoshop. It lets you create web graphics, animations and rollover buttons with greater ease.

Becoming a PhotoShop User

How do you become a PhotoShop user? If you asked the professionals they would answer, "Know PhotoShop inside and out, study graphic artists works and practice, practice, practice until you can see the PhotoShop 7 menu's in your mind."

In additional they would suggest, "Make contact with other PhotoShop 7 users. Go to workshops to meet them. Don't stay isolated."

Pro Reaction

Spell Checker in Photoshop 7. Like a text document, you can now search, replace text, check spelling in multiple languages within the same file. In addition, now you can correct spelling on one text layer or all text layers in the same document.

New brush options. Brush choices and options for each brush are so powerful and easy to understand and use. Also, you have the ability to create your own PhotoShop brushes.

Photoshop 7 program comes with an excellent hardcopy Photoshop 7 user guide of 441 pages.

Video Workshop for Photoshop 7 is a CD that contains over 60 minutes of full screen, full motion, professional training video. Help's you get started with the pros.

Graphic designers who use vector-based and bitmapped images will find that Photoshop 7 and Adobe Illustrator 10 work well together.

Con Reaction

Your control over open documents has been moved to a sub menu. This adds another step each time you want to change your images. Not much has changed in Photoshop 7's look-and-feel compared to version 6's radical revamp.

Missing was Adobe Photoshop 7.0 tips and techniques that was available at the Adobe Breakfast for Mac Users Board members.

Final Notes

The perfect time to be a Photoshop user. Healing Brush is easy to use and does amazing results when you edit your photographs and graphics.

Photoshop 7 lets you work more efficiently. With PhotoShop. you now have new tools like: Healing brush, Auto Color, ImageReady 7 for web output, animations and rollovers.


Upgrade already!   August 17, 2002
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

If you're a Photoshop user and want to upgrade to OS X--let this piece of software convince you. It's stabler and more elegant than the previous version in OS 9. I simply *love* Photoshop 7.0. I've been a Photoshop user on the Mac since Photoshop 4.0, and this is by far the best version yet. If you're a graphics professional and have been waiting to switch to OS X for software like Photoshop to be ready for OS X, then the time has come--switch away. As always, I think Adobe's pricing is a bit too high, but this is a rare example of an upgrade whose price I felt was worth it.


Worthy upgrade   August 13, 2002
guy richardson (Reno, NV USA)
Looks and acts a lot like Photoshop 6.5, but there are many little elegances added. The biggee is the so-called healing brush and it actually does erase wrinkles on a portrait. For me, that was worth the price of the upgrade. If erasing wrinkles on friends, family members and customers doesn't light up your sky, you may be able to live without this -- unless you are on a Mac running OS X. Photoshop 7 is the first big-time graphics program to make the jump to X.