The software I am reviewing is Adobe Photoshop CS, a complex image-editing software product. I installed it on my G4 with OS 10.3.7, 768 MB of RAM, 933 MHz processor. My color monitor is a 17 inch, Nokia 447W. I also have a Epson Perfection 1650 scanner. I am a medical technologist working in a 500+ bed hospital. Photoshop CS requires a Mac G3, G4 or G5 processor running OS 10.2.4 or newer, 192 MB of RAM, 320 MB of disk space available, color monitor with 256 color with 16 bit color or greater video card, 1024x768 or greater monitor resolution and a CD-ROM drive. Installation went without incident. I installed using Easy Install. And put a short cut to Photoshop in my dock. The new welcome screen. has links to make learning about Photoshop CS speedy and fun. The tutorial CD included with Photoshop CS is an excellent way to get acquainted with the new features. The foremost of the new features is the new work area File Browser. Many of the features of the File Browser remind me of working with Windows Explorer. Every Mac person has to bump up against the other format sooner of later. Whether it’s at work or just to defend their purchase of the Mac. File Browser allows you to know where you put your pictures files and creates a desktop search engine where you can not only see the name that you put on the picture file, but the picture itself. This is a godsend for those of us who do not consistently put our pictures in the picture file, but scatter them about the HD in locations with names like Vacation, etc. Certainly having iPhoto organize them in the iPhoto Library takes care of many of the photos that we upload from cameras, but there are those images that we have in other places that make the new File Browser a useful, handy and necessary tool. I love the new File Browser! Shadow & Highlight correction is another really great new feature. I think that almost anyone who has ever used a camera has taken a shot into a lighter backdrop whether it was in front of a window or just that you were not thinking about where the light was coming from. If your foreground subject is darkened or silhouetted, you can select the image adjustment called shadow/highlight to fix it easily. You can customize the keyboard shortcut sets for menu items, tools and palette commands so that Photoshop responds to your style of working in a speedy fashion. I can see that this would be a true time saver for a Photoshop user who had a developed a work structure and found him/herself working on many projects with the same kind of necessary adjustments. One of the features that I have always wanted to learn how to do is to place text on a path. This is something that I remember being able to do in an early version of Appleworks. I was able polish this new skill by using the Help which takes the manual and divides it up into categories. The trick about using any Help features is “What is what I want to do called?” If you can figure out what the program calls what you want to do, you have it made. Calling anything up alphabetically under the Help index is easy. I design webpages for our Mac User Group and for my church using Photoshop and GoLive. Another of my passions is genealogy. I really love the old photos. Polishing them up without over cleaning them is a joy using Photoshop. I use Photoshop for the everyday things like touching up cracks or water marks on old photos and for this I really appreciate the fact that I can scan these old photos on my Epson 1650 and import them directly into Photoshop. I just open Photoshop, pull down Import under the File menu and my Epson model is listed. When I select it, the scanning options open. It’s great! Then the photo I want to work on is in Photoshop and the tools I need to make the cracks and water spots disappear are at my fingertips. Photoshop just keeps getting better and easier to use. I would recommend Photoshop CS to any friends serious about being able to produce stunning photos for any project. Adobe Photoshop is priced at $649.00 (before user group discount) Ellen Urness Webmaster, Mac Mavericks User Group-Dubuque, Iowa 2-11-2005 |
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