Comments on: Comments on 15055

Post number 15055

dilok — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 16:43:58 -0800

Photoshop 7.0 for OS X finally released!

By: alan

alan — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 16:59:09 -0800

You mean Photoshop 7.0 for OS X estimated shipping date finally released. Est Ship
April Still, better than the 'someday' that was the previous line.

By: geoff.

geoff. — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 17:02:47 -0800

It'll release for Windows too, in case anyone thought they were pulling a fast one on us Windows users. It seems like PS6.0 just came out, what intrigues me most about PS7.0 is that it'll have support for paintbrushes (maybe it'll replace the hard to find Canvas).

By: jfuller

jfuller — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 17:29:40 -0800

Robert Cringley wants OS X for Intel (which, keeping things on-topic, no doubt entails Photoshop 7++ for OS X for Intel.) Does anybody have a more-favorite geek pundit then Cringley? If so, I'd like to know about this person.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 17:31:53 -0800

It doesn't seem like enough new features to be considered a new foo.0 release (why not make it 6.5?), but it's good to finally see the one killer app is out for os X, almost a year after os X's debut. I know a handful of mac users that were waiting for this before fully switching over to X. The paintbrushes indeed look cool. I was impressed with Painter for its natural brushes and hybrid vector/raster system. It'd be great to see Photoshop offer those same features.

By: rodii

rodii — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 17:49:38 -0800

I'll be curious to see whether Photoshop sticks with its traditional virtual memory system (#1 pain in the ass for me) or whether they will just use OS X's. Either way, that will be the last Classic app I use with any regularity in OS X: Eudora, BBEdit, Office, IE, Mozilla, Illustrator. (I still use Acrobat in Classic, I guess, but more and more I just print straight to the native PDF (Quartz), although there are some problems with this.) One problem I can see is filters--a lot of third-party filters still run in Classic. I wonder how Adobe will handle that--call them as separate apps?

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 17:53:14 -0800

I might even consider buying a mac if it's good enough. I already like OSX... my biggest problem with Adobe is that there are no linux versions of their software, and I'm sorry, GIMP is not far enough along to be a viable alternative. I would like working on a Mac with Photoshop and a powerful command line.

By: Danelope

Danelope — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 17:53:43 -0800

For the record, Paint Shop Pro (my preferred image creation tool since version 2.0) has had an integrated image browser, brushes, and the vector/raster system for at least two versions now.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 18:07:23 -0800

Yeah, thanks Danelope. I have both, and hardly even use Photoshop any more. It may not be the industry standard for super k-rad elite graphics editing, but for mid-range users like me, PSP is the clear choice. Not even a competition, really.

By: rodii

rodii — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 18:27:16 -0800

What makes it the clear choice? Does it have some functionality--beyond the browser/brushes/vector stuff Danbelope mentions--that Photoshop doesn't? There's a small set of image apps that have seemed to be more "advanced" that PS in one way or another in recent years. Canvas, Painter, Fireworks, TwilightBrush (I think it was called)... I'd like to see some really new ideas in image manipulation come along. I wonder what they will be?

By: jeremias

jeremias — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 18:28:42 -0800

Photoshop 6 actually has a pretty good selection of paint style brushes- it doesn't have the same advanced menu that 7 has but the concept is the same. Just click on the brush menu and then load brushes>presets>brushes and add the Natural brushes, faux brushes, calligraphy, etc.

By: willnot

willnot — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 18:31:15 -0800

It will be interesting to see how the "healing" brush works. One of the biggest headaches with using the clone tool to fix that stuff was variations in light and tone. If they can really adjust for that, it would probably save me some time touching up. I have less confidence in their auto-color correct option, but it too will be interesting to see. But, the best feature by far will have to be spell check. The last several releases have advanced their text handling quite a bit, and I find my self doing more typographic work in Photoshop rather than doing it in Quark. Given that I can't spell worth a danm, spell check would be outstanding.

By: panopticon

panopticon — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 18:37:51 -0800

Imagine this: Adobe completely rewrote Photoshop for Mac. Completely. It's taken forever, but it's better that they take their time instead of releasing buggy beta-software. Thing is, not that much has really changed, it's a lot faster and tighter which may be enough reason to get it, but for a lot of companies with tight budgets, they can still get the same job done with version 5 through 6. I mean, a lot of companies stick with Quark 4, which is how old? Funniest thing about the beta release I've tried: the spiffy new spell checker doesn't recognize the word "photoshop". Love it!

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 18:52:01 -0800

I prefer PaintShopPro because it's "lighter". I can whip it out to make quick changes, and it doesn't bog down my system like PS inevitably does. Yes, it's the first image editing software I ever used, and I'm much more adept at it, which probably enters into my preference, but I very seldom need the added "power" of Photoshop. Plus, unless the company's footing the bill, the huge difference in price makes up for any of PSP's shortcomings.

By: rodii

rodii — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 19:15:51 -0800

Does PSP have the equivalent of Photoshops channels and channel ops? Quick Mask Mode? I think the equivalence of alpha channels, masks and selections is one of the really deep, powerful things about PS. I also like the gradual transition to modal "editor" interfaces (the gradient editor, the brush editor, the text editor (which needs work), the layer effects editor, and probably others I can't think of right now). They've added really powerful functionality without much really showing on the surface. I've never used PSP (I'm on a Mac), but I'd really like to see a point-by-point comparison. (This isn't a dig at PSP, and I understand why someone might never need to mess with chops or convolving. I could use a more lightweight PS myself.)

By: dorian

dorian — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 19:20:15 -0800

what will truly be interesting to see is whether apple and/or adobe will finally stop blaming each other, suck it up and fix the classic/osx font issues. I don't see too many graphic designers switching to illustrator and photoshop on osx until that whole fiasco is resolved. oh yeah, wait, the solution is "please buy our new opentype fonts, pretty please". christ.

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 20:18:41 -0800

::cries:: i just barely got the hang of this ps 6.0 craziness and was debating on whether or not to try and see if it could run on my computer... now i gotta wait to see if i want this instead...

By: metrocake

metrocake — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 20:54:57 -0800

Some comments: 1. Quark 5.0 is now out, actually. Released in late January, to little fanfare it seems. I don't have the upgrade yet, so can't say whether it's good, bad, or ugly. 2. I, personally, am waiting for the day when Adobe just integrates Illustrator and Photoshop. With bringing in some vector capability into Photoshop 6, they're bringing that line ever closer. Anyone with me on this? :) (And, yes, I'm all-too aware that this won't happen for sheer financial reasons...a girl can dream, though.)

By: alan

alan — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 20:56:24 -0800

Adobe completely rewrote Photoshop for the Mac I was under the impression that Adobe was porting Photoshop as a Carbon program, and not Cocoa. It's still a lengthy undertaking, but it's not a complete rewrite. For the uninitiated, a Cocoa application is one written specifically from scratch for OS X. A Carbon application is an existing program that has been modified to run under OS X. Most of the code remains the same. In fact, if a developer/company chooses to do so, a Carbon application will run under both OS X and OS 9.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 21:35:44 -0800

What makes it the clear choice? Does it have some functionality--beyond the browser/brushes/vector stuff Danbelope mentions--that Photoshop doesn't? I couldn't even begin to answer your second question, honestly. But it's the clear choice for me because I never scratched my head once while trying to figure out how to do something in it. Even when I was using Photoshop, there were things I had just given up on ever using. I know it's a great program, but there wouldn't be a market for PSP if PS were perfect for everyone.

By: sarosh

sarosh — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 21:40:03 -0800

I am all about Illustrator + Photoshop becoming one package. Though, from a programming prespective, what kind of rendering engine would be under the hood? Actually, it would be a riot to see the next version of Illustrator become more like Auto-Illustrator or at least have some similar features. For some reason, I also recall PS7 being talked about in terms of being a Carbon app.

By: xyzzy

xyzzy — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 22:19:08 -0800

I think a major reason PSP is so perfect for so many is the extremely low price when compared to Photoshop. ;) Seriously, though, although I am a dedicated Photoshop user, PSP really does have the more popular features of Photoshop, and the interface is non-confusing for certain people. Personally, I couldn't even consider switching to PSP because the user interface annoys me. I wish Adobe would package up the features of ImageReady inside of Photoshop rather than duplicate major portions of Photoshop inside of ImageReady. The new more natural paint features shown on the web site don't impress me at all... you can already get much better effects with Painter for that sort of thing, or even the expensive but amazing Deep Paint plug-in for Photoshop. I mean, in Painter 7 you can set the drying time of a wet brush. How cool is that? I would rather have Photoshop continue doing what it does REALLY WELL, rather than trying to include so many vector and natural paint functions into the application. I don't see how Photoshop could be the ultimate bitmap, vector, AND natural paint application without being too bogged down and overly complex.

By: Danelope

Danelope — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 23:27:53 -0800

rodii: PSP7 has layers, channels, masks, and selections, and they operate nearly identically to Photoshop's. PSP currently lacks Quick Mask Mode, which is a pivotal Photoshop feature to many users. I'm nearly as skilled in Photoshop as I am in Paint Shop Pro, but I prefer the latter because it makes many tasks faster, cleaner, and just plain easier than Adobe products. For example: PSP opens instanteously on my machine (a 750Mhz Athlon), doesn't require the overhead (or contain the bloat) that PS does, and only requires one step to paste to a new image (rather than creating the new image and then pasting.) Combine these sorts of things with an integrated image browser (rather than ACDSee or whatever), seamless file reading/writing with Photoshop PSDs and 20+ other formats, batch image conversion, compatibilty with major Photoshop Plug-ins (Alien Skin, Eye Candy 3.0, etc.), and ultra-low price. For me, it simply makes sense. I try to use PS6 regularly to keep my abilities sharpened, but you'll always catch me with at least one PSP window open constantly.

By: sawks

sawks — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 00:31:56 -0800

ps 7 is carbon, it wouldn't work in os 9 otherwise... one of the reasons it took so long is because of the large amount of legacy and code that hadn't been looked at in several versions and needed to be rewritten for carbon compatability (apple mapped out the path to os x a long time ago, i cant help feeling that adobe were hedging their bets before deciding to undertake this massive code rehaul) using your old plugins under os x is indeed a problem, since most of them are incompatible, but i'm sure new versions will be along soon (most useful plugin functionality gets absored into photoshop at some stage anyway, aside from the 'kais tie-die effects' stuff) jfuller: personally i think cringely talks a lot of bunk :) os x on intel being a good example - apple is a hardware company after all, and theres the problem of who's going to write all the new applex86 software)

By: phalkin

phalkin — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 01:40:03 -0800

What? Nobody likes Painter 7? Just because it's been tossed from one company to another for so long doesn't mean the codebase has lost it's integrity... Oh wait. Yes it does.

By: kerplunk

kerplunk — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 04:30:13 -0800

Why do so many applications insist on trying to incorporate file browser (Windows Explorer) functionality into them, rather than working with or extending the operating system's native facilities? Do Photoshop users really not want to leave the application ever?

By: Kikkoman

Kikkoman — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 06:19:08 -0800

Actually, phalkin, I'm seeing far fewer memory leak problems with Painter 7 than I did with 6. The UI, while still very weird, seems to have improved slightly with the latest release too. Point taken, however -- it certainly has seen more than its fair share of owners/maintainers. I'd hate to be making revisions to _that_ code...

By: kindall

kindall — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 07:43:45 -0800

Why do so many applications insist on trying to incorporate file browser (Windows Explorer) functionality into them, rather than working with or extending the operating system's native facilities? Because the system's native facilities suck? Or, at least, they are not well-suited for browsing a directory full of images.

By: jragon

jragon — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 08:01:47 -0800

Hey now. My windows2000 machine sucks at browsing images, but OSX's massive icons are perfect for image browsing, thank you very much.

By: Potsy

Potsy — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 08:42:15 -0800

Carbon vs. Cocoa has nothing to do with whether or not this is a complete rewrite. The code can be rewritten without switching APIs.

By: ook

ook — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 09:17:31 -0800

I, personally, am waiting for the day when Adobe just integrates Illustrator and Photoshop [metrocake] I wish Adobe would package up the features of ImageReady inside of Photoshop [xyzzy] I've got the opposite feeling, actually... Lately it's seemed to me like Adobe's been starting to make all its applications do a little bit of everything, and it's starting to clutter the interface. Pairing Photoshop with ImageReady seemed weird at first, but turned out to be an excellent strategy: photoshop for straight image manipulation, imageready for web optimization, slicing, animation; easy way to toggle between the applications. Great. Designers who didn't do web stuff didn't have to work around all the web-centric functionality; people who did could focus on creating their images in a familiar environment, then toggle over to ImageReady when they were ready to build in animation or whatever. With Photoshop 6 / ImageReady 3, though, some of the functionality of each app has started bleeding over into the other. Maybe it's just because I'm still in the throes of upgrade disorientation (dammit, they changed the key shortcuts again! :) but I don't really see the point. I'd rather see less duplication, more separation: keep each app smaller, more task-oriented, and focused. Instead we're getting bloat. Illustrator 10 can export flash files, now, for example -- cool, but the app is so strongly based in print publishing that animation and interactivity are necessarily kind of clumsy. Photoshop can do vectors. Cool, but if you're aiming to produce a vector image, why are you using Photoshop? And if you're aiming for a raster image, why use vectors? (For print work, of course, you might well want to use both, but if you're doing print work you're probably using Illustrator anyway, which already handles this quite well.) What I would like to see is more compatibility between the programs. Rather than bringing vector shapes into photoshop, leave them in Illustrator -- but make it as easy to toggle between those two apps as it now is to toggle between photoshop and imageready. Keep the apps smaller, cheaper, and compatible with each other, instead of trying to make all of them do everything clumsily. I'd also like a pony. but not one big pony, of course; lots of small, task-oriented, interoperable ponies.

By: ook

ook — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 09:20:44 -0800

On the PSP vs Photoshop question... doesn't it seem like everyone prefers one or the other based on which one they're more adept with? Which pretty much boils down to which one they learned first? (And isn't this a great argument for any forward-looking software company to give their products away for free to students? ;)

By: jjg

jjg — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 10:22:41 -0800

Potsy's absolutely right -- you could just as easily write a Carbon app from scratch as a Cocoa one. It's just a matter of which APIs and programming languages you're comfortable with. Yes, every port from 9 is a Carbon app, but that doesn't make every Carbon app a port. I can't imagine that they rewrote Photoshop completely. They might have cleaned up some of the code as they Carbonized it, but throwing out the existing code base is really only a last resort when the app is severely broken (Word 6, Netscape 4). If they had rewritten the app, you would think they would mention it quite prominently (as opposed to not at all).

By: Hildago

Hildago — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 13:33:00 -0800

On the PSP vs Photoshop question... doesn't it seem like everyone prefers one or the other based on which one they're more adept with? Which pretty much boils down to which one they learned first? ook -- that's probably true for a lot of people (and for a lot of different issues), but I personally was using Photoshop long before I discovered Paint Shop Pro, and only switched over to the latter recently. Not that I would try to stop anyone from giving me free software.

By: aprilgem

aprilgem — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 17:52:07 -0800

To add to Hildago's comment, I was using Paint Shop Pro at home long before I got my hands on Photoshop at work. I used to know both equally well, but I prefer Photoshop, so now I'm far more adept at using PS than at using PSP.