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"Interface is still stone-age..."
on by dtews4Pros Powerful, flexible
Cons Requires huge and/or multiple monitors
Summary Although I have yet to upgrade to CS2, the editor's review appears to confirm a glaring weakness in Photoshop's interface I've experienced in CS1. Many of Photoshop's features can only be accessed via space hogging palettes. One must keep many palettes open simultaneosly in order to work efficiently, which uses up a huge amount of screen real estate. Having a second monitor, or huge screen is almost a must.
In comparison to other apps today, this is absolutely stone-age. The workflow in apps like Corel Photo Paint is much faster and easier. Although highly detailed palettes are available, most functions are available in a dynamic, changing tool bar whose contents change depending on the tool currently active. I find working in Corel to be faster, more efficient, and generally more pleasant than Photoshop, which is exceedingly klutzy in comparison.
Even the toolbars themselves are far more space efficient in Corel. Related tools, such as lasso, rectangular, and irregular masking tools, are all nested under one master button. Hit that button and all the masking tools unfold into view. After selecting a specific tool, the button collapses again.
In Photoshop, virtually every tool has it's own dedicated button, permenantly taking up a chunk of screen space. This further contributes to a large, cluttered and space-hogging toolspace.
In terms of editing features, the Adobe team has provided an impressive product with few competitors approaching its capabilities. If they could just bring their antiquated, inefficient interface up to twenty-first century standards, there would be little else one could ask for. -
"Even better now!"
on by kayo38Pros Bridge really does make sense!
Cons Only 2 (solved) and dropping the rating system.
Summary I was initially shocked and grateful I had kept Photoshop CS on my machine. However, as I went through a tutorial at lynda.com, it all made sense. I recently downloaded the trial version of GoLive CS2, and between that, Illustrator, and Acrobat, you can work much smarter, not harder. As for the complaint about Bridge being slow, there is a tip in the User Forum about this and I don't find it a deterrent as my preference is to open Bridge with Photoshop.
I like the new features for Camera Raw since I do 85% of my digital shooting in Raw and there's a lot of work eliminated in the first step of opening the image in terms of options available for correction.
I was leery of SmartSharpen, but by George, it does work - I used my methods and compared them to SmartSharpen, and for all intents and purposes, this does do a bang up job.
The other problem I had was unrelated to Photoshop - Nikon overrode PS for opening a Raw file, but again, a trip to the User Forum provided a quick answer and fix.
I have found that the User Forums are much more useful than the info Adobe provides and the solutions work 99% of the time without having to place a call to Adobe (but their service is very good - for a price!).
I don't think the folks at Adobe intended this program to be run on antiquated machines, so if you're at the upper end of the limit, there will be problems with sluggishness, etc., in which case you should forget using it or upgrade to a newer system. I own a web design business and have tried just about everything - Photoshop cannot be beat with respect to achieving high quality images, consistently (believe me I receive some pretty bad scans and digital photos!). -
"Serious workflow issues"
on by asmodeus224Pros Multi-select layers, perspective cloning, smart layers
Cons no more tick boxes for quick linking/unlinking layers, 'merge linked' function now gone
Summary CS2 has a great many new features that will make users happy - however the new link system is a major headche that cancels out ANY improvements made. Linking layers used to be a matter of swiping the cursor along the tick boxes in the layer pallette....it is now a function that requires a user to go to the keyboard and 'shift-click', 'command-click' or 'shift-command-click' in order to selct multiple layers and then forces the user to go to the newly created 'link icon' at the bottom of the pallette in order to link layers. Does this sound easier? no, in a typical production enviornment it will result in hundreds of extra clicks and motions across a project. Do not simply upgrade to CS2 without test driving it first - the shortcoming in the new system will become evident quickly and will result in sticking with CS1. I moved back to CS1 after a week trying to get used to CS2's linking system. It is terrible.
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"absolutely spectacular"
on by moj5556Pros everything you need in a photoshop
Cons can crash if you launch it , then switch to another task to quickly
Summary adobe photoshop cs2 is a big upgrade from cs and 7.0, because it has way more features for your favourite photoshop
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"Perfect program, still best in the world."
on by GrungerzPros Good interface, powerfull image editing tools, animation tools
Cons obviously price. Terribly overpriced product.
Summary In my opinion Adobe Photoshop CS2 is the best image editor in the world. Its features are simply ingenious, its tools so powerful...
There is no doubt, Photoshop is still the best image editor in the world, and it just keeps improving...
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