Photoshop CS2 Review
Ben Pritchard
Pittsburgh Adobe Flash Users Group
5/2006
Photoshop, that golden toolbox full of O’ so many indispensable tools… It had been awhile since I touched a new version of Photoshop – it was great to finally get a hold of a fresh copy. This review may be a bit different than others that you have read as I actually ended up skipping Photoshop CS (8) and this review at times may cover features that appeared in CS and were carried over or refined in CS 2.
Before we get to the juicy details let me give you some details about what kind of setup I have to give it all some perspective:
Windows XP Pro SP2
Dual Pentium 4 2.4 GHZ Processors
1 GB RAM
Layer Management
Jumping from Photoshop 7 to CS2 gave me a couple of surprises, the first of which was the way that layer selection and manipulations were handled. What initially drove me nuts lead to a great love. You may remember the days of linking layers together with the little chain link selection on the layers. You can still do this but now the layers function much more intuitively – very much like any other style of computer-based selections would work. You can select multiple layers by holding down the Control key and clicking them. The awesome part is that the layers do not have to be next to each other in the layers pallet. To top it off you can select multiple layers in this fashion and duplicate or delete them all by dragging them to the “New Layer” or “Trash” icons at the bottom of the pallet.
Grouping layers and clipping mask changes to my shortcuts threw me off for a bit as well. I remapped a small amount of my shortcut keys to what I had been used to with Photoshop 7 and things got more familiar. With these few changes I was shaken up at first but as soon as I started discovering some of the new features I started to forget all of the initial “new software jitters”.
Font Selection
The font menu now contains a preview of all of the typefaces that you have installed. What is great is the way the selected text is displayed as you alter the font or color. Previously you would have that nasty selection box on your text so that as you changed the font color you could not see the true results. The selection box disappears as you change the font or color now allowing you to easily see what the result will be. This is invaluable for color and font selections.
PDF Importing
The handling of PDFs has been improved as well – many times I need to crack a PDF open in Photoshop and pull elements. This has been made more pleasant by subtle enhancements to the process.
Vanishing Points and Perspective Cloning
Though I haven’t used it for a commercial project yet – the vanishing point tools is amazing. If you ever needed to clone in perspective or edit an image while maintaining it’s perspective and vanishing point then this is the tool for you. It takes all of the guess work out of manipulating the image to look just right. You simply create four points, scale to the appropriate vanishing point and clone your little heart away.
Spot Healing Brush
A favorite of mine has always been the Healing Brush. What an amazing tool! With CS2 we have the new Spot Healing Brush. You can simply click on an area you wish to “touch-up” and the surrounding pixels are sampled to cover the area that you have selected. This can be really useful for quick imperfection removals.
Smart Sharpen Filter
The Smart Sharpen filter is something I have been waiting for awhile. I always wanted more control and preview to the effects of the Sharpen Filter. Using the Smart Sharpen Filter you get great control as well as an excellent way to preview the result of the sharpening.
Smart Objects
Smart Object support is another great addition to the Photoshop Toolbox. You can create a vector illustration in Illustrator and import it into Photoshop as a Smart Object. You can then non-destructively apply transformations to it such as Image Warp. This means that the original vector drawing has not been modified. It can be scaled up or down over and over. The original still lives in the Illustrator file and as that file is updated it can be reflected in the Photoshop document as well – very much like a “linked” file that is sucked in each time the parent document is opened.
Red Eye Removal Tool
Another nice new feature is the Red Eye removal tool. I remember the days of hand-retouching the red eye out of my digital pictures. This new tool makes the removal of the red-glare extremely simple.
Maximize Compatibility
The Maximize Compatibilty feature is a great addition as well. I think this came about with Photoshop CS but it was a huge plus for me in CS2. If you use CS/CS2 specific features such as the nested folder groups – you will get a prompt asking you if you would like to maximize the capability of the file. This ensures that the file will be able to be opened by older versions of Photoshop while maintaining as many of the features from CS2 as possible – a very nice feature indeed.
Nested Folder Groups
Finally and possibly at the top of my “likes” list is the ability to have nested folder groups in my layers panel. This is something that my colleagues and I always complained about in older versions of the software. Once we had the ability to do this we could have an entire layout for a website template (homepage and inside page) concept in one document and easily display switch elements out. If you haven’t tried CS2 yet this is reason enough.
The Bridge
One thing that I really do not like is the Bridge. The Bridge spans the Adobe CS Suite of products allowing you to access shared assets, tag images, etc. Many people complain about how the old File Browser tab used to be slow for them. In comparison to the Bridge I would gladly trade back to my File Browser tab. The Bridge takes forever to open and is slow. Remember that my machine is a dual 2.4 GHZ processor with 1 GB of RAM. If we could get some speed into the Bridge I might have something I could really use.
Performance
Occasionally performance is a bit less than desirable – colleagues and I have had some really long open times for some files and some basic functions in Photoshop itself. Most of the time I don’t have too many problems but once in awhile a big white box covers the window as Photoshop struggles to redraw the display. Again – I am not sure what causes slow downs wit
h the Bridge and general document opening and editing but it is something that could use looking at. Overall the performance for me is pretty decent – I’m just being a little picky.
The Bottom Line
Overall on a scale of 1-10 – with 10 being the best I give Photoshop CS2 a 9. I think that this is a great upgrade that gives you a lot of new time-saving features. Jumping back to Photoshop 7 seems like going way back in time. Photoshop CS2 is the standard for internet, DVD and video related graphics design.
Photoshop can be bought on Adobe.com and retails for $649 or $169 for upgrades.
