What’s New in Photoshop 7.0

Meet every challenge

Photoshop 7.0 rounds out its comprehensive toolset with new capabilities that help you meet every creative challenge, master every production demand, and handle any imageediting task efficiently.

File Browser Search for images visually and intuitively rather than just by filename. With the easy-to-view thumbnails in the File Browser window, you can quickly organize and retrieve images from your hard drive, external drives, CDs, and disks directly within Photoshop. The File Browser also displays image metatada, such as date created, date modified, and Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) information from digital cameras. Rotate images, batch rename, sort files, and manage image folders—all within the File Browser. See “Using the File Browser (Photoshop)” on page 78.

Healing brush Effortlessly remove dust, scratches, blemishes, and wrinkles from your photographs, using only one tool. Unlike other cloning tools, the healing brush preserves the original shading, tonality, and texture in the retouched area. Use the related patch tool to work with selections. See “Using the healing brush tool (Photoshop)” on page 189.

Web transparency Make Web page elements transparent in Photoshop and ImageReady by simply clicking on the color you want to knock out. And with the new dithered transparency option, you can apply partial transparency to blend Web graphics seamlessly into any background—even patterns—without having to select a matte color first. If you need to edit the transparent effects later, you can remap more than one color at a time and easily restore colors to their original settings. See “About optimization” on page 415.

Enhanced Web output Keep vector art and text looking crisp by letting Photoshop or ImageReady automatically assign a higher priority to those areas when you optimize an image for the Web. See “Using weighted optimization” on page 428.

WBMP support Preview and save for Web in WBMP format, commonly used for displaying images on PDAs and wireless devices. See “Optimization options for WBMP format” on page 424.

Rollovers palette Use one convenient palette to create, view, and set rollover states. Add a layer-based rollover to a Web page by simply clicking a button, and use the Selected state option in the Rollovers palette to add sophisticated interactivity, with no need for Java scripting. For example, you can create navigation bars that trigger different rollover effects simultaneously. The Rollovers palette also displays all the slices, rollovers, image maps, and animations in a file, making it easy to get a quick overview of all the document states. See “Using the Rollovers palette” on page 398.

Workspaces Customize your Photoshop working environment by creating a palette layout and then saving the layout as a workspace. If you share a computer, saving a workspace lets you instantly access your personalized Photoshop desktop each time you sit down to work. You can also create workspaces for specific tasks—one for painting and another for photo retouching or Web work, for example. See “Customizing your workspace” on page 29.

Tool presets Customize any tool and save your settings as a new, unique tool. Access your presets instantly from the options bar or the new tool Presets palette, which lets you view presets for all your tools in one convenient place. See “Using tool presets (Photoshop)” on page 27.

Auto Color command With the new Auto Color command, color correction has never been easier—and Auto Color provides more reliable results than Auto Levels or Auto Contrast. See “Using the Auto Color command (Photoshop)” on page 151.

Data-driven graphics Whether you’re creating corporate business cards, an online catalog with hundreds of photos and descriptions, or a direct-mail piece with customized data, the new data-driven graphics features in ImageReady let you combine visual sophistication with automated production. Design a template and use the Layers palette to designate key elements as variables. Then use scripts, a Web production tool such as GoLive, or an image server such as Adobe AlterCast® to replace the variables with text or images pulled from an ODBC-compliant database. See “About data-driven graphics” on page 501.

Stay competitive

Photoshop 7.0 delivers new and enhanced tools to help you achieve your creative best. Experiment with sophisticated painting effects and patterns to turn your ideas into images that stand out.

New paint engine Create and save custom brushes with a powerful new paint engine that lets you adjust dozens of different brush settings—including size, shape, tilt, spacing, scatter, and jitter—to get precisely the effect you want. You can even simulate different canvas and paper textures. See “Working with brushes” on page 228 and “About brush dynamics (Photoshop)” on page 231.

Art studio brushes In addition to the brushes you create yourself, you can use the preset brushes included on the Photoshop CD to simulate traditional wet and dry brush painting techniques to duplicate the fine-art effects such as charcoal or pastel. There are also special brushes for effects such as grass and leaves. See “Selecting preset brushes” on page 228.

Pattern Maker Simply make a selection and apply the Pattern Maker plug-in to generate abstract patterns or realistic textures such as sand or rocks. The plug-in performs a sophisticated analysis of your selection to avoid repetition and seamlessly tile the image. Use the patterns to create compelling Web backgrounds, enhance printed or on-screen artwork, or produce unique new imagery in combination with the painting engine. See “Generating patterns” on page 254.

Liquify enhancements The enhanced Liquify plug-in gives you greater control over image warping with zoom, pan, and multiple undo. You can also save your meshes, which lets you return to an image after experimenting with the Liquify tools and start where you left off. Or apply the same mesh to different images; experiment on a low-resolution image, for example, and then apply the mesh to a high-resolution version. Create effects such as smoke or fire with the new Turbulence brush. Use the new backdrop option to view individual layers or a flattened version of the file so that you can see your distortions in context as you create them. See “Using the Liquify command” on page 194.

Work with confidence

Photoshop 7.0 provides new controls and security settings for superior images, precise output, and worry-free file sharing.

PDF security Photoshop 7.0 offers complete support for Adobe Acrobat 5.0 security settings, allowing you to add tighter security to your Photoshop PDF files before sharing them with others online or adding them to an Adobe PDF workflow.You can set password protection to keep users who don’t know the password from opening the file. Or set one password to open the file and another to allow printing or editing. See “Saving files in Photoshop PDF format (Photoshop)” on page 450.

Picture Package enhancements Save time and money when printing by using Picture Package to print multiple images on one page. Enhancements to Photoshop 7.0 let you print to different page sizes, add labels or text to each image, print more than one image per page, and output images as one flattened document or to separate layers. See “Creating multiple-image layouts (Photoshop)” on page 464.

Web photo gallery enhancements Showcase your work online quickly and easily by posting a gallery of images. Photoshop 7.0 offers sophisticated new templates to give you more design flexibility, and a new security option lets you enter text or embed the filename, caption, or copyright information on the image as a watermark. See “Creating Web photo galleries (Photoshop)” on page 390.

XMP support XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) format lets you embed metadata into a document so that you can easily repurpose, archive, or automate files in a workflow. You can also ensure that image information—such as caption, credits, and copyright— travel with the file. See “Adding file information (Photoshop)” on page 459.

Multilingual spelling checker Search and replace text, check spelling in multiple languages within the same file, and correct spelling on one text layer or across all text layers in the same document. See “Checking for spelling errors (Photoshop)” on page 357.

Take advantage of tighter-than-ever integration

Work more efficiently, thanks to tight integration between Photoshop and the latest releases in Adobe’s family of professional graphics software.

Illustrator Move files freely between Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator—layers, masks, transparency, and compound shapes are preserved. Maintain rollovers and animation information when you import Photoshop files into Illustrator, and export Illustrator HTML tables with CSS layers to Photoshop.

InDesign Paste or drop native Photoshop files into Adobe InDesign—even layered images. Paths, masks, and alpha channels in the Photoshop file can be used to remove image backgrounds or to create text wraps in the InDesign document.

GoLive Design and slice your Web page in Photoshop and then bring the sliced file directly into GoLive. Use the GoLive Smart Objects feature to generate variable designs automatically from Photoshop templates.

LiveMotion Drag and drop layered Photoshop files into a LiveMotion composition and quickly convert them into animation-ready independent objects, groups, or sequences. Photoshop blending modes, layer masks, and effects are preserved, and the Photoshop artwork stays editable as you animate and code.

Acrobat Include transparency information in PDF files saved out of Photoshop, add password protection to secure your Photoshop PDF files, and use the Include Vector Data option to preserve text and vector graphics as resolution-independent objects.

AlterCast When you want to automate the production of dynamic data-driven graphics, Adobe AlterCast is the perfect tool. This new image server software (available only in English) automatically replaces the variables—both text and graphics—in your Photoshop templates.