- Introduction
- Adobe Photoshop 6.0
- Macromedia Fireworks 4.0
- Making Your Decision
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Adobe Photoshop 6.0
Everybody knows Photoshop! Without a doubt, it has been one of the most widely used graphic editors over the years. Although it's sometimes thought of as a Mac product, this is not the case at all. To my knowledge, there are no differences between the Mac and PC versions of Photoshop 6 (except, of course, the different Mac and PC interfaces).
In General
Photoshop has dominated the print-based market for quite a while now. But in the last few years, it has also become very popular for Web-based graphic design. I don't know any professional graphic designer who doesn't have this program on his shelf. However, for us newbies, it was always hard to find out and apply all the program's wonderful functions without having to know "difficult" keyboard stroke combinations or purchasing Photoshop for Dummies (been there, done that). In this latest version of Photoshop, Adobe made everything a whole lot easier by adding a context-sensitive toolbar, which makes it a whole lot easier to use all the program's functions. For example, in Free-transform mode, the toolbar switches to a mode in which you can just enter the precise positions, height, angles, and skews that you want the image to be transformed to. In addition, the drop-down lists in other modes ensure that the user can explore all of the program's features and options. It now is now much easier to explore, manage, and change Photoshop's standard templates, which really encourages you to create more original and better-looking images.
Photoshop is well known for the use of layers. The interface allows you to easily view where different parts of your image are. With this latest version, you can even add special effect such as drop-shadow and emboss to your layers. These effects can be easily customized by the user as well. While we're talking about organization, layers (which could get pretty messy in earlier versions—I remember those images with 35 layers that were impossible to keep track of) can now be easily organized into folders. You can color-code these images, and a little thumbnail on the side of each layer in the interface makes it easy to distinguish between them.
Text handling has also been taken care off. As a Fireworks 4 user, I was used to text being easy to add and edit, while in earlier versions of Photoshop this was always hard to do. The text-dialog box is now gone, and you can just type whatever you want wherever you want. That's a great improvement, in my opinion. Also, it is now possible to give characters in the same text box different colors, while in previous versions you had to actually align differently colored text boxes manually. The new Type engine lets you manipulate text in several ways, such as with arches, distortion, squeezes, and warps. Especially when working with Web graphics, easy text implementation is just a necessity.
The new ability to work with scalable vector-based shape layers is also a great improvement to the product. You simply pick a shape and then easily edit it on your screen as it appears on a new layer. Many custom shapes that come with the program, including stars, arrows, and check marks, and you can also just use the pen tool to create your own custom shapes. This new feature is very impressive indeed because actually all shapes are vector-based clipping paths on the masking layer. In other words, you can see through whatever you have on the layers below, so you can easily create images in the forms of hearts, arrows, and other shapes with the "filling" of the shape being the layers placed below the vector-based layer.
As for improvements solely related to Web graphics, Photoshop 6 now comes with the capability to slice images into several parts and then "reassemble" them as an HTML table. Furthermore, you can assign URLs to these layers, making it an image map. You can also set the frame target and ALT tags. The Save for Web dialog box lets you optimize your images for Web export to reduce file size.
A last new feature that is extremely useful for people working in teams, which is often the case when working on Web-based projects, is the ability to attach notes to files. This small upgrade can be very useful for people working in teams.
Why I Like Photoshop
In essence, Photoshop 6 gets my approval because of some useful new features:
Improved text handling
Organized layers
Preview, with the crop tool
Image slicing within the program
Design notes
Optimize for Web output
New vector-based shape layers
Product Information
Price (from Buy.com): At the time of this writing, the full version costs $609, and the upgrade costs $149.
System requirements (Windows):
Intel Pentium processor
Microsoft Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 4, 5 or 6a, or XPinstallnotes.html
64MB of available RAM
125MB of available hard-disk space
Color monitor with 256-color (8-bit) or greater video card
Monitor resolution of 800 x 600 or greater
CD-ROM drive
System requirements (Macintosh):
PowerPC processor
Mac OS software version 8.5, 8.6, or 9.0
64MB of available RAM (with virtual memory on)
125MB of available hard-disk space
Color monitor with 256-color (8-bit) or greater video card
Monitor resolution of 800 x 600 or greater
CD-ROM drive, /products/adobesupportsOSX.html
Product Web site: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/