Photoshop CS2 released

[Swampy]

I've already ordered it. :-)

Warping shapes...kewl! WYSIWYG font menu...'bout time! Noise reduction, smart sharpen, and the new blur filters...probably worth the upgrade for prepress folks. Vanishpoint...great feature.

Also, for those with the CS package, the Illustrator Live Trace tool looks promising.

[Andrew B.]

I'm looking over the CS2 demo now. There are some great features for designers and digital camera buffs (smart objects, vanishing point, RAW). But for fixing photos or doing photo art, not much. I already have Neat Image and Focal Blade for noise, sharpening, and surface blurring. I have to fix red eye so rarely I might as well do it by hand. Which leaves spot healing, which could come in handy, but not worth $149.

So now I'm trying to discover general work flow changes. IOW, ways of handling things that make it much quicker. But all I notice is the blending mode list is no longer compact, and now it has to be scrolled. But I think there were some layer improvements that make things quicker. I just can't figure out what they might be.

Anyone have suggestions for new features to look at?

[Swampy]

Smart Sharpen looks like it will have great potential.

I guess if it's "art" you want, Painter is the better option, but for prepress production, ya can't beat PhotoShop.

[yuppicide]

I actually have a friend who works for Abobe.

[creeduk]

Smart sharpen is indeed a good adition as well as surface blut which will get a lot of use here I would imagine, makes a great job of smooting with out damaging edges like smart blur but better (nneds to be faded though I find)

Smart Object is great when you use repitions of objects in one piece. It was a bit disappointing that if the same smart object was used in multiple documents it could not update them all. I did find a work around using illustrator objects but it has more potential to fill. It needs to be like flash where you can updated library objects at it will look at the external file.

Warp is a nice feature, of course it works best with clean sharp objects. I would like to be able to change the mesh settings but I don't think that is possible.

Bridge is OK ,but take extra resource and slower to load than browser. But so far no problems like some users have reported.

Took me a while to figure out some of the new layer options like "create clipping mask from linked" has gone and now you use the alt key and click inbetween the 2 layers.

Noise reduction so far very good, may replace third party options.

Vanishing point rules. I advise using this for all cloning, just draw a non perspective grid. Reason why, because you get the preview brush which make lining up the clone so much easier to work with especially if there are any lines, patterns in there, how often do we sample go to lone and slip a bit with the alignment so have to undo and go again.

Oh nearly forgot, lens correction filter is a grat add on, saves tweaking with perspective and and or distort, then pinch for barrel distort or maybe you use Richard Rosenmans plugin, well this filter makes lens correction simple.

Not played with variables but may have some nice potential for the web graphic designers.

Spot healing is a welcome addition to the clone and heal suite.

After holding out while every other graphic packaged added one "red eye tool" it works well and is a quick fix. Some cases will still be better (as always) with a manual intervention.

I think that covers what I have used or tested latley.

[akj]

Can you upgrade from Photoshop 6 to CS2? Or do you have to have Photoshop CS to upgrade??

[DannyRaphael]

Nice summary, creed...

Originally Posted by akj

Can you upgrade from Photoshop 6 to CS2? Or do you have to have Photoshop CS to upgrade??

Neither 7.0 or CS are prerequisites for CS2. You may upgrade from 6 to CS2.

Beware, however, depending on your computer hardware config. (processor and RAM), you may experience s-l-o-w performance. Compared to 6.0, CS2 is a LOT more resource intensive.

Read the System Requirements, which are absolute minimums to run CS2, but not nearly enough to run it well.

[Swampy]

Creeduk...
Thank you for that review and hints and tips about CS2. I have it sitting on the shelf and haven't installed it yet. I'm really looking forward to the Illustrator Live Trace feature! I've used Streamline for years and wondered if Adobe would ever update it. It really looks yummy especially combined with Live Paint.

[DannyRaphael]

Here's a well written review with very useful side-by-side graphics for comparison purposes:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/AdobePhotoshopCS2/