First Look: Adobe Photoshop CS2

Product Preview: Page (2) of 3 - 04/03/05

First Look: Adobe Photoshop CS2 The new standard for image editing takes on animation, perspective editing and more! Image warping
Well, another of the new features is an addition to the Transform options called Warp. With this feature, just as with the Warp option previously available only for text, you can apply one of the typical preset warp types (arc, bulge, etc.), as well as a free warp using a grid, just as with grid-based distortions in Adobe Illustrator.

And, in fact, just as with the Warp function in Illustrator, the Warp transformation (Edit > Transform > Warp) in Photoshop CS2 lets you pull the image up over itself, so that you can use it to create things like page curls, flags, etc.

Animation
Photoshop CS2 also adds an Animation palette, just like in ImageReady. And this means, obviously, that you can create animations with all of the power of Photoshop's Paint Engine or rotoscope existing animations with Photoshop's powerful editing tools.

However, before you get too excited about this, note that Photoshop is a long way from becoming the ultimate roto tool. Unlike ImageReady, Photoshop itself--at least in its pre-release incarnation--doesn't let you import movies or image sequences directly. Instead, what you'd need to do would be to import your sequence in ImageReady, then jump over to Photoshop for editing, then either export layers as files or jump back to ImageReady to export a QuickTime of the new animation. And, since ImageReady supports only 8 bits per channel, you're limited in that respect. (There's really no way to know how these capabilities will change by the time the software hits the shelves. Personally, I think Photoshop would be an amazing companion to After Effects if it could import and export sequences in a more straightforward fashion. We'll just have to see.)

But in all other respects, the animation capabilities of Photoshop are identical to those of ImageReady, including tweening position, effects and opacity.

Smart Objects
Now with Photoshop, you have the ability to use complete compositions as Smart Objects. These essentially embed a composition into a single layer (like a symbol in other programs), which you can then use as a subcomp. These Smart Objects can be manipulated non-destructively in several different ways and remain fully editable. In this way, you can transform or otherwise affect a Smart Object (say by applying a warp), then go back and make changes to the original elements and see the changes updated in your current composition.

Multiple layer manipulation
Photoshop CS2 also adds the oft-requested capability to select and manipulate multiple layers at the same time. You can Shift- or Command-select multiple layers in the Layers palette, then duplicate them, apply transformations and otherwise manipulate them.

New filters
Photoshop CS2 includes three new filters in addition to Vanishing Point. These are Smart Sharpen (for correcting image blurs), Reduce Noise (for eliminating channel noise and JPEG artifacts), Lens Correction (for lens distortion), Shape Blur (for applying a blur based on an object shape) and Surface Blur (for blurring based on threshold).

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