First Look: Adobe Photoshop CS2

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First Look: Adobe Photoshop CS2 The new standard for image editing takes on animation, perspective editing and more! Smart Guides
Smart Guides pop up contextually as you move layer contents around, showing you when one layer's contents line up with another. Smart Guides display center, left, right, top and bottom alignment.

New tools
Also included in Photoshop CS2 are two new tools in the Tools palette. The first is a one-click red-eye reduction tool. The other is a new Smart Healing brush. This new brush automatically heals elements of a composition based on surrounding pixels, making it simple to eliminate blemishes with a single click or even entire elements from an image with just a few brush strokes.

Enhanced Camera Raw
The new Camera Raw functionality in Photoshop allows you to process multiple raw images simultaneously, along with clipping previews (displaying shadows and highlights discreetly as you adjust settings), new Curves adjustments, crop and straighten tools, color samples and the ability to export image settings.

Variable data
You can now create data-driven graphics directly within Photoshop, using data from spreadsheets or databases, as well as data defined directly within Photoshop.

32-bit HDR support
Like 16-bit graphics? How about 32-bit HDR images? Photoshop now supports 32 bits per channel, with the ability to merge multiple exposures of an image into a single HDR image. (See example below.) As you'd expect, few tools or filters function in 32-bit mode. AT this point, the filters available in 32-bit mode include Average, Box Blur, Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Surface Blur, Add Noise, Fibers, Lens Flare, Smart Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, De-Interlace, NTSC Colors, High Pass and Offset.

Enhanced 16-bit filter support
Now more filters support images in 16-bit mode, including Liquify and Lens Blur.

Video previews via FireWire
Yes, you can now send your image to your NTSC output device via FireWire.

And the rest
And it doesn't end there. Photoshop CS2 also includes tons of little and not so little touches that make the design process more fluid. These include:

? CMYK support for the Shadow/Highlight function
? Enhanced automation with additional Actions and image processing commands
? Event-based scripting
? Enhanced PDF engine with support for PDF 1.6
? Support for up to 3.5 GB of RAM
? PDF presets
? Menu customization (to hide or show menu commands)
? A WYSIWYG font menu.

And like all of the applications in the new Creative Suite, Photoshop CS2 gains integration with the new Adobe Bridge file browsing application. (This includes support for synchronized color management between all CS2 applications; file browsing and stock image purchasing; and drag and drop support for graphics files in the Bridge. I've already covered this extensively, so I won't repeat myself here. If you'd like to find out more about Adobe Bridge and how it interacts with applications in the Creative Suite, be sure to read my article on the core components of the new Creative Suite, which you can find by clicking here.

We'll be covering the individual features of the new Creative Suite applications even more extensively over the course of the next couple weeks. In the meantime, if you wish to read about the other new applications available, please follow the links below.

? First Look: Adobe Creative Suite 2
? First Look: Adobe Illustrator CS2

And, if you have any further questions, be sure to visit me in the Adobe Illustrator forum by clicking here.

Photoshop CS2, along with the rest of the Creative Suite 2, is expected to be available by the end of the second quarter. The entire Creative Suite 2 will sell for $1,199 for the full version. Upgrades from Creative Suite 1.x will run $549. Upgrades from previous versions of Photoshop go will go for $749. For more information, visit http://www.adobe.com.

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