This article first appeared in the March 2001 issue of DV magazine

By Chris Manners

Adobe, Image Editing Program, $609 System Requirements: Windows: Pentium-class processor; Win98, 2000, or NT 4.0; 64MB of available RAM; 125MB of available hard disk space. Mac: PowerPC processor; Mac OS 8.5, 8.6, or 9.0; 64MB of available RAM; 125MB of available hard disk space. Pros Vector support and better type management are strong additions. Workflow is vastly improved with new Options menu bar. Cons Slightly overworked UI for Layer Styles menu. New vector features not yet supported across entire Adobe suite of tools. Bottom Line A very solid upgrade to Abobe's flagship product that greatly improves the program's usability for video professionals.

Upgrades to Adobe Photoshop (www.adobe.com) are usually met with some degree of excitement, and the reaction to the latest set of enhancements is no exception. When a program such as Photoshop so completely dominates its category, it's not really a surprise to hear considerable buzz before the application is released. What's more difficult to determine, though, is the value of these enhancements. The program is designed for such a broad range of users working on video, Web, and print projects that it's entirely possible that the new features won't be directly useful your specific needs. In this case, with the exception of workflow improvements, most of the new components of the program are aimed at Web designers; and although they're ultimately useful for digital video production, they aren't specifically aimed at this category of designer.

Workflow management
The most dramatic change when the program launches is the addition of a dockable, content-sensitive Options bar. This palette runs across the top of the screen and provides easy access to the options available for each tool as it is selected. For example, if the brush tool is active, the menu provides a dropdown for brush size, mode, opacity, wet edges, and brush dynamics. This menu replaces the old floating palettes that provided access to these options, and consequently now streamlines workflow by allowing quick and easy access while eliminating screen clutter.

The Layers menu has also been reworked. Probably the most useful enhancement is the ability to create layer sets. Layers can be grouped together, named, assigned a color, and moved as one set. These sets can also be locked to ensure no alterations take place by mistake, and the locking capabilities have been extended to provide independent locking of transparent pixels, image pixels, and image position. This is a timely addition that considerably eases project management.

The Layer Styles Menu. This layer replaces the type and layer effects. It provides a series of effects that can be added and altered while viewing the results on the canvas in realtime.

At the same time, a new Layer Styles interface provides additional effects options, such as pattern overlays, and allows for the combination of layer effects that can be saved and reused in later projects. Although the UI is slightly overcomplicated, once a style has been saved, it will appear in the new Styles palette and can easily be reapplied. These new styles function in a similar way to the old layer effects: They're nondestructive and can be changed while the canvas updates in realtime. When you're sure that the style is exactly what's required, the layer can be rasterized into pixel-based art.

The Layers palette. In this instance, layers have been grouped into named sets and color-coded. The yellow layer has an adjustment layer added as a mask. The green layer has filters applied from the Layer Styles menu.

Enhanced vector support
These Layer Styles are but one component of the program's enhanced vector support. There are a slew of tools that allow for adjustment and are resolution independent. The most apparent of these is the improved text layer support, which lets you edit text directly on the canvas instead of within a separate interface. Simply select the text tool and type. These type layers remain editable through a project until they are rendered, and individual characters can be modified by color, size, and font. At the same time, a set of text effects has been included that allows text to be warped, yet remain editable. With the addition of hyphenation, justification, and composition controls, the need to use Illustrator for text creation has been diminished. This is perhaps the update's greatest contribution to the video world, where a lot of titling is still done within Photoshop. Being able to preview titles as they sit over a video still takes a lot less time than stepping into and out of the clumsy old interface.

The Options menu typically runs across the head of the screen. This screen grab shows the airbrush options, with the brush size pulldown menu visible.

The Shape tools are another vector-based addition that let a variety of standard shapes (including rounded rectangles, ellipses, and polygons) be created on a separate new type of layer. These objects are resolution independent, and can be modified and resized without needing to be rasterized. With pathfinder controls that are similar to those found in Illustrator, a wide variety of shapes can be created by adding, subtracting, and so forth from an original object. Once again, these shapes can be saved to the Custom Shape palette for later reuse, and these vector layers can be used as clipping paths or as masks that can be scaled and transformed.

The majority of other enhancements to the program are specifically directed at Web design. The application includes a reworked version of ImageReady v3.0, and continues to facilitate moving image files from one application to the other. Expanded support for using GoLive v5.0 (Adobe's WSIWYG HTML editor) includes the ability to move layered images to and from this program. Within Photoshop, some features of ImageReady have been incorporated, including the ability to slice images and generate HTML pages directly from within the program. The inclusion of these capabilities reinforces Photoshop's position as the premier tool for creating Web graphics.

This type has had a layer style applied, a warp to bend the characters, and a baseline shift set to separate the two lines of text.

Conclusion
The enhancements previously described don't cover every new feature—there are a considerable number of additions that aren't as dramatic. For example, it's now possible to include both written and voice annotations when trading files. The new Liquify command will please some users—it allows pixels to be inter-actively pushed and pulled in a manner similar to that introduced by Kai's Power Goo.

However, bigger issues are at play—Adobe is adding features formerly found only in Illustrator. At this time, there's no integration between these additions and other Adobe applications—for example, vector text layers are rasterized before a Photoshop v6 file is opened in After Effects, and shape layers are transformed into pixels when imported into Illustrator. Given that Photoshop is the leader in graphics portability between applications, we can infer that reading this vector data will be added in future versions of the Adobe suite of tools. Already there's an After Effects v4.1.1 updater that provides support for Adobe Photoshop v6 files with both vector and raster layer masks. However, layer styles and vector text styles are still not fully supported when transporting to another program.

Nonetheless, this is a sturdy and valuable upgrade to Adobe's core product. If you don't use the program on a daily basis, you'll find a lot of improvements, such as the options menu, that make the program more intuitive. If you're an After Effects designer who uses Photoshop everyday, you'll appreciate the workflow enhancements, new text capabilities, and layer management tools. These enhancements alone are worth the price of purchase. Although the enhancements included in this release aren't video spe-cific, the upgrade is solid and reliable, and lays the basis for new features that may be included in future improvements to After Effects.

Chris Manners is the director of design at LimeVoodoo Productions, a San Francisco–based digital design firm.