Review: Adobe Photoshop 5.0 beta, Part 3

Software Review:
Adobe Photoshop 5.0 beta
Part 3

The Web Professional's Graphic tool?

Layering It On

In other words, let's say you want to add a drop shadow to your company logo. Fine. Then you decide that you want to add a horizontal rule below your logo. If you're using layer effects, you simply draw the rule and the drop shadow is automatically applied. Very cool.

It's Getting Better All The Time
With all of Photoshop 5's new features, it's nice to see that the development team has taken the time to improve upon already existent capabilities. My pick for greatest Web-related refinement? The new and improved indexed-color conversion.

Does this sound familiar? Mode->Indexed color->Adaptive Palette->3bits. No, too dithered. Undo. Mode->Indexed color->Adaptive Palette->4bits. Better, but still not right. Undo. Mode->Indexed color->Adaptive Palette->5bits. Finally!

This back-and-forth process has been a painstaking, but necessary step to achieving the best-looking GIFs with the least-number of colors in Photoshops past. However, the preview in Photoshop 5 now updates dynamically, so you only have to make a single trip to the Indexed Color dialog box to see what your final image will look like at different bit-depths. Mode->Indexed color->Adaptive Palette-->3bits. No? 4bits? No. 5bits? Yeah, baby!

Other improvements include (but are in no way limited to) a vertical type tool, three new gradient styles (angular, reflected, and diamond), support for ICC (International Color Consortium) color profiles, expanded 48- and 64-bit color support, and a host of variations on familiar Photoshop tools.

And In The End
A full discourse on all the new features and improvements in Photoshop 5 is beyond the scope of this review, but with this latest release Adobe continues to hit the mark and set the standard in graphic design--a standard that is quickly becoming impossible to match.

I know a guy who's been a graphic designer for years. He's extremely talented, but always the last on the block to upgrade his software. "New features are never worth the hassle of dealing with buggy software," I've heard him say on more than one occasion. When I spoke to this same guy a week ago, he told me that he'd actually TRASHED his copy of Photoshop 4 in favor of his beta release of Photoshop 5. It's that good. The full retail version of Photoshop 5 ships on May 15, which suddenly seems oh so far away.
This article first appeared in April, 1998.

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