Sometimes a program goes along in its history, making changes along the way as it evolves, and it even gets a little ho-hum as it meanders down the road. Then, magically almost, a new version comes out that hits you – as we used to say back home – upside the head. Let's be clear, we've been impressed with the latest version changes in Adobe Photoshop, but the ones in version 7 are, well, rather spectacular.
   My tendency in beginning this look at the new version of Photoshop is to start at the obvious: the healing brush and its companion, the patch tool; the file browser or the "automatic" color correction, to name a few. I'll get to them. But first, let's talk about the new way Photoshops deals with its brushes.
   We've seen some of the changes in the brushes palette in earlier versions of Photoshop, but it was sort of tucked away in 6.0. It reemerges in 7.0 as a whole new critter: the palette is basically devoted to making changes in brush settings and brush dynamics that delve right into the power of the new painting engine.
   New painting engine? Yes. For those who have looked at Painter through the years and wished some of that creative ability could be in Photoshop, the wait is over. What that means is you can do some really creative things with Photoshop such as create dry and wet brush effects, make leaves on trees and grass (as well as bugs, if that's what you are in to) effortlessly and basically take dynamic control of the burshes.
   We have been used to changing the size of the brush and the shape of the tip, but that is – if you will pardon – just the tip of the iceburg. Try adding things like jitter, textures, scattering, noise and the ability to paint with two brushes at once and you have some really super creative tools that are, truth be known, vastly different than what you've had with Photoshop before. Got me to wondering, it did, whether you need anything other than Photoshop to do some really creative graphic work.
   The only complaint we have about this new feature is that you can spend an awful lot of time playing with it. Truth is this is more in the province of a reviewer than in that of someone who wants to accomplish something. But I admit spending a lot of hours seeing all the things I could so. Were I in the middle of a project and wanting to create a certain look, I would have simply focused on achieving that look.
   In my not-so-humble opinion, this is the major innovation to Photoshop 7. Not the only one by any stretch of the imagination, for the new version is feature-rich and well-rounded, but, truth to tell, the things Adobe has done with its brush dynamics are, all alone, reason enough to upgrade.
   That said, as I approach another birthday, I figure I could probably subtract a good 18 months from my age if I simply had the time back I have spent correcting blemishes and age lines in photographs the healing brush does in a snap.
   I took a photo of an older woman who worked for me for a newsletter we were producing back in '92 and she told me I "better not run any picture with all these wrinkles." I spent two days removing wrinkles with the clone tool, smoothing things out with the smudge tool and running back and forth to the lady to see if it was "OK now."
   On a technical basis, the healing brush preserves the destination's luminosity and other tonal values. All you really have to do is pick a clone area with the proper coloring. Click. Wrinkles (and crows feet and dust and scratches and spots) begone. This is backed by the patch tool, which uses a marquee to fix things. It employs the same technology as the healing brush, but to a wider area.
   Magic? Pretty much. My only thing is I've spent a lot of time perfecting techniques with the clone tool. Now, anyone can achieve the same results almost the first time they try.
   The other thing Photoshop 7 adds which takes a lot of my hard-won expertise away is the auto color command. While not as comprehensive as Auto-Eye from Auto f/x software (or tinkering with the color controls in Photoshop itself) the auto color is to color what auto levels is to level control. It uses different techniques than auto levels to make the picture more color balanced and, overall, can make a big difference in how a photo looks without a lot of tinkering.
  Despite Windows XP's thumbnail preview ability, there is a strong vote here for Photoshop's new file browser window. The reason for this is that Photoshop's file browser lets you rank and sort your photos, rename or batch rename them, rotate them and do a variety of other things.
   Most important is the ranking ability. The truth is that no matter how good the thumbnails, you cannot always tell which version of a picture you want to use from looking at it. Rankling solves this and, to be honest, many of the other details about the picture which are displayed from the file browser window go a long way toward helping you manage files.
   I would be remiss were I not to mention tool presets. Now, you could always create a new brush (though not with the same dynamics as mentioned above) and save it for reuse, but now you can create presets for all the tools and give them names which make them easy to remember.
   On a very basic level, if you're creating a layout and you want to crop a range of the pictures to 2x3, you can set up a cropping tool present to 2x3 and you don't need to try to remember what size the picture was cropped to when, six months later, the dispatch driver quits and a new one takes his place. As I say, that is pretty basic, but when you consider the wide variety of options available for each tool, the ability to save them matters a great deal.
   We could go on and on. We have not yet even mentioned ImageReady, the companion to Photoshop, which also boasts new enhancements, most specifically the new rollover palette. ImageReady also seems more stable than before but, in truth, it has always been a good program which needed little tweaking.
   However, it would be unfair to close without merely telling you that Photoshop 7 also: features a color-enhanced toolbox when you roll your cursor over a tool; allows you to sample a color not just from within the program, but anywhere on the desktop; permits copy and paste operations from Illustrator and has nifty presets for new files and enhanced printing of multiple files on the same sheet of paper.
   There is so much else to say there is little more to say. Except that Photoshop 7 is a must upgrade or purchase. You'll be glad you did.