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There can be no doubt. Photographers will be the
biggest beneficiaries of Adobe's upgrade to Photoshop 7.0.
The Healing Brush and Patch Tool alone will
allow us to produce wrinkle-free, blemish-free portraits. Are we
about to become a society where our portraits no longer resemble
the way we look?
I applied the Healing Brush to one half of my
friend Don's face and flopped the same half. Don does look
younger but remember, wrinkles are a sign of character that
comes with maturity. Don't overdo it.
As with most new, usable applications, the
Healing Brush will probably be overused to the point of cliché,
then everything will settle down and the tool will be employed
by those who really need it.
But hidden away in Version 7's Edit>Automate
menu are three improved features that are bound to be a hit with
photographers.
First is the working improvements made to
Contact Sheet II. Captions can now be set in a variety of type
sizes instead of the previous 12 point. Individual images can
occupy their own layers (or be flattened). This enables moving
images around to make room for credit lines or paragraphs.
The finished contact sheet is still ordinary and
its performance still lags behind FotoPage. But the improvement
is vast.
Next comes Picture Package. Previously limited
to one image per page, 7.0's Picture Package has the same wide
variety of school photographer formats (i.e., 1 5x7, 2 3x5's and
6 billfold size). But now, we can install a different image in
every frame of the format. They don't even have to be in the
same source folder. I'll have a detailed tutorial coming in a
few weeks.
Finally, there's the Web Photo Gallery. I've
been a slow arrival at Web design - not even there, to be exact.
But when I tried this feature, I was sold! I had a Photo Gallery
website up in about two hours. Nothing great, mind you, but
something people could actually view.
Since then, I've produced a couple more. For my
view of Italy's Tuscany region, try
http://web.tampabay.rr.com/shoreline/Tuscany/.
Peter iNova, well-known author and publisher of
eBooks, just posted photos from his tour of Italy. Peter's style
certainly differs from mine but I thought readers might get a
kick out of seeing his take from Venice, Florence and Rome at
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/italy.html.
Peter is also hard at work on an eBook for the
Sony F707.
Finally, after 4-5 years of mild frustration
with Netscape, I gave up the ghost last Friday after being
unable to access this column for two weeks. Using my OS-9 CD, I
installed Microsoft's Internet Explorer. What an electronic
epiphany! Planet Photoshop and every other website pops up
instantly. I was able to import my bookmarks from Netscape.
Everything is terrific. |