Photoshop CS: It's a Big Deal Pulling Double-Duty Scott Koegler
Automated Functions
There's a whole new set of scripts that are immediately useful. Select the Web Album function and Photoshop will create thumbnails and let you select from a variety of Web page designs. One format will even let you collect feedback on each image — very useful for submitting work to a customer. Other scripts will create "photo packages" like those offered by pro photographers with several different size images of the same picture on a single sheet. And you can pick from a variety of slide shows, including a PDF slide show that's suitable for distributing via email or downloading.
Pulling Double-Duty
Another major change in the CS release is that ImageReady CS is now fully integrated with Photoshop CS. Previously ImageReady functioned as a completely separate entity, and while you could kick it off from within Photoshop, the image you were working on stayed open in Photoshop and had to be updated when you were done working with it in ImageReady. While certainly not the end of the world, interaction between the two programs was all too often messy and inconvenient.
If you work with graphical Web pages, ImageReady's new features can help speed page development. Aside from the normal image optimization functions that make JPGs, GIFs, and other Web graphics load as quickly and painlessly as possible, creating rollovers and manipulating image sections is made simple by new functions that help you align image elements, assign attributes to individual slices, and import comma delimited data to control what displays on various mouse actions.
ImageReady can also create Flash images directly from your image selections. This makes putting interactive content on pages simple. I created what Adobe calls remote rollovers so that floating a cursor over one item causes an action to happen in a different segment of the page. For instance, floating over the "Contact Us" button on the left side of the page causes the company's contact information to appear in a box on the right side of the page.
One Small Caveat...
One word of caution for those digital photographers who intend to use the 16-bit raw format capability; you may experience some limitations when using these kinds of files. While the program does indeed import the raw format, you'll notice that several of Photoshop's filters become unavailable. In addition, many third-party plug-ins don't work on these files. Check with the vendor of any plug-ins you rely on to see if you'll be able to use them on 16-bit files. When we opened the pictures as 8-bit files everything worked as normal.
We also noticed that when working with 16-bit files, every time we applied an adjustment such as 'curves' or 'contrast,' the dynamic range of the file (based on watching the histogram) degraded. When we tried the same operation on an 8-bit fill, however, the histogram retained the original dynamic range.
Even with the caveat about 16-bit images, Photoshop CS is a joy to use, and its latest enhancements address some aspects of using the program that kept all but the dedicated professionals from loving it.
