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Photoshop 6 First Impressions
New
Feature Highlights
New:
Photoshop
7.0 is now available! 
If
I had to sum up my first impressions of Photoshop 6 in a single
word, it would have to be...
Lucky
for you, I don't have to! In the pages that follow, I'll summarize
amny of the features I found most impressive while exploring
a late beta version.
Options
Bar
This
is the first thing you'll notice when you launch Photoshop 6. The tool options
bar is a context-sensitive toolbar directly under the menu bar. The available
options are always accessible according to whatever Photoshop tool is active,
so you don't have to go hunting for a palette which might be hidden. The options
bar replaces the Tool Options palette from previous versions. Here's a few screen
shots of the Tool Options for various tool (shown split to fit on this page).
The Move Tool Options Bar - The Auto Select Layer option allows you to
select layers by clicking directly on an object in your document rather than
in the layers palette. Show Bounding Box displays a bounding box around the
layer contents, and when you move the cursor to the edges of the bounding box,
you can rotate and scale the layer without switching to transform mode. The
other buttons are for aligning and distributing linked layers. They'll be disabled
when only one layer is selected.
The Paintbrush Tool Options Bar - Choose a brush from the drop-down palette,
set a blend mode, paint opacity, and Wet Edges for the paintbrush tool. When
the Brush palette is displayed you can choose from the loaded brush sets or
load additional brushes from disk.
The Gradient Tool Options Bar - The Gradient Options Bar displays a sample
of your gradient. Clicking the triangle displays a palette of all the loaded
gradients and allows you to load additional gradient sets. The next set of buttons
are the types of gradients: linear, radial, angle, reflected, and diamond. You
can select a blend mode, opacity level, reverse the gradient, add dithering
to reduce banding, and use transparency.
Continue on to
learn about the enhanced text features including advanced character and paragraph
formatting and warped text.
Enhanced
Text Features -->
- Intro &
Tool Options Bar
- Enhanced
Text Features
- Layer
Styles & Presets
- Vector
Shapes & Editing Tools
- Content
Layers
- Web
Photo Gallery, Action Droplets, Conclusion
Sue
Chastain
Your Guide to Graphics Software
Questions? Comments? Post
to the Forum!
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