Home > Consumer Reviews > Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Upgrade [Old Version]

Check out adobe's website and it will prove to you that PS 6 is the best version ever! By incorporating a much cleaner integration with a new version of ImageReady, you can do your web work in half the time. The new features are all to be believed only by trying. And no more 99 layer limit! The only thing I want more of is FILTERS!!! Maybe for the next release. Adobe makes the best stuff on the planet. Forget CorelDraw or Paintshop pro.

The new Photoshop makes a massive leap in usability. The ever-present Option Bar/Palette offers many new options -- all them very easy to use.

The new type tool is very good. It feels somewhat like InDesign's and it does an excellent job. No spell checker -- but hey, this is not page layout. You can even include the vector type information in your document (although no one supports that yet).

You can now rasterize PDFs easily -- the Save for Web option is so good that you will rarely need to go to ImageReady.

In general, this was the easiest upgrade I have ever learned. Many if the things I hoped it would do it did -- without thinking about it. Several effects I had never figured out in 5.5 I just did and realized afterward that this was something I couldn't do before without a lot of effort. It now seems to work easier (???) what can I say? I have had several students say the same thing.

What a great product. When it comes to image editing, if you can imagine it, with Photoshop, you can do it. If you are new to graphics/design I recommend that this be the first software you start to master. (if you aren't new, then you already know this) Not only is it powerful, its a great deal of fun to use.

Adobe has updated the interface. Now when you select a tool all of the options for the selected tool appear (you don't have to go to the pallettes as often). The selection tools and text handling are much better than previous versions. There are several other improvements that I haven't mentioned.

Using Photoshop is an art in itself. I've been using this product for several years now and I'm still learning.

Most of you reading this have heard of, or are using a version of Photoshop. That alone attests to its popularity. And you know the basics. The single most powerful raster graphics program around, made more powerful and flexible by the number of plug-ins available.

What's new:
"Vector shapes" - a little misleading in its meaning. Indeed they are vector shapes, but when saved, they are rasterized. Maybe future versions will integrate the fundamentals of Illustrator (or Freehand - both the best vector graphics programs available) a little better. But the shapes feature is quite useful for logos, and small icons.

Editable text effects - Not quite "text on a path," but a very welcome feature. After skewing the text with this feature, you are still able to alter font styles/sizes/colors with no problem.

Dockable Palettes - a great feature, if you have a large enough monitor (17" w/high-resolution setting, 19" w/mid-res setting), in order to see the dock. Allows you to place heavily used palettes in the upper right hand section, without having to move them around.

It has quite a few more feature, but those I've mentioned are my favorites. Coming from 5.0 to 5.5 was fairly unimpressive, but the jump to 6.0 has made it a worthwhile upgrade.

The ability to keep my Polaroid SS-4000 scans at 48 bits while I crop, sharpen, blur and otherwise massage is YET ANOTHER reason to own this upgrade. You can do a lot more at full color before squishing down to 24 bits for printing on your dye-sub printer, and you WILL be able to see the difference.

Of course, you'll want a LOT of RAM - my 35 mm slides bulk up to about 100 MB in 48-bit mode. It's worth every bit.