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

Adobe Photoshop has until recently been a full-timer's tool. Like Oracle or Unix, you either lived in it and loved it, or you didn't use it at all.

But the Photoshop user base is changing. The Web has boosted the demand for bitmap graphics, and created a new breed of multimedia developers who use a huge range of tools for content creation and publication. And the rise of digital cameras and scanners has opened bitmap editing to consumers.

So Photoshop is changing from its traditional position as part of Adobe's imaging solution, a tool to be used alongside Illustrator and Web-aware tools like ImageReady and ImageStyler. Now it's eating features from the rest of Adobe's imaging line.

* Photoshop eats Illustrator: Photoshop 6.0 has sprouted serious text-editing tools. They end the old routine of importing Illustrator text to Photoshop. Decent control of letter spacing and justification appears for the first time. And Photoshop text is now editable on the page, a mere six years of so after the under-rated and now sadly wasted Corel Photo-Paint first performed this trick.

* Photoshop eats ImageReady. The new ImageReady 3.0 is bundled with Photoshop 6.0, just as its predecessor was biundled with Photoshop 5.5. And Web tasks such as JavaScript rollovers and animations still require you to jump to ImageReady, an inconvenient process. But ImageReady 2.0's simple shape-creation tools have made it to Photoshop this time around. ImageReady's on track to disappear completely into Photoshop at about Photoshop 7.0.

* Photoshop eats ImageStyler. ImageStyler 1.0's slightly gimmicky but sometimes useful "styles" appear in Photoshop 6.0 too, letting you create buttons and, um, more buttons. There's little chance of a separate ImageStyler 2.0.

So Photoshop now does most of what a Web developer would want it to do. It has garnered mostly laudatory reviews, both for its continuing power and for implementing features that other programs already had. But there are prices to be paid. There's the money: at around $A1400 street or $A400 for the upgrade, Adobe gives the Mastercard a beating it won't soon forget. There's the speed; version 6.0 runs slower than any before it. And there's the famous Photoshop learning curve, which is becoming a problem as Adobe aims Photoshop at that wider audience.

The loyalists won't acknowledge it, but Adobe has an interface problem. The program works like Unix, letting power users into an exclusive club while alienating everyone else. It has added a new context-sensitive toolbar to version 6.0. Yet it still buries powerful features and eschews basic interface devices like a Save button in favour of memorable keyboard combinations like Control-Alt-Shift-S (that's the command for saving a Web-ready graphic, so Web developers should keep their fingers flexible). The new shape-creation tools have aspects that are obscure even by Adobe's standards. So an increasing number of mid-level Photoshop users - especially Web development shops and individual users - are paying for power they can't access. They've bought a BMW, but they can't get it out of second gear.

This interface problem, though, seems unlikely to end Photoshop's dominance. The program's new audience is following the high-end professionals' lead. They want industry-standard tools. And amongst bitmap graphics professionals, Photoshop remains the industry standard.

If you do Web development, know Photoshop, own fast hardware and you're currently with version 5.0 or earlier - or if you create substantial amounts of bitmap text or simple button-like shapes - Photoshop 6.0 is a worthwhile investment. As long as you can afford it, and as long as you're prepared for its sometimes unnecessary difficulties.

PhotoShop is without a doubt the best digital image editing software on the market. However, Adobe seems to have placed testing of the application on the users who fork over the big bucks and stake their livelihood on its use. If you check the User to User Forum on Adobe's WebSite, you will see the large number of problems people are experiencing with this product. Foremost is speed. Take the minimum system requirements on the box and times those by 4 if you expect it to run efficiently. Also there are many features that either do not work correctly or were just not thought out well when designed. If you are a graphics professional, you will find some of the new features and design a work flow killer. The guides and slice tool are not precise, the text tool is half thought out and there are many features hidden away in right mouse click menus such as text attributes like bold and italic and layer options (you can't rename layers without going to a menu anymore). There is a complete lack of consistency between PhotoShop, ImageReady and Illustrator, which makes no sense at all. I am finding myself switching back and forth between 5.5 and 6. Hopefully, with all of the complaints, Adobe is finding out what real world users need in an application (not what programmers and product people think we need) and are working on a patch.

With this latest iteration of Photoshop, Adobe has improved upon the program usability while still not doing perhaps as much as they could. While some folks still express a preference for some of the old interface features, I think the overall opinions on the new tweaks are positive...such as the Options bar now being at the top, a full slew of layer options being more quickly accessible, and a palette well to help declutter the screen. Anyone using Photoshop 6 on a Windows 2000 PC, particularly if Norton Utilities are installed, is apt to see some problems and is well advised to peruse suggested solutions at the Adobe Photoshop users forum. Initially I observed significantly slow operations for some tasks but disabling Norton Protection eliminated them altogether. There have also been some complications with the Epson 1270 Photo printer on a USB port, again resolved per information learned at the Photoshop forum.

For prior Photoshop users, it is wise to maintain your old installation until you learn how well PS6 works for you and whether it is very buggy or not. An update is forthcoming but I've not heard just how soon. DO NOT install over prior versions, but rather in a separate path. Some plugins may not work or be installable, yet they may work if you simply copy them from the old to the new installation. In particular, Extensis Phototools will not work and the 3.06 update download from Extensis is needed. This will result in removal of the very convenient Photobars component but I have managed to recover that component from a Photoshop 5.5 installation. I have remapped all toolbar buttons for carried-over menu items as well as adding buttons for new menu items. Those changes are freely available by a download from my website. Since URLs are not permitted in these reviews, you may learn of the location by either visiting the Extensis Phototools forum or the Adobe Photoshop users forum, searching on the phrase "Photobars 6.0".

All in all, this is a very welcome upgrade but don't be surprised to see some problems after installation. If you do, by all means visit the Photoshop users forum for a review of problems mentioned there and any solutions offered.

If you do any kind of computer graphics then you should have this program. Its without a doubt the best image editing software on the planet, and with this newest version it gets even better. When I first got into this latest release I noticed that they made some cosmetic changes to the layout. They added some more buttons on the top of the screen, which really helps save time searching around for certain functions, and of course you can customize this if you like. From what I have seen so far from using this is that there really isn't anything significantly new. There is a new style function which you can stylize layers, but I'm not exactly sure what use this has besides being able to create tacky logos :) If this was just an upgrade you are thinking of over v5.0 or 5.5 I would try out the demo before buying it, because there really isn't a drastic improvement, at least for what I use it for. But, if you have never owned a copy of Photoshop, theres no better time to get this than the present.

As a long time user and consistent upgrader of Adobe Photoshop I am always impressed with the functionality of the program and what I am able to do with it. I am also continually dissapointed with the the confusing user interface and terrible documentation. Given the high price of the software, I always feel cheated. Version 6 has particularly poor documentation... they managed to confusingly merge the user guide for both Photoshop and Image Ready into a single incomprehensible document. New features are barely documented. Numerous features have no documentation in the guide at all... only the online help covers them. The illustrations are a joke... they have some examples of before and after color effects printed in an all B&W manual (no visible difference... duh!). Overall, the guide reads like it was written by programmers for programmers, not for people thinking about the artistic use of the features. They really give you the impression that they just didn't care about the guide and were trying to save every last penny they could. Given the cost of the program I feel I should have a comprehensible, complete, full color user's guide. I imagine that the CEO of Adobe never looked at this guide or he certainly wouldn't have let it out the door. Finally, while the program's functionality is very powerful, the interface is described in a way that sounds more like their programmer's perspective than a user's conceptual framework. Instead of vector and bitmap shapes they talk about clipping paths, working paths, quick masks, layer masks, text layers, text shapes and on and on and on. I'm sure there is good reason why the program needs to keep track of this but there is no good reason why the jargon and user interface couldn't be simplified to make the advanced features more accessable to a broader class of users.