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

I have owned Photoshop since 3.0 (14 3.5 inch floppies). Each of the new releases has had some great productivity improvements. Actions, adjustment layers, Image Ready all were great bonuses. There is no revolution in 6.0, but the sum of the improvements are worth the cost of the upgrade.

Check the system requirements carefully. It will not run on Windows 95. I have not had any problems running both Photoshop and Image Ready on a machine with 128 meg of ram.

The install is a pain. You have to get out your 4.0 cd and insert it, then remove it after Photoshop verifies you own one. My CD did not like this the first two times I tried it, but it finally came through after a reboot.

On to the improvements.

My favorite is the intuitive toolbar at the top of the workspace. This puts tool options one click away. No need to hunt for the options palette. Next is the "Step backward" and "Step Forward". This works like a multiple level undo without having to go to the history palette.

Text (excuse me, type) is getting easier. Now you can add paragraph text to a box with ease. Define the size of the box and start keying, right in the layer. They still need to improve the font handling (you can't see a text string in the new font unless you update the layer), but the changes to type in 6.0 are fairly intuitive, especially if you have worked in Flash or Corel. Oh, by the way, you no longer render a layer of text, you rasterize it.

To the action they have added "droplets," a productivity improvement that lets you run an action on multiple files through "drap and drop".

The crop tool is no longer in with the marquees but stands alone in the toolbox. Big timesaver.

They have added the ability to round the corners of a rectangle, and create all kinds of shapes without using the lasso (Bravo!).

You can add free form notes to a file. I won't use this much, but I can see where it might be helpful. The implementation of this feature, however, is lacking.

There are no new filters, but they have added "Liquify" which is pretty cool. It works like Extract.

Path selection has been improved and the path tools have been separated from the pens (used to create the path).

Also new: Layer styles, trim, adding slices in Photoshop.

Photoshop, over the years, has become the standard for image manipulation. With the upgrade to version 6.0, Adobe has made this program even better. The controls are easier to use and find. But the real highlight here, is the programs ability to use and manipulate text. The text interface is very much improved. There is no more palette. You can now directly manipulate text size and color within the frame. This alone, for many, will make this a must upgrade. In general, the tools are more intuitive than previous versions. And overall the work out of v6.0 seems 'cleaner' than from v5.5.

Using Adobe Photoshop 5.5, I would get aggravated trying to do some very simplistic graphics. Since PS 5.5 didn't have some options I needed to use right away while using the software, I would have to open ImageReady to get the features I desired. Having these two products open on a 600mhz computer with 256 megs of RAM was horrible. I had the worst time with ImageReady as it took up so much of my computer's resources.

When upgrading to PS 6.0, I was amazed that all the tools I was in search of were and were normally in the separate program ImageReady, were put together in this one software. I was so happy that they included new tools AND improved previous tools. The program overall runs a lot smoother than the previous version and the interface changes were positive, they allowed for me to further put into use my creativity using less steps. I would definitely recommend this to all graphics and photo editing professionals!

Powerful vector editing and masking, improved layer controls, layer styles, incredible typographic control, new Web publishing tools, and a cleaner, more accessible interface. Photoshop's new vector features provide even more control when dealing with photographic images something that is lacking in 5.5. You can also use the vector drawing tools simply to create polygons and custom shapes, but they can also act as layer clipping paths using vector masks that hide or reveal image areas in underlying layers. The editable layer effects such as drop shadow and glow that were introduced in version 5.5; have been renamed layer styles in version 6. New options include satin, stroke and color, gradient, and pattern overlay. The layer styles dialogue box provides much more control. Bevel and emboss has five style options, as well as adjusters for technique, depth, direction, size, soften, angle, attitude, gloss, contour, highlight mode and opacity. You can enter and edit text directly onto the layer and set style attributes from the new tool options bar. Web imaging tools have also been revamped, with layer-based slicing now available from within Photoshop itself. If you are looking for the best image editing software that money can buy, look no further this is the real deal.

FinancialNeeds.com

I wasn't sold on the changes I saw to 5.5, so I was slow in upgrading from 5.0 to 6.0, but now I'm glad I've done it. This is a huge leap up in the way images are handled. There are a number of wholly new functions, and the old ones have been generally smoothed out and improved. There is more vector functionality here, better type handling, smooth layer handling, and increased support for web images. Improvements like this make it clear why Photoshop is the Holy Grail of image manipulation. If you can afford it, treat yourself to the best, and buy PShop 6.0.