Home > Consumer Reviews > Adobe Photoshop 7.0 [OLD VERSION]

I have owned Photoshop in its various forms since its earliest versions. It is clearly my preferred picture editing tool, and I have owned many and continue to use a few others such as Picture It for particular tasks. So I affirm the positive comments on Photoshop's abilities.

Some notes about the 7.0 release. The "healing tool" is a real time saver if you are working on restoring old slides. It has easily multiplied my productivity 3X on difficult pictures versus previous versions. Otherwise, I see no feature that is compelling enough to make someone upgrade from 5.5 or 6.0. The new tool particularly shines in situations in former versions where the standard technique of dust removal (rubber stamp tool was too tedious to use). The new healing tool does more than a simple rubber stamp and blur though that at first appears to be what it is doing. It is totally amazing- check it out in a store if you are skeptical about these accolades.

Negative points- One reason I do not give a 5 star, and I really was thinking of giving this version a 3 star was a major major bug that can cause havoc on XP and windows 2000 systems. If you install and attempt to display a folder in thumbnail view, it would crash explorer. It is something that photoshop was installing, because once I removed the software, the system behaved fine again. If this happens to you, reinstall in safe mode (press f8 at boot). The 7.01 upgrade fix from the adobe site does not fix this bug, and it may have something to do with interactions with virus protection and firewall programs. Anyhow, Adobe's testing should have caught this high severity bug.

The only remotely negative thing I can say about Photoshop 7 is, that if you're totally new to Photoshop, completely learning to use all of its myriad features effectively will be a very daunting task (to say the least). But, that could also be construed as a good thing about Photoshop. It's loaded with a plethora of very useful, very advanced features that other competitive products can't even touch.

However, once you get a basic understanding of Photoshop's layers and basic tools, you can immediately get to work creatively modifying and enhancing your digital photos and doing graphic design. If you ARE new to Photoshop, I do recommend purchasing 3rd party training materials to gain an understanding of the features Photoshop has to offer.

Chances are, if you're considering forking out the considerable cost for this product, than you probably have at least intermediate experience with Photoshop already. The new features of Photoshop 7 are extremely useful. There are new tools for photo enhancements (such as the unbelievable healing brush) as well as illustrating tools that finally turn Photoshop (in my opinion) to a one-stop graphic design studio.

This comes with a fantastic training CD that takes you through the new features. It covers the new customizable paint brushes (which will blow your mind), the (soon-to-be my favorite tool) healing brush, the new file browser and all sorts of other things. This CD was so good, in fact, that I'm considering buying the whole training series for Photoshop.

There is a reason Adobe Photoshop is the omnipresent software installed on every serious graphic designer's computer. It's simply the best, and everything else is a cheap knockoff. True, some cheaper packages do a reasonable job of imitating some of Photoshop's features-but none of them do as good of a job. Photoshop 7 just brings even more revolutionary, well-implemented features to the table, and puts more distance between itself and the wannabes. The bottom line is that if you're looking for the best photo editing software coupled with incredible graphic design tools, you've found it.

Okay here is the lowdown on why you should get this product and why you should not get this product.

You should get this product if:

- You want to learn the #1 photo/paint package that is an industry standard.
- You do not mind the massive learning curve.
- If you do not want something that you pop out of the box and use right away without spending weeks learning it.
- If you want total control over every aspect of paint/photo manipulation.
- If you do not mind it being a bit slow.
- If you do not mind it taking up a lot of hard disk space.

You should not get this product if:

- You do not need to learn an industry standard package.
- If you want to use something right away out of the box.
- If you do not need total control over every aspect of paint/photo manipulation.
- If you want a fast package.
- If you want to conserve hard drive space.

If you are looking for a paint/photo package that you can use out of the box and has lots of features then use Paint Shop Pro. If you are looking to learn the industry standard with the most features then learn and use Photoshop.

However I would like to finish this off by saying that I have worked for various multimedia groups that have demanded experience with this package and yet when it came to working for them they used 10% of this package and should have been using Paint Shop Pro instead. If you mention Paint Shop Pro in an interview then the interviewer will look at you sideways. What a load of mumbo-jumbo. They simply use this package because it is the "industry standard" instead of actually looking at a package that suites their needs. If you are an interviewer and someone says they also use Paint Shop Pro then you should actually listen to them for not toeing the official line. You might learn something there that will save you time, money and wasted space. Why bother training people for a couple of months to learn this package when they can do your intermediate tasks on a package they can use out of the box?

That is the bottom line.

I will admit that this is not a easy to use application but if you want to become an expert, you have to go to a lesson class in graphics and photo-editing. It does pay off, the editing features of this program are amazing, for removing red eye giving pictures the best lighting and creating great photo-content. With new features for fixing photos such as the healing brush which I know a lot users will appreciate for removing wrinkles and other types facial problems in photos. You also have security with version 7.0 so people cannot steal your precious content or use dissrespectly with special water mark features and other secure and file protection stuff. A new file browser is in the product so you can find and select your photo-content easily. Over all for previous users of Photo-shop I recommend you upgrade, I highly recommend 5.0 & 5.5 users to upgrade most of all but for people who just purchased 6.0 wait about 3 to 6 month's and hear what everybody is saying. If you want to go in photo-graphics I highly recommend Photoshop 7.0 it's new and a little bit easier use. If you are a novice and new to Photo-editing stick with Photoshop elements.

I started using Photoshop at release 7.0, I love this program, I spend most of my time playing around with this.(yeah yeah I have no life) I mainly use it for photo repair, my family has alot of old photos from the 30's 40's and 50's and time has taken their toll on them, and they come to me to fix them(I am the computer nerd of the family)well, I sit down with Photoshop 7 and for the most part I can make the old photos appear as they are new again.
I strongly recommend this software if you do photo repair/retouch, are into any kind of image editing/creation, or do marketing publications...this program makes it easy. The tools and filters will make your work look professional, even if you are not..like me :)As for stability, it rocks! I had it crash once, but I was lacking RAM memory and it hung(while multitasking)I run it on Windows XP with 768mb RAM and 1.4ghz AMD and it is smooth... yeah it is a bit spendy..but trust me you get what you pay for...I did!