New Adobe Photoshop 7.0

Adobe just announced Adobe Photoshop 7.0, a major upgrade to the world's professional image editing standard. Photoshop 7.0 has new features that allow photographers, Web and graphic designers to work more efficiently, explore new creative options and produce the highest quality images for print, Web and other media. Photoshop 7.0 software delivers a comprehensive toolset that helps users meet any creative or production challenge. The new Healing Brush removes dust, scratches, blemishes and wrinkles, while automatically preserving shading, lighting, texture and other attributes. The new File Browser allows users to quickly locate, organize and visually manage images, as well as view EXIF information from digital cameras, including date captured, exposure settings, and associated metadata (such as creation and modification dates).

The creative tools in Photoshop 7.0 help design professionals generate compelling visual effects and stay ahead of the competition. A new painting engine lets users create custom brush presets, simulate techniques like pastels and charcoal, and add special effects such as grass and leaves, while the new Pattern Maker plug-in can create patterns such as rocks and sand. An enhanced Liquify plug-in provides even greater control over image warping with zoom, pan and multiple undo capabilities.

Including ImageReady 7.0, the advanced Web component, Photoshop 7.0 provides new output enhancements so Web designers can apply extra compression to images while maintaining the quality of text and vector shape layers, as well as exercise greater control over how transparency is maintained online. New support for the WBMP format enables optimization for display on PDAs and other wireless devices. For interactive authoring, ImageReady software now allows all slices, rollovers, image maps and animations in one palette, and an expanded set of rollover types allows for the creation of more effective navigation bars.

To streamline the management and updating of large image libraries, Photoshop 7.0 integrates with Adobe AlterCast, Adobe's dynamic imaging server software. Photoshop 7.0 supports Adobe's XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform), an open framework that standardizes the creation and processing of content across publishing workflows. Photoshop 7.0 is also tightly integrated with Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe GoLive, Adobe LiveMotion, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Acrobat.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 will ship in the second quarter of 2002 for all platforms. The estimated street price is $609. Registered users of earlier versions of Photoshop can upgrade to version 7.0 for the new reduced price of $149. Upgrades from Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photoshop LE are available directly from Adobe for US $499. Information about other language versions, as well as pricing, upgrade and support policies for other countries, is available on Adobe's Web site at www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.