ISSUE 514: The high tech office- Aug
31 1999
ALAN ZISMAN
Adobe's high-end graphics programs are improved but
still expensive
Last week, we took a look at Corel Draw
9, the latest version of Corel's graphics suite for Windows PCs, which
claims more than 10 million users.
But while Corel Draw is a powerful package that offers
the most stuff in the box, it has not been able to steal serious
mindshare from Adobe's collection of high-end graphics
products. Unlike Corel's suite, Adobe's suite is marketed as the
separate applications PhotoShop and Illustrator.
At about the same time that Corel came out with the
new version of its graphics suite, Adobe (www.adobe.
com) premiered an upgrade of its flagship application, Photo-
Shop version 5.5, available in virtually identical PC and Mac versions.
Last year, the company released PhotoShop 5.0, with a
number of nice new features, such as a History list, which makes it
possible to review earlier versions of your work. At about the same
time, Adobe released a separate application, ImageReady, which while
almost identical to PhotoShop, focused on features designed to get
graphics ready for the Internet.
With PhotoShop and Image-
Ready offering different sets of features for working with photographs
and bit-mapped illustrations, it seemed like many designers would find
themselves forced to buy both, as well as yet another product such as
Adobe Illustrator to work with vector graphics.
The new version of PhotoShop puts all the features of
Adobe's two photo-editing programs into one box. While ImageReady is
updated to version 2.0, it will no longer be sold as a separate
product. Instead, it's been made part of the PhotoShop package. It's
still a separate program. However, users can install either or both of
the two programs and each starts up with its own icon.
But each adds a Jump-To icon on its toolbar to start
up the other program, loading the picture that you're working on right
into it and making it easier to switch from one to the other as the
need arises.
Some of ImageReady's Web smarts are integrated into
the new and improved PhotoShop.
Now, for example, both programs make it easier to get
just the right balance between picture quality and size. "LiveView"
lets you see what gets lost in the exchange for small-
er size files.
PhotoShop can now warn you if you try to work with a
shade outside the 216 colours of the standard Web-safe palette that can
be viewed both on PCs and Macs.
A Save For Web option lets you play with different
colour choices and see how they will appear on both Mac and PC screens.
Not everything new in PhotoShop is Web-focused. New
masking tools such as the Background Eraser makes it easier than ever
to pull a foreground image out from its background. With a little
practice, even wispy hair can be cleanly masked-out using the new
tools.
While ImageReady now has a new version number, I
couldn't find much changed, other than the improved ability to switch
back and forth between it and PhotoShop. No printed documentation is
included in the package for ImageReady. I suspect that the next version
of PhotoShop will merge all of Image-
Ready's functions into the single, core program.
That program remains expensive, especially since
graphics professionals will tend to need both PhotoShop and Adobe
Illustrator. It costs $960 (list) for new purchasers and $320 to
upgrade either PhotoShop or ImageReady to the new version 5.5. Users
who can't justify that, but need more than the basic graphics
applications that come bundled with digital cameras and scanners, may
be interested in Adobe's plans for its scaled-down version of
PhotoShop, LE.
While lacking the full feature set of PhotoShop, such
as colour management, channels, working with CMYK colours or those
Image Ready Internet features, LE still packs a lot of power.
Previously available only bundled with some hardware products or with
other Adobe programs such as PageMaker, LE will now be sold retail for
about $300.
PC graphics users may want to take a look at Paint
Shop Pro, a powerful program with its roots as downloadable shareware,
but now also available retail for about $130. Its creator, Jasc,
is put-
ting the finishing touches on version 6.0. Beta versions with a limited
lifespan can be freely downloaded from www.
jasc.com.
Also new, from Vancouver's Multiactive Software
Inc. (of Maximizer and ecBuilder fame) is Entice! (yes, the
exclamation point is part of the name). Aimed at mid-sized companies
doing business on the Web, according to the company Entice! unifies an
organization's Web activities with its front office -- that is, its
sales, marketing and customer service divisions. It automates
traditional business processes and also helps businesses generate,
qualify, distribute, process and respond to online customer and
prospect inquiries. (www.
maximizer.com) *
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