Photoshop CS and CS2

[JuStDaVe]

What is the main differences ?

[tim]

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html

[DaveG]

What is the main differences ?


I just got my upgrade of CS2 the other day so I'm still coming up to speed.

So far I'm seeing features that wll aid the old work flow. Within Bridge - the new File Browser - there's a "favorites" as well as folders access. I store my archives on a separate hard drive and it's a bit time consuming to move within a folder tree from a file folder under Photoshop CS to a separate hard drive. Now the Archives are set up as a favorite and I can access it very easily. Other photographers will use their own file storage ideas, but this is great for me.

The ability within Bridge to scale the small thumbnails into sizes that actually let you edit out the bad ones is convenient too, and I would think that it would be very useful to journalists who are looking to edit (a fancy word for "pick") and move images as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I like the auto (once enabled) highlight and shadow clipping indication. I don't trust my monitor even a little and prefer to fly by instruments rather than by the seat of my pants. This empirical indication of clipping is much better than "Hmm, looks OK." There was clipping indication in CS but you had to hold down the alt key, not onerous but one fewer step in CS2.

The big item improvements in CS2 like vanishing point and smart objects will be reviewed ad nausium. One smaller feature I like is Smart Guides. I like to do multiple image collages and what Smart Guide does is to automatically throw out a guide line from a static object when you move another object near it. Basically it's a guide line that shows you the middle and bottom (or top) of the static object and you can use this to snap the moved object to the same line. It's going to save many minutes of checking at 200% to make sure that everything - images, copy and so forth - is on the same line. A tiny out-of-registration error looks sloppy, especially because it is sloppy. Smart Guides - while not all that sexy - is probably going to be of more actual use to me than the much more and truly amazing Vanishing Point will be.

Spot Healing Brush will be my new best friend I think. Simple to use and it does what it's supposed too. Clone tool will still get used but not nearly as much.

Now here's something that will cause a bit of a fire storm mostly because it's inexplicable. Under Help there's a line that says "Transfer Activation". I think that we all know - certainly everyone that used CS knew - that you only have Adobe's permission to use CS/CS2 on two computers and not at the same time. Well I saw this Transfer Activation and started reading. It says straight out that the first computer needs to be deactivated before it can be used on a second, and the deactivation is done by Adobe over the net.

Well on the face of it I freaked. I want to have CS2 on both my desktop AND notebook computer. I could see leaving the office with the notebook having forgotten to deactivate the desktop computer. And I couldn't figure out how the notbook computer could be used in the field without being hooked up to the internet. This was shapping up to be a big cluster----.

I called Adobe and a really nice lady had a look into it. She came back and told me that Adobe counts the desktop AND the notebook as one computer and that I'd have no trouble installing and activating CS2 on both. I did the second installation today on my notebook and it worked just fine. But I also suggested to the Adobe lady that she and Adobe prepare for hundreds of exceptionally angry enquiries. All is well but I just don't understand what "Transfer Activation" does or why it's there if it doesn't affect the notebook.

In any case I'm very happy with what I'm seeing from CS2. Of course I'll know a lot more in the coming days.

[drisley]

I am already a big convert from C1 Pro to Photoshop CS for my 20D raw conversions, but after watching the new CS2 raw video on this page (http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/tt-cs2/camera-raw.html), I'm blown away. I can't wait to get it!

[paulhillion]

There's a great review of CS2 in the May issue of 'Professional Photographer' (UK).