Motivation: Adobe Photoshop CS2 establishes its highend pre-eminence
Features: Features like Bridge and Cue put Photoshop on a "must have" pedestal

Adobe Photoshop has always had two core competencies that its major competitors like Corel, Microsoft, Ulead and other 2D graphics programs have only belatedly and weakly matched: all aspects of color control and all aspects of printing management. True Corel Draw/PhotoPaint have made clear progress but then Adobe adds prepress functionality plus 16bit and 24bit color modes for many of its tools and that takes Photoshop to a new and unmatched level.

And now in the Creative Suite series Photoshop is achieving separation from the competition in four new major arenas: smart color adjustments, team collaboration, smart touchup/image corrections, and tools to manage graphics workflow. In addition, Photoshop continues to strengthen its overall graphics processing capabilities while adding some handy digital photo processing corrections. Finally, Photoshop CS2 appears to have headed off a disturbing trend seen in the Windows version of CS1 - buggy performance. In contrast to the 1-2 crashes per 3-4 hour editing session that we experienced on Windows 2000, CS2 has yet to go down in over 12 weeks of intensive testing.

But overall, Photoshop offers tremendous features, top of the line processing including Mac as well as Windows support and lots of specialized but unmatched value to anyone doing 2D image processing. If your work has you processing 20 or more images per week, you owe it to yourself and your own innovation to adopting Photoshop. Not only is Photoshop essential for working in most creative graphics positions; but also it amply increases your productivity as you master its many features. However, be prepared for a substantial learning curve. So if you are a casual user of photo images say for digital camera use or the occasional illustration or web page use, there are a number of easier to use programs from Corel's PaintShop Pro to Ulead's Photo Impact and Adobe's own Photoshop Elements that you will find much easier to learn and operate on an ongoing basis.So given Photoshop's commanding price, be certain that you can get more than a casual return.

In the next sections, we examine some of the key new features coupled with existing strengths that make Photoshop a dominating choice for top notch bitmap graphics work.

Smart Color Adjustments

Photoshop has lead all image processing programs in color system support. First in the color types supported starting with Duotone, CMYK, and Lab. Now it supports more color bits per channel with 16 and 32 bit options (but also with a much reduced set of command options available - especially for 32bits per channel). And there are new commands to take advantage of different color modes.

However, in terms of color adjustments, Photoshop had been surrendering its lead to programs like PhotoPaint and PaintShop Pro that employed constrained(only portions of the tonal range) or smart color adjustments. The latter allowed for better corrections in either the shadow or highlight tonal ranges. The net result - users could get color adjustments done faster than in Photoshop. But CS1 added tonal Shadow/Highlight command which corrects

for details and colors lost in shadows or brightness shifted in highlights. For, example in the screenshot above the road and other highlight areas barely move while the cyclist comes out of deep shadows (begfore image is on right, after on left). Using Image | Adjustments | Shadow/Highlight I am able to bring out much more color and detail on the cyclist while keeping the highlighted areas relatively unchanged. In CS2, the Shadow/Highlight command gains CMYK and 16bit channel capability for users of those color modes(most digital camera images are RGB but CMYK dominates in printing, 16bit and 32bit/channel is used in precise color and sharpness control as we shall see below).

Now if we look at the main commands for color adjustments, Photoshop has an improved set given its CS1 and now CS2 enhancements:

Brightness/Contrast - provides brightness and contrast adjustments; the Curves and Exposure commands described below are much more versatile. 16bit enabled.
Color Balance - provides direct RGB or CMYK or Lab color component adjustments in the shadows, midtones, or highlight tonal ranges. More precise results can be achieved with the Curves command described just below. 16bit enabled.
Channel Mixer - provides direct, individual RGB color adjustment with no tonal limits(use Color Balance) nor hue limits (use Selective Colors). 16 & 32bit enabled. Best place to do Color => Black + White conversions;
Curves - provides a curve of shadow, midtone, highlight brightness/settings for RGB, CMYK or Lab composite settings or individual color components. This allows for precise color hue control as well as tone/lightness corrections. 16bit enabled.
Desaturate - reduces image to gray level; use Sponge tool to do partial desaturations.
Exposure - allows the user to make 3 color adjustments in one dialog:
  Exposure - adjusts the highlight tones with minimal effect in extreme shadows.
  Offset - Darkens shadows and midtones with minimal effect in the highlights.
  Gamma - adjusts the image's gamma
The Exposure eyedropper tool is different than the one in Levels which effects all color channnels; the Exposure eyedroppers is for a a limited range of tones.
HDR-High Dynamic Range - allows users to combine two or more identical images with different exposure settings to be combined with widest possible dynamic range. HDR files are 32bits per channel and therefore are enabled only for a limited set of color (Exposure, Channel Mixer, PhotoFilter) and other Photoshop commands. This is an example of unmatched high end feature in Photoshop.
Levels - adjusts for color and tonal casts by setting the pixel distribution/saturation for the color channels. Convenient eye droppers can set black, grey and white tone values and often provide quick tonal balance and colorcast corrections. Users can fine tune those corrections with input and output level settings. 16bit enabled.
Hue/Saturation - provides quick Hue shifts (red through green to blue in under a second), saturation increases/decreases (beware punchy, over-saturated images) and lightness corrections. 16bit enabled.
Match Colors - matches the color from one photo to another or from one layer to another or from one selection to another in the same or a different image. Quite versatile in providing a common look and color hue to a related set of images.
Photo Filters - is a group of 16 color filters which provide the equivalent of their photographic counterparts - like an #85 warming filter or an #80 cooling filter. There are no graduated filters; users would have to emulate that with gradient fill into a masked area. 16 & 32 bit enabled.
Selective Colors - allows users to adjust the color balance for just one hue while Color Balance tool is geared to shadow/midtones/highlight adjusted corrections. Very useful. 16bit enabled.

There are also Auto Color, Auto Contrast, Auto Levels commands that provide a quick best guess adjustment. They are useful when in a time pinch but often you must revert to the underlying commands to provide better final adjustments. So I use these command sparingly. However, the bottom line is the graphic artists have a wealth of choices for doing color adjustments in Photoshop CS2. And the choices are not repetitious, but as we see in the sexample below, complimentary to each other.

So the bottom line is this, when doing color adjustments in Photoshop CS2 I am completely confident that:
a)you will be able to do any adjustment and b)do so quickly and in most cases without

having to resort to elaborate masking. An example is shown in the screenshot above. Using the new HDR facility, I took multiple exposures on a tripod (this is essential because the HDR command is only able to make minimal corrections for images out of alignment)of the scene. I did this because I knew the deep scarlet tones of the tree would be lost. Then using the File | Automate | merge to HDR I was able to combine the three exposures into one image which brought out the deeper tones. Using the new Exposure command which works with 32bit HDR images I am able to make the final color adjustments. Trying to do this with masks was a nightmare. Yet the added time for two more exposurees was less than a minute.

To paraphrase - when working with colors I know you are in good hands with Photoshop.

Bridge as Control Center

One of the things astute Photoshop users will note is that the recently arrived Image Browser has been taken right out again from Photoshop. The reason is because the Image Browser has been given a much broader role in the whole Creative Suite series of programs - it acts as the control center for a number of integrating operations - hence the new name Bridge.

In the screenshot below we see the Image Browser moved out of Photoshop and into Bridge.

This edition of the browser is nearly three times faster than the one in CS1 (but still lags the Corel PaintShop Pro browser by more than a factor of two). But the Browser in Bridge adds a number of new options for users. For example, there are 4 ways to display image thumbnails i)filmstrip view, ii)details view, iii) basic thumbnails and iv)Versions view. Versions is important because its the new Version Cue system that ties together all CS2 programs with the following set of features:
1)Cue can create historical versions and branched alternates of project files:
2)Cue can maintain file security/sharing for designated files;
3)Cue can organize files into private or shared projects;
4)Cue enables searching file info and version comments;
5)Cue allows online reviews of PDF documents;
6)Cue provides duplication, backup, and exporting of projects;
7)Cue allows imports using WebDAV or FTP;
8)Cue allows setting a roster of users with different project privileges;
In sum, Version Cue brings full team collaboration features to Creative Suite users, not just Photoshop. This means teams of designers can work on a group of files without worrying about file collisions. They also can have earlier versions maintained. The downside to Version Cue is that it only acts as a safeguard; it cannot protect against 3rd party tools deleting shared resources inadvertently.

Bridge now acts as display center , placing files into other CS2 applications, Photoshop Services, Labels & Ratings, but most notably extensive Camera Raw support.

Retouching Advances

In this next section we look at some of the new touch up advances and how they are used.

The Healing Brush is a powerful tool for retouching because it retains the color and luminosity of the destination area while taking the B+W drawing characteristics of the source area. So in the Screenshot to te immediate left we have reroduced the drawing of Dan (this is the source area) onto the yellow balloon(this is the destination area). We used the Edit |Fade command after each brushstroke to reduce the opacity of the drawing - note some of the original color comes across - but we can correct for this.

If you look at the Mode selections in the screenshot at the top of the screen there are 8 selections. Here are the most interesting:
Normal - produces the screenshot rendering
Replace - translates Healing Brush to Clone tool
Multiply - emphasizes the drawing lines and shadows
Lighten - gives just a hint of drawing, subtle effect
Luminosity - desaturates the source colors
Some other important tips when using the Healing Brush - use Edit | Fade to reduce the opacity of the Healing Brush stroke if its too strong. Also the Brush pulldown in the Options bar (see screenshot above) allows you to control the hardness at the edges and the shape of the brush - these adjustments are crucial for getting good Healing Brush effects Finally check the Aligned property if you want the Healing Brush to start the net stroke where you left off on the original. If you uncheck aligned, each stroke will start from the original ALT+Click setting. This works when you have a limited in size source area you want to expand in the image.

New to Photoshop CS2 is the Spot Healing Brush. It works just like the Healing Brush but takes as its sources the pixels nearby the outside of the Spot Healing Brush. So the size and shape of the Spot Healing Brush is very important. In our screenshot we have made the brush long and narrow to fit the area to be corrected. In addition, the Spot Healing Brush works with two different settings. Proximity Match uses the pixels on either side of the brush to most influence the final correction. Texture uses all of the pixels around the brush to come up with a composite texture that is used to replace the offending blemish. We found that the best Modes to use were Replace and Luminosity. Also repeating the operation a second time, especally with the Texture setting produced better results. Jasc Paintshop pro has roughly the equivalent of this tool with Texture as the setting and a rectangular brush as the permanent shape. Otherwise, Photoshop is onto something new again here.

From this small sampling , artists can see that Photoshop CS2 really does offer a diverse and powerful set of image retouching tools.

Other new Features

Photoshop CS2 has a whole slew of other new features. Here are some of the most important for photo finishers.

Lens Blur uses a selection or Depth Map (see Help on how to create one) to blur to an image to give the effect of a narrower depth of field. This means objects in the image ouside the selection stay in focus and the ones in the selections (or depest/darkest in the depth map)are blurred. This is very useful in scenic or people shots when users want to apply a lower f/stop with software.

HDR-High Dynamic Range - alows a user to take several bracketed images and combine them together so that the extremes of shadows and highlights, under user control are reduced. HDR works where Shadow/Highlight nd other Photoshop color adjustment cmmands fall short. The trick is to get two or ore camera images(best from a tripod) with the only difference being the shutter speed settings.

Optical lens correction - following Jasc and Ulead, Photoshop finally provides corrections for lens aberrations such as barrel and pincushion distortion, chromatic aberration, and lens vignetting. Long overdue.

Noise reduction - again following Jasc and Ulead, Photoshop now provides filters and commands to reduce digital image noise, JPEG artifacts, and scanned film grain. The difference is that Photoshop has done a slightly better job particularly in JPEG artifact corrections.

Smart Sharpen filter - shores up Photoshop's venerable Unsharp filter. There are a whole slew of Sharpening plugins withNik's Sharpener Probeing one of the best which have "inspired" the new Smart Sharpen filter. It sharpen images using algorithms for better edge detection and reduced sharpening halos.

So photofinishers got a lot of new features and we have yet to cover such goodies as Smart Guides, Smart Objects, Multiple Layer Control, and the new script and batch processing capabilities. The bottom line is that Photoshop has risen to the top because it has consistently not a few well chosen new features with every program update - there are no Windows MEs to be found here.

Summary

Just on the new Bridge and Cue features alone , this is a major update for Photoshop. But the program is packed with other new features which will please artists, photo finishers and creative designers alike. This photo finisher really appreciates the new retouch, lens correction and and smart sharpening capabilities. A creative design colleague is just as excited about Smart Objects, multiple layer control, Image Warp, and the new HDR-High Dynamic Range capabilities. If you spend 1/4 or more of your time doing graphics and image processing - you owe it to yoursel to download the 30-day, fully functional trial edition or upgrade (there are some attractive discounts). Photoshop CS2 is simply that good.