i/s Back Issues

Volume 14

No. 1  September/October 1998

Adobe Photoshop 5: History, Type, Magnetism, Color

Oliver Thomas

When Photoshop 4 was released, it lacked quite a few of the features users had hoped to see, and many considered it a relatively minor upgrade. Adobe Photoshop 5 not only makes good on these long-awaited features, but delivers a slew of new tools and enhancements.

The History Palette
Perhaps the most anticipated new feature in Photoshop 5 is the History palette. It keeps track of every operation performed on an image in chronological order. To discard one or more operations applied to your image, simply click on the corresponding step in the history list.

In its most straightforward application, the History palette gives you unlimited undo capability (the single most requested feature for a Photoshop upgrade). In combination with the History brush and snapshot feature, it becomes a powerful painting and editing tool.

The History brush lets you paint with the contents of a historical version of the image. It works much like the rubber stamp tool, except that it can use any previous version of the image in the History palette. Let's say that you wanted to give an object the appearance of speed, but keep certain details, such as the leading edge of a person's face, sharp and clear. Simply apply the Motion Blur filter to the entire object. Then check the step in the History palette right before the Motion Blur filter was applied, and, using the History brush, paint over the details you want to revert to their original sharpness.

You can save intermediate results using the History palette's snapshot feature. This lets you combine different effects or compare different versions of the image.

The number of steps retained by the History palette depends on available scratch disk space. You can set an upper bound on steps via History Options... on the History palette pop-up menu.

Editable Text
The Type Tool has been significantly enhanced in this release. Photoshop 5 seeks to address the problem of inflexible type editing through Type Layers. New text is placed in a Type Layer, which keeps it separate from other layers of the image and retains some editing ability.

You can apply most formatting operations and filters to placed text; they will be automatically reapplied if you edit the text. You can also select multiple fonts, sizes, and styles without having to apply the Type Tool separately for each change.

Magnetism
Photoshop 5 introduces a small family of magnetic tools. With the Magnetic Lasso, you can draw freeform selections around parts of an image and it automatically looks for nearby edges (based on contrast) and snaps the selection to those edges. If an object stands out from the background, you can select it and cut it out quickly and precisely. The contrast threshold can be adjusted. The Magnetic Pen operates on a similar principle, creating a bezier path that follows the outline of an object. Paths can be saved, loaded, and reshaped, and used to create clipping regions, selections, and outlines.

New Color Profiles
Photoshop 5 has a sophisticated new color management system and support for ICC profiles. It is designed to give maximal color accuracy and consistency across different displays and in print. It does this by translating display colors through the ICC profile for a device, such as an RGB monitor. This function is usually transparent to the user. Photoshop 4, like most graphics programs, creates and displays images using the monitor color space (or gamut). By default Photoshop 5 tries to correct this "distortion" when loading old images by converting them to a generic RGB color profile, which it then translates to printer or display color profiles as appropriate. If you don't want this process to happen automatically, you can disable it by following these steps:

1.   Go to the File menu and choose Color Settings: Profile Setup...

2.   Deselect the Embed Profiles checkboxes, and set the Assumed Profiles fields to None and the Profile Mismatch Handling fields to Ignore.

There is also an Ask When Opening setting that lets you make the choice for each old image as you open it. For full information on the rich new color management system, see Chapter 5 in the Photoshop 5 manual.

Other Features
Photoshop 5 also offers better scripting tools, customizable layer effects, a new angle and distance measurement tool, a multipoint color sampler, and a 3D Transform filter.

System Requirements
Photoshop is very demanding of system resources and storage space. While the program will run on a system meeting the minimum requirements, it is not advisable to do so for serious work as you will quickly run into resource constraints.

The minimum requirements, for Macintosh or Windows, are:

  PowerPC or Intel Pentium processor

  32MB of RAM (64MB recommended)

  60MB of available disk space (large-capacity hard disk recommended)

  CD-ROM drive

  24-bit display adapter card

Pricing, Online Resources
If you are a serious Photoshop user, the History palette and Editable Text features alone make this version worth the upgrade price ($171.09, through MCC/Online-NECX). If you are buying Photoshop for the first time, the academic price is very reasonable ($212.48 at NECX, compared to $600 retail). The Adobe Web site offers a tryout version, as well as more product information and a Tips page at http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/photoshop/main.html

i/s Home |  i/s Back Issues |  Volume 14 |  No. 1