Photoshop 7 Mac Download

  • The king of image editors. Adobe Photoshop is the reference app when it comes to image editing and many years at the top haven’t dimmed its shine. It’s also a serious app: Photoshop has a steep learning curve and will take practice, often over many years, to get to grips with.
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  • Photoshop 7 is quite simply the best version of Photoshop ever. With the File Browser, the Healing brush, and the Painting Engine, Photoshop 7 provides something new and useful for just about.
By MIKE PASINI
Editor

The blog, launched in 2012, covers software reviews, design tips, photoshop, Download photoshop cs6 for mac os x 10.7.5 for free. Design & Photo downloads - Adobe Photoshop CS6 by Adobe Systems Inc. And many more programs are available for instant and free download. Apr 22, 2018 Step-by-step Guide to photoshop for mac free.

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The Imaging Resource Digital Photography NewsletterDownload

Review Date: July 2002

Upgrading Photoshop has always been a little like visiting the local magic shop. 'What's new?' you ask. 'Hey, I got a great little hat trick just in,' the smiling clerk says. 'Just for digital photographers.'

C O N T E N T S

As he pulls one brightly colored object after another out of his hat, you begin to wonder if your coat is in there. 'I just want to impress my in-laws,' you plead. 'So set the table,' he shrugs.

But since Photoshop 6, Adobe has been focusing less on magic and more on the Photoshop user experience. There are certainly enough new magic tricks to applaud Photoshop 7.0 with the flapping of checkbook covers. But what will win you over, launch after launch, is the improved usability. You won't go back.

And if you've been waiting for a Photoshop that runs natively under OS X or Windows XP, the wait is over. Even if you aren't, the new scripting capabilities alone are efficiencies enough.

HOOPLA | Back to Contents

Adobe says this version is aimed at digital photographers especially (and Web designers especially, and ...). We take that to simply mean Adobe recognizes Photoshop has a life outside pre-press. Fifty percent of Photoshop users are not going to press with their files, according to Adobe.

But we do find after using both the beta and the final release that Photoshop 7 is a valuable (and robust) upgrade for digital photographers.

And this time Adobe has made it affordable, too. Upgrades are $149 for the $609 full version (http://www.software-wholesale.com) has the Windows version for $535 with free three-day shipping).

NEW FEATURES | Back to Contents

Among the new features (many of which we'll skip), highlights for digital photographers include:

  • File Browser. At last you can see the images you have, not just their filenames. You can also rotate, sort, rank, and batch rename images, as well as view Exif metadata. This won't impress anyone using an image organizer but it's long overdue in Photoshop.
  • Auto Color. Improved. Beats the old Auto Levels or Auto Contrast.
  • Healing Brush. Like its rubber stamping predecessors it promises to simplify 'the photo retouching process by allowing users to effortlessly remove dust, scratches, blemishes, wrinkles, and other flaws.' (Wrinkles are flaws?) But this tool promises to do so while preserving 'the shading, lighting, and texture of an original image.'
  • Enhanced Picture Packages. You can easily fill one sheet of photo paper with multiple print sizes and even mark your prints with copyright information.
  • New Painting Engine with Enhanced Brush Tool. If it isn't a new type engine, it's a new paint engine. This one has variable valve timing and 400,000 miles between tune-ups. It does allow you to fiddle with a great number of brush variables, actually simulating traditional painting tools.
  • Tool Presets. No longer fiddle and refiddle from the default settings for any particular tool. Just save the tool settings and restore them whenever you like with a click.
  • Workspaces. You can now save the Photoshop desktop (your palette layouts, that is) that you prefer to use. Save different desktops for different tasks (one for startup, one for photo editing, another for retouching).
  • ZoomView technology. Export your high-res images in ZoomView format and Photoshop creates the files you need to access Viewpoint's technology from your Web site to zoom or pan your images online.
  • New Scripting Support. Can't help it, we're a sucker for automation. Just a little goes a very long way. And this is more than a little. AppleScript, JavaScript, and Microsoft Visual Basic are all equally supported (no wonder it took so long). But it's a download (you have to be brave, kids) from http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html. We'll cover scripting in a separate review.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS | Back to Contents

System requirements never get smaller, but 7.0 bumps them up significantly. All systems need 128-MB RAM (192-MB recommended) with a CD-ROM drive and an 800x600 color monitor with at least 16-bit color (24-bit recommended).

On the Mac, you'll need a PowerPC (G3 or higher recommended) running OS 9.1 or higher (or OS X) with 320-MB of free disk space.

On Windows, you need a Pentium III or 4 running Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP with 280-MB of free disk space.

INSTALLATION | Back to Contents

Photoshop is still a pretty straightforward install, writing almost all of what it needs to the folder it inhabits.

It needs quite a bit, though, especially this version's multilingual spell checker. Our Mac OS 9 basic install actually required 238-MB. OS X took 280-MB.

We did several installs, taking between five and eight minutes, depending on the machine and disk speed.

We install software on an external drive we move from machine to machine to confirm or resolve one or another issue. But we were unable to run the install we did on a G4 from a 7300 (PPC 604), for example. After a reinstall on the 7300, we were able to run Photoshop 7 on that system without any problems or penalties. The executables were indeed different sizes (56,315,475 vs. 56,288,344 for the G4 version).

WAIT A MINUTE | Back to Contents

Installation is simple, but that doesn't mean you're up and running. Photoshop's personality is usually modified by a few third-party plug-ins, some of which you may consider utterly indispensable.

Adobe actually gives Mac users the OS 9 version along with the OS X version so they can run their plug-ins. The OS X version enjoys few plug-ins at the moment (not to mention printer drivers) but the OS 9 version welcomes most Photoshop 6.0 plug-ins.

That doesn't mean everything you depend on will work. And in our case, it didn't.

Our Average digicam doesn't rotate images. Everything's a landscape, just as if we were still using film. So we rotate them in Juri Munkki's great little utility Cameraid (http://www.cameraid.com). But when we looked at these images in the new File Browser, the rotated images had no thumbnails. Worse, the File Browser didn't display any Exif data for them.

A bug? Adobe couldn't duplicate it (they have an Average digicam, too).

Our only clue was that Photoshop reported the file format as ProJPEG, not its own JPEG. We depend on Boxtop Software's ProJPEG plug-in for optimizing file sizes for Web images, and it has the habit of embracing any JPEG file as its own format. Apparently the File Browser doesn't peek into those files.

Removing the plug-in restored Photoshop's ability to display thumbnails of rotated images and to report the metadata.

Photoshop 7 Mac Download
FILE BROWSER | Back to Contents

Adobe says the new File Browser was added for digital photographers who have to scan dozens of images at a time. But rest assured the entire graphic arts community thanks you. Long overdue and the single best reason to upgrade. Once you use it, you won't want to live without it.

The File Browser
Click on a pane for an enlargment

It's a good browser, no question. But we much prefer what Apple's done in iPhoto, primarily because iPhoto has on-the-fly thumbnail scaling. But also because iPhoto isn't scrunched into your work area -- it is your work area (like any other photo cataloging program).

Adobe's Browser window has four panes, one big one on the right side for the thumbnails and three stacked on top of each other on the left. The top pane is a navigable list view of your desktop. The middle pane shows a preview of any selected image whose Exif data is displayed in the pane just below it. Like frames in your Web browser, you can resize these panes within the browser window by dragging their dividers around.

Within the Browser you can easily rotate any selection of thumbnails to correct orientation. A double click opens the image in Photoshop and rotates it into the corrected orientation. But thumbnail rotation does not itself change the orientation of the image.

In fact, to make this stick you have to save the image in Photoshop.

Ranking any selection of thumbnails by letter grade can be done from a popup menu. And you can sort the ranked images to group all the A's together, for example.

The Exif display is essential for digital photographers (where it can be illuminating in cataloging software). But Adobe has even decided to preserve it in edited images. Not all data will be valid but it's nice it doesn't disappear any more (even that's more accurate).

The Browser also lets you batch rename (and optionally move) any selection of unopened images using a template for filenames that's among the more sophisticated we've seen. The options include: the document name in initial caps, lower case or all caps; a one, two or three digit serial number; a lower or upper case serial letter; seven date variations; and the extension in lower or upper case. Plus any custom text in any combination of six options.

For example, you can rename all your images as 'FathersDay-061602-001.jpg' and so on. We generally find renaming images one of the least rewarding tasks we can think of, preferring to impose a meaningful directory structure without changing any filenames (a folder for each year and a folder for each shoot that year numbered sequentially with a text description like '74 Annadel Park'). So while we like just how descriptive you can be, we won't use it. But that's just us.

Filename compatibility checkboxes for Windows, Linux and the Macintosh are also available. Which beats learning the rules.

The information displayed by the Browser for any folder is stored in a cache. That includes the thumbnail previews, their orientation and their ranking. To avoid recreating it, you have to (remember to) export that cache to the directory. This should really be invisible to the user. Really.

AUTO COLOR | Back to Contents

We found the new Auto Color command useful for correcting color casts, especially if you're not comfortable using Levels, Curves or Variations to do the job.

Yosemite Sam
Auto Color Sam

We used it for a quick color correction of a very flat picture we took of a 4x6 print we took in fluorescent kitchen light. We were just making one of those stealthy copies of a friend's funny image, figuring we could fix it up later. One click of Auto Color was all it took to restore vibrancy to the image.

Photoshop 7 Mac Download Full

Auto Color
Easily tweeked

You can have some serious control over Auto Color, too. Tweaking Auto Levels, Contrast and Color is done from the Options dialog window in Levels. Setting the algorithm to 'Enhance Per Channel Contrast' mimics the old Auto Levels command. Setting it to 'Enhance Monochromatic Contrast' makes it behave like the old Auto Contrast command. Setting it to 'Find Dark & Light Colors' (which neutralizes the highlights and shadows) and clicking on the 'Snap Neutral Midtones' option (to neutralize the midtones) makes it into the new Auto Color command.

Photoshop 7 Mac Download

You can also shift that midtone in the Options dialog box. And you can save your settings as the default.

Photoshop 7.0 Mac

Auto color is a welcome addition but to make it useful can require almost as much work as manually manipulating color. Why? Because it has no idea what the colors it is trying to automatically correct actually represent.

Photoshop 7 Mac Download Crack

So we'll stick with the plug-in iCorrect EditLab (http://www.picto.com) where we can point out the sky, foliage and skin to get a corrected image or batch of images faster than Auto Color can shift its midtone.