Birmingham Web Designer Jeremy Flint blogs here. He works for Kinetic Communications. He organizes events and programs for IPSA. He takes pictures and posts them on Flickr. He also blogs about Hiking and Mississippi State Sports when he has the time. He recommends Dreamhost for all your hosting needs. Make sure you grab the RSS Feed.

We upgraded our Adobe software at the office a month or so ago by purchasing the Adobe CS2 package. Before that, I had been running Photoshop 6 (even after obtaining a copy of PS7), and why not. It served my needs well enough and I never had any problems out of it.

Most of the upgrades made to Photoshop seemed to be in the realm of digital photography with the introduction of features like the Healing Brush and Patch tools. Most of my work in Photoshop is for concepting sites, and once a concept is approved, I only use about 30-50% of what is in the image since I use CSS for background colors and such.

Note: I have never really gotten used to Illustrator for concepting, although I know plenty of people that use it.

So anyway, when we ordered CS2, I decided to give it a whirl. I installed it on my machine and have been using it for about a month or so now. Overall, I guess I am pleased. One of the main things I like is the ability to drag the images outside of the “grey area” (on a PC). That used to not be possible (at least not in PS6).

I really only have 2 complaints. The first is somewhat minor. Just about every other application has this feature, yet Photoshop is still holding out. When I am adding/editing text, and I want to change the font, my first instinct is to open the font dropdown in the Character panel and type the first letter of the name of the font I want to use. Now, in 90% of the applications I use, this works. This even works in Illustrator. Is it really that hard to implement in Photoshop?

The other complaint I have is actually pretty disturbing. I usually work with files directly off the local network, or if anything I am saving directly to the local network. In CS2, when I go to do a Save For Web, there is a bit of a delay between the time I hit the key-combo and when the save for web interface shows up. Many times, I can’t even see the export window when it actually shows up. I have to click off of the program and back in to bring it to the front.

The same happens when I try to save the file out of the Save For Web interface.

Has anyone else experienced this?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2005 at November 11,2005 @ 3:35 pm and is filed under Adobe, Design, Photoshop, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.