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Adobe Creative Suite CS2 - part 2 of 1 2

by Mike McNamee Published 01/09/2005

Smart Sharpen and Blur Filters The need to engage in fancy methods to rescue sharpness reduces with each new version of Photoshop. This latest version attempts to differentiate between lens blur and motion blur. The new Smart Sharpen seems quite good, and time, plus xperience, will no doubt add to its usefulness, as we refine our use. There are three new blur filters. Box Blur should assist if you have to clean moire patterns from scanned half‑tones. No doubt you creative readers will start to find ways of exploiting the Shape Blur tool.

Lens Correction

This feature will be a joy for architects and estate agents!

Even though an expensive prime lens will suffer from very little distortion, zoom lenses and particularly wide-angle zoom lenses tend to suffer from either barrel or pin-cushion distortion and sometimes both. Lens Correction enables you to dial out these distortions and, more importantly, it also enables the photographer to deal with both vertical and horizontal perspective distortions and rotation.

Red Eye Removal

Not a tool for serious professionals (like our readers) but just in case you have to correct your wife's holiday snaps, it works a treat - (not a sexist remark this btw - more intended irony!).

Spot Healing Brush

This is a simple extension of the Healing Brush which does away with the need to Alt-click to set the source texture area.

It may not sound much but on a heavy retouch session you could quickly grow to love it! Most of the time you will find it as effective as the regular healing brush which is still available when needed.

Automation

The scripting in CS2 moves to a higher level. For those who have not used Russell Brown's image processor it is now inbuilt and this single facility will pay for your upgrade on its own! (Although it was actually free before)

It enables the user to output various sizes and formats to designated folders automatically. It is an essential tool which your editor and Tom Lee (amongst others) have been plugging all year. Russell has not been idle in the interim and there is a script to extract meta data from a file and place it onto the printed image in a border. This has implications for those of you who are sneaking off to ASDA to get your proofs, as you can now put the file name, copyright information and so on onto your image, before getting it printed.

There is a wealth of workflow-improving possibilities available through scripting and we have been working for some months now trying to decide whether to run a feature on the subject. Once you get into scripting (which is a programming language) it can really have profound influences on your workflow and this is an area in dire need of enhancement!

Web Photo Gallery

This has not changed very much except that a few templates have been added which use Flash. How the shape of webbased applications is going to change with Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia remains to be seen, but the dominance of Dreamweaver in the web design field leaves GoLive looking a little vulnerable. However the thought of improved compatibility and interactivity between Dreamweaver and the rest of the CS suite will have the webbies licking their lips in anticipation.

Illustrator CS2

One of the exciting new features in Illustrator is the Live Trace function. This converts a pixel-based image into vectors.

Whilst this is superb for converting your favourite image into a simplified logo it also opens a whole range of opportunities for different images as portraits. If you are seeking a retro 30's look then search no further. In truth it is quite a tricky beast to use creatively and we made more rubbish than half decent stuff using the technique. We also tried rolling the vectorised Illustrator file into Photoshop and then reducing the transparency of the layer to create the image below right. We look forward to our more creative readers getting to grips with these techniques and producing work that is outstandingly different!

InDesign CS2

We could devote many pages to this topic. Suffice to say that we made the magazine you are reading using InDesign. The productivity enhancement is partly why you are now getting a 100 page mag - the reduction in stress from using InDesign is something only your Editor can appreciate, but take it from the horse's mouth, it's a heck of a lot simpler and making pdfs is just a dream! If you want to beef up your addon services by designing your client's brochures after taking the pictures you need to look at this software right away.

Acrobat 7 Professional

Like InDesign, this could be a topic all on its own and we will be returning to it now and again. If you have to send images and text for approval, Acrobat is the way to do it but that only uses a small fraction of what it can do. It remains one of Adobe's hidden jewels!

CONCLUSION

You have a number of choices depending on where you are starting from. Whist the learning curve is much greater if you buy into the whole suite the benefits are stronger if you have a need for them. Upgrading just Photoshop to get your hands on Bridge and the new RAW handler will easily pay for that part of the upgrade.

Getting your hands on Illustrator will be of benefit only if you can exploit its slightly esoteric properties.

Acrobat remains an underused tool of immense power, vital if you send stuff to print, even if it is only for proofing.

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1st Published 01/09/2005
last update 09/12/2022 14:50:54

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