Anybody have anything to say about this product? I would be intersted in hearing the review from 'joe user'

Im excited about the new brush system. Its supposed to be really improved. Only a few more months untill its release.. Damned beta testers and the people with the "hook up" who are talking about how much they love it

One thing I really hope is that they make it so the color dodge layer mode goes back to the way it was in 5.5-. The one in 6 is just plain useless, it looks and acts exactly the same as Screen. I know that you can fill the layer with black in 6 and it will go back to the old 5.5 way, but that is super annoying and you cant do "preserve transparency" to change the color on the fly.

Originally posted by adam
One thing I really hope is that they make it so the color dodge layer mode goes back to the way it was in 5.5-. The one in 6 is just plain useless, it looks and acts exactly the same as Screen. I know that you can fill the layer with black in 6 and it will go back to the old 5.5 way, but that is super annoying and you cant do "preserve transparency" to change the color on the fly.

yea verily :)

I happen to know one of the beta testers...lucky bastards. :)

To me, the main improvement is just the interface. Perhaps I am not as an advanced PS user to notice the finer points but the enhancements are not all that great and would not force me to be first in line to shell out money for an upgrade.

1. The brushes – It is true that there are more options with the brushes than were previously available. You can now adjust the size, viewing, etc. But does that really help? I prefer to have a thumbnailed view of all the brushes in one window on the screen, so this feature really has not done much for me just yet.
2. Image browsing – This was what disappointed me the most, primarily because I was more excited about this than any other feature. I currently use JASC Paint Shop Pro to browse my directories of images. The PSP browser is much faster and saves the data for the thumbnails for quicker loading the 2nd time around. The PS image browser is cumbersome to me when compared against PSP.
3. Type Engine – I was hoping for additional improvements to the type engine. Again, PS is top notch, but the PSP type selection is much better than Photoshop’s. When I have the drop-down opened in PS and want to select a font, I cannot type in “H” to take me to the H fonts. I have to scroll. If I remember right, Adobe has always taken a “hit” because of their type engine and has made several improvements over the past releases, but it still could use some work.
4. Blending modes – I have not used the new blending modes all that much so I cannot really give you an honest opinion on them. I know there are several news ones but cannot name them all off the top of my head (Pin Light, Vivid Light, Linear Dodge, etc).

Just my 2 cents…

thanks Dub for the comments. :)

On of the most interresting thing for me should be the new painting options that should make you able to "paint" better
:)

Snoogie

I wish there was a program that could help me paint better. :)

who doesn't?
=]

You can now adjust the size, viewing, etc. But does that really help?
If you have a tablet then it will help out a huge amount. They are adding tablet adjustment options for every little thing, like in Painter. Before we could only set the size/opacity/color to just "pressure." Now we can set just how sensitive the pressure is for each setting (Im thankfull for this because I like stiff pressure for size but soft pressure for opacity). They are also finally implementing the tilt feature for the Wacom Intuos. Then theres the "scatter" types of brushes that can have different effects based on pressure.

I didnt know about the new blending mode things. I hope that "linear dodge" means PS 5.5 dodge. They recieved a lot of complaints about that.

Just wanted to say, that I use ACDSee for browsing my huge amount of image files. It's the best there is imho and super fast.

And dub, like I have said on gf, I have none of those problems regardning the dropdown. I just don't get it!?? I'm in ps6 tho.

Just wanted to say, that I use ACDSee for browsing my huge amount of image files. It's the best there is imho and super fast.

me too.

IMO, version 7 is the best upgrade they've made since 3.0. The overhaul on the brush engine is in many ways comparable to when they first implemented layers. It's phenomenal how much they added to it and how easy it is to creat and use your own custom brushes. With very little effort at all, Photoshop can now do a lot of what only Painter could do before. Personally, I couldn't care less about added blend modes or image viewers or anything else they want to add. The brush tool alone was worth the upgrade.

...unfortunately, it seems like version 8/CS was a bit underwhelming.

I havent had an opportunity to try CS yet. I will give it a few more months.

i've played around with it a bit. i just got it for my mac. i'm still using ps6 on my pc. but recently i've been spending the majority of my time in final cut. as such, i'm still learning and adjusting to cs.