Content area
Full Text
Adobe Systems Inc.'s Photoshop has established itself as the most powerful image processing application available for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. With Version 3.0, Adobe has added substantial enhancements to keep Photoshop positioned firmly at the top of the image editing market.
One important new feature is the incorporation of multiple floating objects, called layers. These add enormous flexibility to image manipulation and photo collage. Layers act like transparent sheets of acetate that float above the background layer. You can draw, edit, and paste onto separate layers, experimenting with different combinations and placements of objects until you achieve the desired effect. Each layer remains independent of the others until the layers are merged. Adobe has jumped on the multiple-floating-object bandwagon, joining programs such as Altamira Software Corp.'s Composer and Fractal Design Corp.'s Painter/X2.
Here's what makes this technology so hot. Until this latest release, Photoshop worked on a single layer that allowed only one floating selection at a time. You could move that floating selection freely around the picture, but once the object was deselected, it became part of the background image. Any attempt to reposition the object would leave a hole where the object was originally positioned, requiring extensive touch-ups.
I loaded an 8MB Photoshop file to try out various functions and filters. The performance was wickedly fast.
To see how well the layers worked, I placed images from MediaClips' Animal Kingdom CD-ROM into Photoshop. The layers feature was intuitive and simple in design. In fact, I was able to use it without having to refer to the manual at all.
You can drag and drop floating selections from one open document to another without having to use the clipboard. Double-clicking on the Floating Selection item in the...