I've been testing Photoshop 6.0 out for a couple of weeks now and am ready to pass a verdict, and unfortunately, I cannot pass a positive verdict here. Note that I am not an opponent of Adobe and I swear by their software on any occasion.

The good:

Layer management. This is wonderful. I cannot understate how important it is to have sets of layers in the layer menu. Adobe finally upgraded the layers. One small tip: Adobe advertised that adding an effect to a set would only apply to a set. At first it seems like it doesnt work: try playing with the overlay options and you'll notice that it does work. It's not perfect, but this is probably the best improvement of the program.

Mixed blessings:

A new toolbar. The first thing I noticed was the context sensitive toolbar. It sits on the top of the screen and is very useful for any beginner. You can select your tool, look at all of the options that used to be harder to find throughout the program. It's a great idea. That being said, toggling a lot in Photoshop (which I normally do) has a problem: the tab key, which gets rid of all of the menus, gets rid of the context bar as well. In 5.5, a toggle will cause the menus to disappear and the graphic stays put. In 6.0, it moves upward when you turn off the menus and downward when you turn them on. This is a major pain when you are focusing on 1 element of a photo or a graphic.

Text. The second thing that I noticed was the new text tool. If you thought that the text tool in 5.5 was revolutionary, 6.0 finally got it right: you feel like you can type onto the image without the text window being separate. It's finally a true WYSIWIG feel the text tool. Until you realize that selecting the options that are important: the leading, baseline, and tracking aren't easy to access anymore. In fact, you need to click on the new context toolbar to get those options. And this is even worse for *any* true Photoshop jock: when you are typing away and finish typing, you *CANNOT* quickly switch to another tool via hotkey. You need to use your mouse to select another tool, which slows down Photoshop production considerably. I am waiting for Adobe to figure something out because the key to the program is hotkeys.

The bad:

The help file. Why do I say that? Because the help file has a habit of crashing the program. I'm not the only person with the problem: everyone on the Photoshop 6 message boards have been complaining about the same problem. Adobe needs to patch this one up very soon.

The vector graphics. Adobe claims that this program will be completely integrated to the point where you believe that you will never need your copy of Illustrator again. Hang onto it. Vectors are worked into Photoshop, but not at a high level of usability. My guess is that something like Photoshop 6.5 will have the vectors more integrated, but until then, don't think that this is an Illustrator replacement.

Conclusion:

I bought my copy already, but I don't recommend buying this software yet. It has *plenty* of promise, but too many downfalls to switch over from 5.5. My advice: wait for an update patch from Adobe.



Recommended: No