Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Upgrade [Old Version]

by Adobe

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00004YNJL
• Item model number: 23101337
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 31, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,755 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

With each new release of Photoshop, Adobe manages both to satisfy the expectations of existing users and to pull a few magic features out of its hat. Version 6 is no exception. Powerful vector editing and masking, improved layer controls, layer styles, incredible typographic control, new Web publishing tools, and a cleaner, more accessible interface are already making version 5.5, itself a groundbreaker, look like ancient history.

Photoshop's new vector features provide even more control when compositing photographic images. You can use the vector drawing tools simply to create polygons and custom shapes, but they can also act as layer clipping paths--vector masks that hide or reveal image areas in underlying layers.

Editable layer effects such as drop shadow and glow were introduced in version 5.5; in version 6, they have been renamed layer styles. New options include satin, stroke and color, gradient, and pattern overlay. The layer styles dialogue box provides much more control--bevel and emboss has five style options, as well as adjusters for technique, depth, direction, size, soften, angle, attitude, gloss, contour, highlight mode, opacity--and that's not all of them. As the name suggests, layer styles can easily be saved and applied to other layers.

You can enter and edit text directly onto the layer and set style attributes from the new tool options bar. Photoshop 6 seems to have benefited from some of InDesign's superb typographic tools, with character and paragraph palettes providing precise control. Web imaging tools have been revamped, with layer-based slicing now available from within Photoshop itself, and a major overhaul of ImageReady introducing weighted optimization, rollover styles, and tweened animation.

If you want the best image editing software that money can buy, look no further. For users of 5.5, there never was a more compelling reason to upgrade. --Ken McMahon

Amazon.com Product Description

Adobe Photoshop 6.0 software introduces the next generation of imageediting with powerful new features that offer something for every user. Delivering a broad and productive tool set, Photoshop helps you explore your creativity, work at peak efficiency, and achieve the highest-quality results across all media. Combine vector drawing tools and new layer design features that greatly enhance your creative options, output razor-sharp text and shapes from Photoshop, and take advantage of an expanded Web tool kit that includes the new ImageReady 3.0 software for advanced Web processing. Use text warping and image distortion tools to manipulate and experiment. Photoshop's timesaving features help you break new ground and still beat your deadlines. Master the power of Photoshop faster with user-interface enhancements that help you to get to work quickly and make it easy to take full advantage of the comprehensive tool set.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Improvement with obscurity, February 25, 2001

By 

David Walker (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Upgrade [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

Adobe Photoshop has until recently been a full-timer's tool. Like Oracle or Unix, you either lived in it and loved it, or you didn't use it at all.

But the Photoshop user base is changing. The Web has boosted the demand for bitmap graphics, and created a new breed of multimedia developers who use a huge range of tools for content creation and publication. And the rise of digital cameras and scanners has opened bitmap editing to consumers.

So Photoshop is changing from its traditional position as part of Adobe's imaging solution, a tool to be used alongside Illustrator and Web-aware tools like ImageReady and ImageStyler. Now it's eating features from the rest of Adobe's imaging line.

* Photoshop eats Illustrator: Photoshop 6.0 has sprouted serious text-editing tools. They end the old routine of importing Illustrator text to Photoshop. Decent control of letter spacing and justification appears for the first time. And Photoshop text is now editable on the page, a mere six years of so after the under-rated and now sadly wasted Corel Photo-Paint first performed this trick.

* Photoshop eats ImageReady. The new ImageReady 3.0 is bundled with Photoshop 6.0, just as its predecessor was biundled with Photoshop 5.5. And Web tasks such as JavaScript rollovers and animations still require you to jump to ImageReady, an inconvenient process. But ImageReady 2.0's simple shape-creation tools have made it to Photoshop this time around. ImageReady's on track to disappear completely into Photoshop at about Photoshop 7.0.

* Photoshop eats ImageStyler. ImageStyler 1.0's slightly gimmicky but sometimes useful "styles" appear in Photoshop 6.0 too, letting you create buttons and, um, more buttons. There's little chance of a separate ImageStyler 2.0.

So Photoshop now does most of what a Web developer would want it to do. It has garnered mostly laudatory reviews, both for its continuing power and for implementing features that other programs already had. But there are prices to be paid. There's the money: at around $A1400 street or $A400 for the upgrade, Adobe gives the Mastercard a beating it won't soon forget. There's the speed; version 6.0 runs slower than any before it. And there's the famous Photoshop learning curve, which is becoming a problem as Adobe aims Photoshop at that wider audience.

The loyalists won't acknowledge it, but Adobe has an interface problem. The program works like Unix, letting power users into an exclusive club while alienating everyone else. It has added a new context-sensitive toolbar to version 6.0. Yet it still buries powerful features and eschews basic interface devices like a Save button in favour of memorable keyboard combinations like Control-Alt-Shift-S (that's the command for saving a Web-ready graphic, so Web developers should keep their fingers flexible). The new shape-creation tools have aspects that are obscure even by Adobe's standards. So an increasing number of mid-level Photoshop users - especially Web development shops and individual users - are paying for power they can't access. They've bought a BMW, but they can't get it out of second gear.

This interface problem, though, seems unlikely to end Photoshop's dominance. The program's new audience is following the high-end professionals' lead. They want industry-standard tools. And amongst bitmap graphics professionals, Photoshop remains the industry standard.

If you do Web development, know Photoshop, own fast hardware and you're currently with version 5.0 or earlier - or if you create substantial amounts of bitmap text or simple button-like shapes - Photoshop 6.0 is a worthwhile investment. As long as you can afford it, and as long as you're prepared for its sometimes unnecessary difficulties.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Application  Could Have Stood a Bit More Testing, November 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Upgrade [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

PhotoShop is without a doubt the best digital image editing software on the market. However, Adobe seems to have placed testing of the application on the users who fork over the big bucks and stake their livelihood on its use. If you check the User to User Forum on Adobe's WebSite, you will see the large number of problems people are experiencing with this product. Foremost is speed. Take the minimum system requirements on the box and times those by 4 if you expect it to run efficiently. Also there are many features that either do not work correctly or were just not thought out well when designed. If you are a graphics professional, you will find some of the new features and design a work flow killer. The guides and slice tool are not precise, the text tool is half thought out and there are many features hidden away in right mouse click menus such as text attributes like bold and italic and layer options (you can't rename layers without going to a menu anymore). There is a complete lack of consistency between PhotoShop, ImageReady and Illustrator, which makes no sense at all. I am finding myself switching back and forth between 5.5 and 6. Hopefully, with all of the complaints, Adobe is finding out what real world users need in an application (not what programmers and product people think we need) and are working on a patch.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent as always yet buggy for some users., January 6, 2001

By 

D. Pritchard (Fort Worth, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Upgrade [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

With this latest iteration of Photoshop, Adobe has improved upon the program usability while still not doing perhaps as much as they could. While some folks still express a preference for some of the old interface features, I think the overall opinions on the new tweaks are positive...such as the Options bar now being at the top, a full slew of layer options being more quickly accessible, and a palette well to help declutter the screen. Anyone using Photoshop 6 on a Windows 2000 PC, particularly if Norton Utilities are installed, is apt to see some problems and is well advised to peruse suggested solutions at the Adobe Photoshop users forum. Initially I observed significantly slow operations for some tasks but disabling Norton Protection eliminated them altogether. There have also been some complications with the Epson 1270 Photo printer on a USB port, again resolved per information learned at the Photoshop forum.

For prior Photoshop users, it is wise to maintain your old installation until you learn how well PS6 works for you and whether it is very buggy or not. An update is forthcoming but I've not heard just how soon. DO NOT install over prior versions, but rather in a separate path. Some plugins may not work or be installable, yet they may work if you simply copy them from the old to the new installation. In particular, Extensis Phototools will not work and the 3.06 update download from Extensis is needed. This will result in removal of the very convenient Photobars component but I have managed to recover that component from a Photoshop 5.5 installation. I have remapped all toolbar buttons for carried-over menu items as well as adding buttons for new menu items. Those changes are freely available by a download from my website. Since URLs are not permitted in these reviews, you may learn of the location by either visiting the Extensis Phototools forum or the Adobe Photoshop users forum, searching on the phrase "Photobars 6.0".

All in all, this is a very welcome upgrade but don't be surprised to see some problems after installation. If you do, by all means visit the Photoshop users forum for a review of problems mentioned there and any solutions offered.