Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe Photoshop 4.0 for Windows and Macintosh, a new version of the world-standard photo-design and production tool. Available in 18 languages, Adobe Photoshop is the product of choice for graphic designers, photographers, Webmasters and multimedia authors for the creation of high-quality print, multimedia and Web graphics. This new version provides features that dramatically increase user productivity and creative control, allow users to work more efficiently with all Adobe's market-leading graphics products, and streamline the process of preparing images for the World Wide Web.

"With more than two million users worldwide, Photoshop is the de facto standard for graphic design, digital photography and prepress production," said Bryan Lamkin, director for Adobe graphics products. "In addition, Photoshop has emerged as the leading tool for Web page production. With Version 4.0, we focused on delivering a robust product that gives our users increased functionality in areas that matter to them the most: productivity, creative control, ease-of-use, and image preparation for the World Wide Web."

Photoshop 4.0 Enhances User Productivity

The Actions feature in Photoshop Version 4.0 dramatically increases user productivity with the ability to automate editing functions, streamlining tasks such as image retouching and downsampling, file conversion, filter operations, and even batch processing of multiple images. A groundbreaking new feature for image editing, Actions allow users to process one image, or multiple images quickly and easily by recording functions as an "action list." Additionally, multiple images can be acquired from a digital camera and processed in batches, so users can be more efficient. To provide consistency within a production environment, Actions can be saved and shared with others. Users will also benefit from pre-saved Actions in Version 4.0 for tasks such as downsampling images to 72 dpi for Web posting, saving GIF and JPEG files with optimal Web settings, and adding drop shadows to text.

"Adobe Photoshop 4.0 is a big jump forward, providing users with enormous creativity and productivity gains," said Jeff Schewe, professional photographer and photo-imaging artist in Chicago, Illinois. "The ability to automate routine tasks using Actions provides a huge time-saving benefit."

The Guides and Grids feature in Version 4.0 makes it easy to build Web pages, or composites, providing greater accuracy in placing and aligning images. Users will be more productive with precise zooming and panning capabilities using the new Navigator palette. Also, when working with large images, Photoshop users will immediately notice significant improvements in responsiveness with Version 4.0 when scrolling, zooming, moving selections, and compositing layers, allowing them to work more efficiently.

Adobe Photoshop continues to lead the imaging market with support for the latest hardware and operating system advances, offering users increased functionality and performance. Photoshop users will benefit from dramatic speed improvements when using machines with multiple processors on either the Macintosh and Windows NT platforms, due to Version 4.0's extensive symmetric multiprocessing capabilities.

Powerful Creative Control

Adobe Photoshop 4.0 provides unparalleled creative control with features such as Adjustment Layers, the Free Transform tool and Custom Gradients. With Adjustment Layers, Photoshop users now have the ability to perform image color adjustments without affecting the original image data. This allows for unlimited experimentation with adjustments such as hue and saturation, brightness and contrast and overall color balance, and provides the option to "undo," or refine the adjustments at a later time.

"Adjustment Layers are outstanding and will totally change the way color correction and adjustments are done," continued Schewe. "With enhancements such as Actions, Guides and Grids and Adjustment Layers, Photoshop continues to be the most comprehensive, full-featured image editing program available."

The Custom Gradients palette lets users achieve new levels of creativity with the ability to customize multi-color gradients, with varying opacity, that can be saved and shared. The Free Transform tool preserves image fidelity with the ability to perform multiple transformations, such as skew, rotate, and scale, in a single step. In addition, Photoshop 4.0 doubles the number of artistic filters offered in the program by adding forty-eight new creative effects.

Adobe Photoshop 4.0 offers breakthrough technology for the protection of intellectual property with the addition of digital watermark capabilities. An industry first in an image-editing application, this feature allows users to embed an imperceptible digital watermark containing artist and copyright information in an image. When a watermarked file is opened, Adobe Photoshop 4.0 will automatically indicate that copyright information is present. Adding a watermark to images can also be automated with the Actions feature, allowing users to add a digital watermark to multiple images in a batch process.

Strong Integration Across Adobe Graphics Applications

User interface enhancements and improved interoperability available in Photoshop 4.0 will enable users to work seamlessly between Adobe graphics applications. Version 4.0 features an updated look-and-feel that will also be found in future versions of other Adobe graphics applications, such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe PageMaker. Common terminology, shortcut keys, menu structure, and Tab palette design that will be shared among Adobe products will give users a familiar interface and enable them to quickly become more productive with Photoshop and other Adobe software. "Adobe's continual improvements to the interoperability between Photoshop and its other products such as Adobe Illustrator allows us to work much more effectively," said Josh Feldman, creative director for Prophet Communications, a Web design and content creation firm based in San Francisco, California.

Enhanced Image Production and Integration for the World Wide Web

Already an indispensable tool for print graphics, Photoshop bridges the gap between traditional print and Web publishing, providing the most robust features for the creation of high-quality graphics for both environments. The Actions feature in Photoshop 4.0 not only streamlines graphic artists' design process, but allows users involved in Web image processing to easily perform batch file conversions and downsampling, saving valuable time.

"Adobe Photoshop is the ideal tool for our graphics production and Web preparation needs. Features in Adobe Photoshop 4.0 such as Actions make the program even more indispensable to us," continued Feldman. "The Actions palette streamlines the process of working with different file formats while preparing graphics for the Web-a process that is very time-consuming. The ability within Photoshop to automate tasks through Actions such as converting files to different formats will save a tremendous amount of time and effort."

New file format support in Version 4.0 provides users with a broad range of useful Web file formats, including Portable Network Graphics (PNG), progressive JPEG and the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Additionally, users will save time and money by having direct access to Photoshop product and technical information, updates and plug-ins, on the Adobe home page via a Web link within Photoshop 4.0. Adobe is the first company to provide dynamic access to product information from within a software application, and will extend this functionality to other Adobe products as new versions are released. (A more comprehensive list of new features follows in the attached Addendum.)

New Features Addendum

Improved Productivity Actions -- The Actions palette enables users to record a sequence of editing steps as an Action that can then be applied to another selection in the same image, to another image file, or even to hundreds of files in a batch operation. Users can play an action with selected steps disabled or display selected dialog boxes during playback in order to interactively adjust the filter settings. The order in which tasks are executed can easily be edited by simple dragging-and-dropping functions. Multiple actions can be displayed simultaneously in the Actions palette, and sets of actions can be saved and loaded separately. A special feature of Actions is the ability to batch-acquire images from a digital camera, allowing for an entire set of images to be acquired, retouched, and saved to files automatically.

Adobe Photoshop Version 4.0 will support Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, Macintosh and Power Macintosh, and will be available in 18 languages worldwide. The new version is expected to ship in Q4 1996 for the suggested retail price of $895 and will be available from Adobe Authorized Resellers or directly from Adobe. The program will ship on CD-ROM (floppy disks available upon request for a nominal charge), and will include an interactive tutorial CD-ROM, stock photography, sample plug-ins, a digital gallery and Adobe tryout software. Registered owners of any previous full version may purchase the Version 4.0 upgrade for $149. Upgrades from Photoshop LE to the full Version 4.0 are $249. Users purchasing Version 3.0 on, or after, September 9, 1996, will receive a free upgrade to Version 4.0. For more information, customers may call 800-833-6687.

Return to today's headlines

Copyright 1997 - 2008
GVP.DSJ Inc Web Development & GetMeOnTop SEO & Search Optimization NYC