Photoshop 7 offers a few new features that might make you decide it is time to upgrade. The new File Browser, Healing Brush, and Web Gallery alone are enticing enough, but there is more. There is the ability to create your own workspace and a multi-lingual spell checker to name a few. Let's check them out.

File Browser

Open dialogue window

With the adoption of WinXP technology, I no longer have to wonder what is behind the file called IMG-302.jpg. I just select Thumbnails as the display option and a thumbnail of the image is displayed above the file name. This technology is now incorporated into Photoshop as well. Used to be, when you wanted to see what was in a specific file, you would use the Open dialogue box and click on a file to see a thumbnail at the bottom of the window.

With the File Browser, you can see a list of your files, thumbnail-sized. So now when the filename is not at all intuitive (like IMG-302.jpg), you don't have to sift through so many Open previews before finding the one you want.

Besides letting you see your images side-by-side, the File Browser also lets you sort images (by name, file size, file type, resolution, color profile, date created, date modified, etc), and manage folders (create, rename folders, move, delete, etc).

Also in this section, you can batch rename your files.

Change the name from the generic filename assigned by the digital camera or scanner into one more meaningful.

Workflow/Workgroup
We hear this buzz-word a lot these days, and it sounds really sophisticated and cool. But it just refers to how you manage your image from capture to presentation. And the ideal is to do this as efficiently as possible. What used to be called workflow in Photoshop, is now called a more descriptive workgroup, and a new feature has been added.

• Photoshop 7.0 has a file sharing option (lower left corner of the screen). If you have a team of designers who work on the same images, it can get confusing and even destructive. If two people are working on the same file at the same time, the last person to Save wins, and the other guy's work is wiped out. With this feature, you can Check Out a file when you are working on it. Anybody who tries to edit while you have it Checked Out, will see that it is already in use, and unavailable for editing. In order to use this feature, you must be working on a WebDav server.

Tool Presets are a real time-saver. Always use 300 dpi when cropping? Or maybe use 72 dpi and a preset size regularly for your web work? Define these settings and save them as presets to be chosen next time you call up the tool. Kind of like a mini-action.

The workspace is customizable. Never use the color window? Or maybe you'd rather have the windows on the left side of the screen. Drag and drop windows and tabs within windows so they are the way you want them. Yes, we have been able to do this for a while, but now we can save this setup for loading later. This is especially helpful for those who share a computer (don't you hate when you have it set up just like you want it and someone else comes along and totally revamps it?) You will save (as a named workspace), everything about your workspace that you customized, including the tool presets.

Spell checker has arrived Huh? We are working with images here--but don't forget there is that Text tool). Spell checker has a multi-lingual dictionary and can be used on more than one layer at a time. No more misspelled text (as long as you use it :-)

Auto Color
Unlike Auto Levels which I hardly ever used because of the ghastly colors that resulted, Auto Color actually does a decent job in several instances, and might help with quick-and-dirty color management.

Rearranged Toolbox
The airbrush has disappeared. You can vary the opacity and flow of the regular brush to achieve the same results. New in this version are the Healing Brush and Patch tools.  

• New Brush Palette
  Brush handling is far more creative these days. Eleven new settings (Shape Dynamics, Scattering, Texture, Dual Brush, Color Dynamics, Other Dynamics, Noise, Wet Edges, Airbrush, Smoothing and Protect Texture) give you more power over the results. You can create your own brushes (as always) and save them as a preset. Healing Brush
  This one will blow your mind the first time you use it. The main result of this tool is to remove dust, scratches, wrinkles, blemishes, bags under the eyes, etc. As you paint, the brush acts like the Clone Stamp tool, and you think "what is so different about this?" As soon as you stop, though, the cloned area is processed and merged into the underlying pixels, preserving the original texture and lighting. So the cloned-over look disappears as well as the blemish that was originally there.

  Before

  After

• Patch Tool
  Similar to the Healing Brush, the Patch tool removes blemishes while preserving the original. You first make a selection (any selection tool will do, you can even use channels). Then drag your selection over to an area of similar lighting/texture but without blemishes and let go of the mouse. The blemishes magically disappear.

Image Collections

• Web Gallery
  If you put pictures up on the web (and who doesn't these days), you are going to love this time-saver. Instead of spending hours cropping, saving a full-sized image, then cropping, renaming and saving a thumbnail-sized image, then writing the HTML to make separate web pages for each image complete with navigation, let Photoshop do it for you. The resulting format might not be exactly your style, but it is perfect for things like client reviews that have to be done quickly and will only stay live for a short time. An example of a web gallery created with Photoshop with just a few tweaks.
• Picture Packing
  This little gem enables you to automatically layout a number of pictures on a page. (Often I will have a batch of images I need made into 4x5 preview prints. I will batch 4 of them onto 1 8x10 pages and cut later. This saves on paper and printing time).

Bottom Line
Is it worth spending the bucks for the upgrade? In my humble opinion, there are 2 features that justify the move -- The Healing Brush and the Web Gallery. If you do a lot of retouching, you will wonder how you ever lived without the Healing Brush. And the time savings realized by using the Web Gallery will more than pay for the upgrade.