Adobe Photoshop CS2

Before I downloaded and installed Photoshop CS2, I was going to complain about Adobe's shopping cart (hint: if you can't fix your address in the login screen, CALL them; it's the only way) … but that was before I fired up CS2.

Whoa. This 350MB download is … rather amazing. First, there's the Adobe Bridge, a File/Browse feature in the File menu; I hadn't seen anything like this earlier. Maneuver to any folder and it'll display *all* folders as well as images, and dates for each. Much easier to find stuff, perhaps after I got past the idea of how strange it is to be able to do this at all.

Then there are some Spot Healing and Red-Eye tools. And other stuff. Yes, there is other stuff.

Now, I don't usually upgrade any software with every version. I'd already gotten Photoshop CS (along with Illustrator, InDesign, etc.) so I'd not thought to upgrade quite so immediately because, I thought, it probably wasn't worth it. Then I got one of those gorgeous, extremely creative Adobe emails (one of four, it said) with a link to a Flash movie explaining just some of the new features. After just a couple of features, I decided I had to have it. Who said email doesn't work?

The Photoshop CS2 install — accomplished via the Adobe installer — was reasonably fast and definitely smooth, walking me through a series of steps and registration. I haven't let a program do that in years, but this was nice. Then, while I was playing with CS2, I got another Adobe email saying, "Thanks for registering. Now for the good part" — which proceeded to offer me my choice of one of three rather tasty bonuses. Really: offering a bonus that they didn't tell you about ahead of time in order to entice you into buying. Gotta hand it to Adobe; how elegant is that?

So, I'm off to play with CS2, and to await the new Macromedia Dreamweaver/Flash release. Who said having fun wasn't creative?