Photoshop 4

The constant recourse to the menus for changing between effects is clearly wasteful, and the new Free Transform command is designed to make such mouse work redundant. Selecting the command, or its shortcut, puts a bounding box around the selection. Dragging on the box's corner handles will resize the element while dragging outside rotates it. By right-clicking and using the context-sensitive menu, it's possible to skew, distort and add a perspective effect. If such control is a little too interactive, the new Numeric Transform allows similar management but set precisely through a dialog box.

Apart from the changes to the handling of selections, the core working of Photoshop 4 is very similar to that in version 3. There are no changes to the controls over tonal maps, levels, colour correction and so on, presumably because there's nothing further to add. The same can't be said for Photoshop's tools, however, which have also been relatively unaffected. When shareware programs like Paint Shop Pro offer artistic brushes, the fact that Photoshop steadfastly refuses to seems like a point of principle.

At least one tool has been given a much-needed revamp. In the past, the gradient tool was limited to basic linear or radial fades from one colour to another. Now Photoshop comes with a range of 20 pre-defined gradient effects including options like spectrum and chrome. It's also possible to create your own gradients by clicking on the Edit command in the Gradient Options palette. By inserting markers it's possible to add multiple colours and control the gradient's opacity at each point. The end results are far more fluid and realistic, but the limitation to linear or radial effects is a clear weakness compared with the swirling freeform gradient textures offered by some other programs.

Gradients are also important as masks to protect and partially apply image filters. Photoshop 4 now comes with 90 of these filters, double the previous number, thanks to the incorporation of the previously separate Adobe Gallery Effects. All of the new filters are genuinely useful, with most, such as rough pastels or stained glass, tending towards the artistic. A major criticism is that in each case the Photoshop preview doesn't affect the whole image, but only a small thumbnail. Moreover, since there often seems to be little connection between the preview and the final effect, you can be left working blind. On the positive side, the new Fade command allows the strength of the filter to be easily changed retrospectively.

Web mastery

One of the most fundamental changes that has happened to the world of graphics since the last Photoshop release has been the massive explosion of interest in the Internet. Photoshop 4 acknowledges this through its improved support for Web file formats. Support for transparency in GIF files was already available through an Export add-on, but now there's also support for progressive JPEGs with total control over compression settings. Completely new is the Portable Network Graphic (PNG) format which offers lossless, highly-compressed, progressive, full colour RGB images with the ability to include mask channel information, and gamma and chromaticity data for improved colour matching.

But apart from the improved support for file formats, and a link to Adobe's home page, Photoshop's Web offerings are pretty meagre. There's nothing like PhotoImpact's SmartSaver, for example, which allows the effects of compression settings and colour reduction to be previewed on screen, so ensuring the optimum trade-off between quality and file size. Neither is there direct support for creating image maps or background tiles, and I've a strong feeling that hell will freeze over before Photoshop includes a button designer or GIF animator.