for my new copy of Photoshop CS2 to get here. As usual, I had to finagle the upgrade. For some reason Management takes the cynical view of upgrades, assuming that the new features are tricks to get weak minded people to buy something they don’t really need. Too used to dealing with Microsoft, I guess. Ironically, I finagled it as part of the $1500 Adobe Video Collection Professional. Whew, sure glad we saved that 150 bucks for the upgrade. So that also means I now have a bunch of meta-cool goodies like Premier, Aftereffects, Audition & Encore but that’s a separate happy dance.

As usual, the hoi palloi are myopically obsessed with Photoshop’s ability to mess with reality, but for those of us whose work generally takes place outside the intelligence or conspiracy theory communities, this is a minor amusement for after hours.

So what has me salivating? The easy batch processing built into Bridge for one. This is perfect for those perfectiony jobs like contrast tweaks where you don’t want to mess with a batch. Along a similar vein but even more useful is the multiple layer control. I’ve long dreamt of the ability to perform the same task on a bunch of different layers all at the same time. As usual there are a bunch of really neat features that I’ll probably never have a valid use for, but are nice to have nonetheless - vanishing point and image warp. I’m going to have to wait and see what this SmartObject thing is all about - sounds pretty amazing, but I want to see it in action.

So here’s the rest of the coverage from people who know better than me – NyTimes, Photoshop News, Photography Hack