Photoshop 7 is a truly exciting upgrade from Adobe. Whether you’ll be receiving your copy soon after it ships in mid-April or are waiting to upgrade, there are some things you can do to smooth the transition.

The first step in making a smooth transition from Photoshop 6 to Photoshop 7 is checking your hardware. The requirements for Photoshop 7 are pretty substantial.

WINDOWS

• You’ll need Windows 98 or later. Windows NT requires Service Pack 2. Windows XP Home and Professional run Photoshop 7.

• Your computer needs a Pentium III or Pentium 4 (or equivalent) processor. P-I and P-II CPUs won’t cut the mustard.

• An absolute minimum of 128 MB of physical RAM-just for Photoshop. (This does not include the memory required to run your operating system and any other programs that you may need to use in conjunction with Photoshop.) 192 MB is suggested for smooth operation of Photoshop 7 and ImageReady 7.

• 280 MB of hard drive space in which to install the program. You can slim that down by doing a Custom install and skipping parts. Don’t forget that you also need free hard drive space for your scratch disk. You need at least as much free space as the memory being used by Photoshop. And that’s in addition to the available hard drive space required by Windows for paging files.

• A minimum of 800×600 pixel resolution on your monitor, at 16-bit color. Remember that at 800×600, you don’t have access to the Palette Well in the Options Bar. (This resolution is supported primarily for laptops.) 16-bit color is called “Medium (16 Bit)” or “High Color (16 Bit)” depending upon your version of Windows.

MACINTOSH

• Mac OS 9.1, 9.2, or OS X (version 10.1.3 or later). Photoshop 7 can run natively in OS X or in Classic mode, and is fully-functional on Mac OS 9 machines.

• G3 or G4 processor(s) are required. Early G3s may be a bit pokey on some processor-intensive operations, such as filters, on large files.
• At least 128 MB of RAM fore the program alone. You’ll need additional RAM for your OS and any programs that run in conjunction with Photoshop. 192 MB of RAM is suggested, especially if you run Photoshop and ImageReady together.

• 320 MB of hard drive space in which to install the program. You can trim that by doing a Custom install and skipping parts. Don’t forget that you also need free hard drive space for your scratch disk. You need at least as much free space as the memory being used by Photoshop. And that’s in addition to the available hard drive space required by the Mac OS for Virtual Memory.
• A minimum of 800×600 pixel resolution on your monitor, at 16-bit color. Remember that at 800×600, you don’t have access to the Palette Well in the Options Bar. (This resolution is supported primarily for laptops.) The Mac OS refers to 16-bit color as “Thousands.”
If your hardware doesn’t meet the minimum requirements, hold off on upgrading to Photoshop 7. This is especially true of the processor and memory requirements. (I’d hate to think that you’d be unhappy with this great upgrade because it’s not running properly….)

SAVING CUSTOM ACTIONS AND STYLES
If you’ve created or collected sets of Actions and Styles, you’ll want to move those to a safe location away from the Photoshop 6 folder. It’s generally a good idea to keep your custom Actions and styles outside the Photoshop folder anyway-you don’t want to accidentally lose them if you’re forced to re-install. Remember that you use the palette Load command to bring Actions and styles into Photoshop, so they can be located anywhere, even on Zip disks or CDs.

EASING IN….

For many, the transition to Photoshop 7 will be seamless. Others may not be as comfortable with the latest version. Generally, you can keep Photoshop 6 on your computer during a transition period, working with either or both programs. Once you’re comfortable with Photoshop 7, however, there’s no reason to tie up disk space with the older version-Photoshop 6 doesn’t do anything that can’t be done in Photoshop 7.

PHOTOSHOP’S PREFERENCE FILE: OS X and WINDOWS XP

When Photoshop starts acting strangely, a quick fix is often replacement of the Preferences file. (Full information can be found at http://www.planetphotoshop.com/tutorials/PeteBauer22.html)
In Mac OS X, the preferences files are stored on a user-by-user basis. On the hard drive, open the Users folder, find you user name, and go to your Library folder. Inside the Library folder, you’ll find Preferences. Within is the Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Settings folder. That’s the location of the Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Prefs file. You’re looking for:
Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Settings/Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Prefs.
For Windows XP, You’ve got two challenges: Finding the file and making it visible. Here’s the Prefs location:

Documents and Settings/[user name]/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop/7.0/Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Settings/Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Prefs

To enable Windows XP to show hidden files and folders:
1. Choose Tools > Folder Options, View > Options and then click the View tab.
2. Select “Show hidden files and folders” in the “Hidden files and folders” section, and then click OK.

And, while you’re waiting for Photoshop 7 to arrive, keep an eye on Planet Photoshop as we show you many of the new features.

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