Another new addition to Photoshop 7 is the pattern making tool. This generates a pattern (tiled or seamless) from any portion of an image, which can then be used in conjunction with other Photoshop tools that are capable of using patterns.

Like most of the other new features, the pattern maker is very simple to use. Select an image and go to 'filters> pattern maker' to open the pattern making window. From here, you can select a portion of the image to make into a pattern. Once you have your selection, adjust the detail, tile size and generate up to 20 different versions before saving them into Photoshop's tile library. If you wish to create a seamless pattern, you can use the 'use image size' button to create a single pattern the size of your original image.

The pattern maker is an interesting tool, but not one that we found much use for. We could see how being able to create custom patterns easily within Photoshop could come in handy though. Adobe's usage example was to fill out the background of a picture with a pattern derived from the foreground vegetation, but we could think of several other uses.

New 'liquify' effects

Photoshop 7 brings some changes to the liquify command, aiming to increase its usefulness. Sensibly, a hand tool and a magnifying glass tool have been added to the command's window, allowing navigation and magnification of the selected image. A multiple-step undo has also been added to the interface.

In terms of new features, you can now bring up a somewhat transparent background image of any or all other layers of the image you are working on. This allows you to get a sense of the changes you are making without leaving the liquify window. This is a great addition, allowing you to get a real sense of how the finished image will look right in the liquify window.

A new 'turbulence' effect has been added, creating a wavy distortion ideal for smoke or choppy water effects. We had some fun playing with this feature!

Distorted 'meshes' created with the liquify tool can also be saved and applied to other images. This enables you to create a mesh on a low resolution version of an image, save it, then apply it to a higher res version of the same image, saving significant processing time.

Spell Checker!

Adobe has also introduced a spell checking engine to Photoshop 7. This is a long-overdue feature for those of us who create business documents with the program. The spell checker can use multiple languages as you'd expect, and seems to work reasonably well. As a bonus for those of us working north of the border, the 'English USA' dictionary set does not flag Canadian spelling differences, so we get to keep our local 'colour' without a hassle.

PDF security features

Photoshop 7 integrates the PDF security features now available in Adobe Acrobat, meaning it can encrypt .PDF format files with 128-bit RCA password encryption.