PC World gave Photoshop CS2 a
luke-warm review in the last
issue of the magazine. IMHO the reviewers' comments focus on trivial points and in some cases are just plain wrong. But
hey — I guess they had to do something to differentiate their article from all the other glowing reviews of CS2. Let's
take a closer look:
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The authors complain that the new Spot Healing Brush gives you less control than the regular Healing Brush. (Right, because the Spot Healing Brush is great when you just want quick and dirty spotting. If you want more control, then just switch over to the Healing Brush.)
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They grouse that the controls in the new Noise Reduction Filter aren't adequately labeled. (Yes, learning Photoshop does require a little effort. You can't expect one word labels to explain everything.)
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They suggest there are now too many features. (Can there ever be too many? It's all good.)
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They say that “you can copy a layer style and apply it to other layers, but that layer style may include some attributes you don’t want in other layers.” (Huh? So either don’t copy that layer style, or just trash the unwanted effects from the style on the destination layer.)
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They are misinformed, when they say that “You can’t change the layer blending mode of a group of layers.” (Wrong! Just select a layer group and make a selection from the Blending Mode menu in the Layers palette.)
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They think they can do better combining multiple bracketed images manually than by using the new HDR feature. (Not if you Photoshop like you write, guys.)
Letter to the PC World Editors: If this review reflects the opinion of PC World magazine, then why did you place Photoshop CS2 number 32 in your ranking of all the Top 100 Products of 2005 and praise the product as ”the once and future king of image editing.” Do I sense some inconsistency here?
1. This is why I think blogs are better suited than magazine style reviews in this regard. We can let our dissatisfaction to a blog posting, however unfounded it may seem, readily available alongside the review article. These magazine formats can get away with anything these days.
Posted at 6:36AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Nizam Rahman