Adobe Photoshop has led the still image postproduction industry for over a decade. It has evolved from being a tool used almost strictly in professional circles, to becoming a household name. It has become so popular and is so effective a program that the term “Photoshopped” has been coined to refer to an image that has been manipulated in some way. This program is so extensive and powerful, that there is still no program that can rival it, even after all these years.
It’s only been 18 months since Photoshop CS3 Extended was released, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was still trying to wrap my head around CS3 when CS4 was announced. Like many of you, I felt that CS3 met my needs. I never really ran into any barriers in its regular day to day use, so let’s find out what makes CS4 so much better than CS3.
The Adjustment and Mask Panels are two of the most noticeable changes Adobe has made to the interface. Not only are these huge timesavers, they are very intuitive and user friendly.
Ease of Use
Photoshop’s layout has always presented a challenge to it’s designers to make it endless in options, yet had an intuitive interface. Because this is the most advanced image manipulation program available, it has a rather steep learning curve. It usually takes a new user some getting used to in order to learn how to apply changes and navigate through the different options. Without correction, this learning curve for the beginner could become more and more intimidating as the versions progressed.
However, Adobe’s latest solution to diminishing the learning curve is the addition of the Adjustment Panel and Mask Panel. These panels conveniently contain all the most used options that you would previously have to access by going to through a number of adjustment options. Not only is this a huge time saver (in fact Adobe sites 89% less mouse travel for using adjustment layers), but it provides a visual reference to new users who want to make changes to their image or video.
Multiple images are now opened in tabs, creating a cleaner and more organized way of navigating through images.
If you use Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture, nondestructive editing is arguably one of the most important features of these programs. Now, improved nondestructive editing comes to Photoshop in the form of adjustment layers (in addition to the improved Camera RAW 5.2 plugin that is accessible in Photoshop, Bridge, and Lightroom). Adjustment layers have been a crucial part of Photoshop for the past decade, and now we see them become the heart of editing in Photoshop. (Note: Adjustments are only nondestructive if they are made in the adjustments panel, via creating a separate adjustment layer, or if performed inside the Camera RAW plugin on RAW photos.)
Other great improvements include new images, video streams, or 3D objects being opened in separate tabs for each new item. There is no need to drag and resize open photos to create room, and no cascading imports unless you prefer it that way. There is also the addition of an application bar, which gives you readily available options of how you want your picture(s) displayed. If you are buying CS4 Extended, in addition to 18 other new options in the extended toolbar, you will notice the inclusion of “3D” in the menu bar, which lists all the 3D options for the program. (This simplifies all use of 3D in Photoshop tremendously. More on that next.)
Adobe Photoshop has led the still image postproduction industry for over a decade. It has evolved from being a tool used almost strictly in professional circles, to becoming a household name. It has become so popular and is so effective a program that the term “Photoshopped” has been coined to refer to an image that has been manipulated in some way. This program is so extensive and powerful, that there is still no program that can rival it, even after all these years.
