Photoshop CS4 announced

photon · September 23, 2008

Links:

What do you think -- worth the upgrade?

kdog · September 23, 2008

photon wrote:

Links:
Photography Bay

Adobe

What do you think -- worth the upgrade?

With new versions of CS coming out ever year, it seems like we're just renting it.

That being said, the new 3D stuff and portraits touch-up features don't seem compelling to me. Maybe I'll get to pass on this one.

RogersDA · September 23, 2008

photon wrote:

Links:
Photography Bay

Adobe

What do you think -- worth the upgrade?

Since I just bought CS3 within the past month so the upgrade should be free. So - why not upgrade. I will get it and listen for any bugs/problems before installing. I just submitted my Post-announce upgrade request to Adobe.

I am interested in the enhancements to nondestructive editing and raw processing, among other things. I am not looking at the extended version - no need for 3D work.

ziggy53 · September 23, 2008

Check out the "Content Aware Scaling":

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/features/include/content-aware-scaling/inline.jpg

There is a video to how it works on this page (along with the other new and enhanced features.)

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/features/?view=topnew

I believe this is the "Seam Carving" demonstrated last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcIJXTlugc

digismile · September 23, 2008

I just watched an hour long product launch for the suite, but they really didn't show much on Photoshop. I also looked at the tutorials on NAPP. There are some interesting new features, but I'm really not sure if I need to run out and get it right away.

Content Aware Scaling looks cool, but it's not something that I believe I would use a lot. Lots of 3D stuff, but not of interest to me.

About the only thing that might make it worthwhile is better integration with Lightroom and supposedly faster rendering/processing (the webinar showed the host zooming and rotating a 2Gb file). Some of the new editting features in Lightroom have now been incorporated into Photoshop (theres a surprise).

Gary Petersen · September 23, 2008

I don't even know what the new features are but I just ordered the upgrade.

Nikolai · September 23, 2008

Now that the cat is finally out of the bag I'd like to share few personal comments about Abobe PS CS4. I must preface these notes that I was only interested in primary photography related workflow, so I can't say much about other apps from the Creative Suite. I also wasn't interested in 3D or Video stuff, so nothing on this part either. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >
Also, I understand that many of the Bridge and, especially, ACR features could have been found in LR2.0

Below are my brief comments I made for myself

Bridge

This is the first app you'll see and, from my experience, will be spending most of your time in.

It's MUCH faster.
<LI id=ql6n>Can use persistent preview instead of generating thumbnails each time
<LI id=ql6n1>New Review mode (Ctrl+B) simplifies the culling process A LOT with its easy-to-use minimalistic left-right-(thumb)down interface. I cannot overemphasize how much the life is easier with this - fairly simple - addition. <LI id=f8v:1>Simple "Space" stroke engages a trimmed down version of SlideShow, instantly bringing image full-screen (and back)
<LI id=bm6->Searches and Smart collections (saved Search results) uses OS-built-in indexing services for huge performance boost
You can AutoStack panoramas/hdrs

Camera RAW (ACR) 5.x

Post Crop Vignetting is a true blessing

All in all in many cases I only found myself launching PS only when I needed to work with multiple layers, add text/fx and such.

Photoshop

<LI id=bm6-2>Holding H (and pressing the mouse) engages a spring loaded bird view (fit all) panning mode (not in all modes) <LI id=ltbv>Animated panning/zooming (requires hardware OpenGL support) <LI id=ugso>Ctrl+Space+MouseDown zooms at the cursor, Alt+Space+MouseDown zooms out <LI id=n0e0>New frameless tabbed UI is actually pretty handy <LI id=wd7x>New advanced histogram <LI id=fa.5>New mask and adjustment layers palette <LI id=wd7x0>Masks can have their own opacity, feathering, edge refining, etc. <LI id=n0e00>New Adjustment Layers:

Vibrance

<LI id=hlnk>Hue/Saturation and Curves adjustment layers have uber-powerful "painting on screen" mode, just like B/W one. <LI id=cspf>New Rotate tool in the main tool bar - with direct on-screen rotation a la LR.<LI id=ltbv0>Better icons and more colors in adjustment layers <LI id=by1y>Ctrl+1 is now 100% view (used to be ctrl+alt+0, which still works), which is more logical for new users, considering Ctrl+0 is "fit the screen".
All the "color channel" views shortcuts are thus shifted by 2 (Composite is Ctrl+2, Red channel is now Ctrl+3, Green Ctrl+4, Blue Ctrl+5) <LI id=lf5t>Spring loaded keys for temporary tool usage <LI id=sow_>Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C for content-aware scaling (Edit menu), aka Seam Carving <LI id=sow_0>Extensions: kuler, and such
[*]Screen sharing (great for team work)
[*]Much improved layer alignment and blending
====
That's what I noted and what I used. I'm sure I only covered the tip of the iceberg. Also, I didn't try that myself, but I know that PS CS4 has a great capability of handling super large files (over 1Gb), and is actually optimized for using 64bit OS. However, my experiments with blending a couple of dozens RAW files seemed to work much better/faster than it was to the case with CS3.

Conclusion

With numerous performance improvement across the board, OGL support, new local tools in ACR, improved and new tools in PS, this version is a much bigger step up from CS3 that the latter was to CS2.

HTH

Nikolai · September 23, 2008

ziggy53 wrote:

Check out the "Content Aware Scaling":
There is a video to how it works on this page (along with the other new and enhanced features.)
I believe this is the "Seam Carving" demonstrated last year:

Yes, and it works great! :-)

pathfinder · September 23, 2008

I am just finally beginning to get CS3 and LR2, so I will be a bit slow to the party I suspect.

But I will probably join the fun later this winter when I have more time.

digismile · September 23, 2008

Nik,

Thanks for the detail. It's a lot more helpful than what I've seen online so far.

I'm wondering how the preview image rendering is on the new version of Bridge. One of the reasons I have been using a trial version of LR2 the last several weeks is that I finally was fed up with the very soft rendering in Bridge. I was forever unsure whether an image was sharp until I opened it in PS. LR2 doesn't have this issue.

In the end, I'm likely to pull the trigger on purchasing LR2 and upgrade my CS3 later. But it would be nice for those that stay just in the Bridge/CS4 workflow that they had decent preview rendering ...

Nikolai wrote:

Conclusion

With numerous performance improvement across the board, OGL support, new local tools in ACR, improved and new tools in PS, this version is a much bigger step up from CS3 that the latter was to CS2.

HTH

Art Scott · September 23, 2008

Resources
Just how much in the way of resources will this new version eat up......

Nikolai · September 23, 2008

digismile wrote:

Nik,

Thanks for the detail. It's a lot more helpful than what I've seen online so far.

I'm wondering how the preview image rendering is on the new version of Bridge. One of the reasons I have been using a trial version of LR2 the last several weeks is that I finally was fed up with the very soft rendering in Bridge. I was forever unsure whether an image was sharp until I opened it in PS. LR2 doesn't have this issue.

In the end, I'm likely to pull the trigger on purchasing LR2 and upgrade my CS3 later. But it would be nice for those that stay just in the Bridge/CS4 workflow that they had decent preview rendering ...

Brad,
while there are options, what I find using the most is a soft preview in a combination with a - considerably more useful - loupe if I need to make sure if my focusing is on target.

Also, (improved) Collections and (new) Smart Collections kinda makeup for LR's Catalogues without the dreaded "import" process.
And, I say it again, speedwise it's awesome...

Nikolai · September 23, 2008

Art Scott wrote:

Just how much in the way of resources will this new version eat up......

It's actually much better with resource using. Guys did some testing against that, memory/VM was released very soon after closing files, etc.
I'm using the same Dell XP3 machine I have been using for 3+ years, it's *much* better under CS4.

arodney · September 24, 2008

There's a nice photo centric overview of CS4 by Martin Evening (who's Photoshop for Photographers book is a must) on Photoshop News:

http://photoshopnews.com/feature-stories/whats-new-in-cs4-by-martin-evening/

Nikolai · September 24, 2008

arodney wrote:

There's a nice photo centric overview of CS4 by Martin Evening (who's Photoshop for Photographers book is a must) on Photoshop News:
http://photoshopnews.com/feature-stories/whats-new-in-cs4-by-martin-evening/

Great link, Andrew, thanks for sharing! Very accurate review, I must say!

Tango · September 24, 2008

hurray for me, i just finished CS1 training....now when i finish CS2 training CS8 should be released

Nik, thanks for the info, very helpful

Tango · September 24, 2008

Nik, whats auto stacking for pano& hdrs in bridge?

in bridge i just drag everything over to cs3 and open with acr.

Nikolai · September 24, 2008

AaronNelson wrote:

Nik, whats auto stacking for pano& hdrs in bridge?

in bridge i just drag everything over to cs3 and open with acr.

You can select a menu item, it will analyze the time stamps (and contents!) and will automatically group (stack) images that are panos, or bracketed exposures. I believe LR had this (or at least time-based) feature for quite some time. I can't say this feature would be a major tipping point for me, but it's nice to have.

OffTopic · September 24, 2008

Ack, they're killing me! I've been using Photoshop since Version 3 in 1994 and had been upgrading to every version, so I have a lot of money sunk into it!

Finally decided I had to start skipping versions because they've been coming out too quickly. Skipped CS2 and went to CS3, and in hindsight that seemed to be a good decision.

I think I'm to going to wait until people have been using it for a while...if it's only another year before CS5 comes out...But Nikolai's glowing praise is going to make it tough to stick to my guns.

You'd think they'd throw a bone to us long time users, but I guess they know they have us hooked.

Nikolai · September 24, 2008

OffTopic wrote:

Ack, they're killing me! I've been using Photoshop since Version 3 in 1994 and had been upgrading to every version, so I have a lot of money sunk into it! Finally decided I had to start skipping versions because they've been coming out too quickly. Skipped CS2 and went to CS3, and in hindsight that seemed to be a good decision.

I think I'm to going to wait until people have been using it for a while...if it's only another year before CS5 comes out...But Nikolai's glowing praise is going to make it tough to stick to my guns.

You'd think they'd throw a bone to us long time users, but I guess they know they have us hooked.

Ouch, sorry...

1) you can try before buy: http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photoshop-cs4/photoshop-11-cs4.html
2) upgrade is ~$350, PPA annual membership is ~ this much
3) have kids in school/college? Consider an academic version...

Photoshop CS4 announced

Comments