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Panels
Adobe began exploring the nondestructive approach with its layer adjustments
options and smart objects. They have expanded that almost across the board.
You can have several of the tabbed adjustment panels open at the same time.
They remain dynamic, you no longer have to click to apply. They have grouped
key adjustment features together. Yes, there will be learning curves to old
practices with CS4. The panels also offers 'on image adjustments'. This
means you can put the cursor on your image, drag it up/down or left/right to
create changes. This is much more handy than it might appear. Say you want
to increase the saturation of just your subject’s unique pastel hat. Click
the cursor on it, Photoshop recognises the colour and isolates it. Hold the
mouse down and move it to the side to increase just that colour’s
saturation.
Each Panel comes with a collection of pre-sets, more than 20, to give you
typical starting points.
The Curves Panel is completely revised. Dan, the Curves Guru, griped that
the floating target circle seems to have been forgotten. This is that circle
that roamed up and down your curve as you moved the cursor over the image,
revealing exactly where that pixel was in the curve. On the other hand, you
can now tweak the curve directly from within the image.
Vibrancy, that mysterious tool from Lightroom and Camera RAW has migrated
over. This is a great little slider. It increases the saturation of weak
colours in the image but does not touch the strong colours. Really gives an
image some pop.
You will also find a lot of the commands have moved into these panels, for
example all the adjustment options have moved to their own Adjustments
Panel, complete with icons.
The Masks Panel holds all the masking tools for creating editable pixel and
vector-based masks, selection of noncontiguous objects, feathering,
adjusting density and more.
Content Aware Resizing
Original image before Content Aware Sizing.
What the heck? Not sure what else you would call it, magic maybe. Ever find
your image was just a little smaller than the canvas?
Open Transform and drag it wider made the poor subject just appear fatter?
No more.
It retains the integrity of the main subjects (content) and drags out the
rest without appearing to stretch the pixels. Yes amazing but wait, as
Russell Brown says, there is more.
Using Content Aware Sizing to widen image to panorama.Note subjects remain proper shape.
Squishing the image to Tall. Note surfers remain normal.
When you squish it, critical elements don’t get skinny. Let's say you have a
family standing a bit apart on a beach scene. You need to fill the width of
canvas. You drag it wider. The distance between each person gets wider but
the person remains the same. It’s being called Seam Carving, found under the
Edit > Content Aware Scale.
The software can determine what is important or you can protect parts
important to you.
This does eat up the power though so your slower processors might grind for
a bit.
Camera RAW
Now up to Camera RAW 5.0. All the innovations from Lightroom arrive with
CS4. You will find the changes both in Photoshop and Bridge. There are new
tools for localised adjustments and gradients. You can control the size and
angle of the gradient effects, plus apply multiple gradients to an image.
You can adjust the size of the adjustment brush plus control feathering as
well as opacity to local areas. The brushes have the same manipulation
options as the gradients. You can even automatically mask the brush stroke
to confine the adjustment – a critical ability if you are working on faces
but want to preserve the background.
Post crop vignette is now a working choice. The crop and straighten tool now
rotates the image to its correct orientation. Camera RAW supports the new
DNG Profile Editor, so you can create or use profiles based on your camera’s
picture styles.
Note: Camera RAW has been upgraded to version 5.2 as we set the magazine
out. Amongst other things the download contains an exe file to install
camera profiles into the RAW-file handler, ACR. The list of cameras is
comprehensive.
Ed.
Bridge
Bridge is fast becoming a baby Photoshop. It originally surfaced as a file
management interface. With Lightroom expanding into its territory it was
wondered if it was really useful anymore. Adobe is pretty sure it is, taking
lots of abilities from Lightroom.
Firstly, it’s really stable, did I mention that earlier? In many ways it is
the hub of the CS4 workflow, remember the CS4 family expands into InDesign,
Illustrator, etc, depending on the version you get.
You can touch up highlights and polish skin tones. Bridge lets you create
web galleries or print directly from it, without needing to open Photoshop.
There are Flash and HTML web galleries, same as Lightroom 2. You can also
drop and drag any missing favourites from the older Photoshop galleries.
Websites or PDF file creation now launches from a click on the command bar.
It redraws the screen to show you what it will look like. Bridge will also
let you include movies, Illustrator files, etc into the web page thumbnails.
While it has a number of pre-sets, you can also add your own. Expanding
filing needs, Bridge will sort by metadata now. It will show recent history
from Photoshop. There is a Recent icon allowing for quick jump backs to
previously visited folders.
Taking cue from Lightroom, Collections have arrived in Bridge. These are
virtual pointers to the physical files on the computer.
The interface has been updated, sporting a path bar at the top, which can be
turned on or off. Many commands now appear as icons above the thumbnails.
There’s a new way to view a larger image of a thumbnail – hit the space bar
to fill the screen with the image. You can still adjust the preview window
size too.
A really fun feature is the Carousel View: select several thumbnails, press
command/Ctrl B to bring up a view that looks very similar to the ITunes art
cover interface. Smaller thumbnails are on the side with the larger main
image in the middle, they easily move dynamically like a loop.
Depth of Field Blend. CS4 will combine images to control
Depth of Field. Here it combines all the infocus points into one image.
Lots More
As you can guess, this isn’t much more than a surface scratch of the
changes. There are little tweaks hidden away, other major useful changes,
some things you will ask ‘Why?’, all bundled up in our growing girl. Just
when you wonder what else can be done, the Adobe folks find things that
become must-haves.
They have tailored the product offerings to specialities. It’s a full family
of choice. I still find it exciting. Often to the annoyance of my staff, I
can’t wait to get my copy.
Post Cropping in Camera RAW.
Learning Resources
It is amazing how prolific the learning resources are that are already
available for CS4. There are videos, step-by-step tutorials and even book
launching. You almost wonder who did not have an advanced copy to create
educational tools with.
The premier source is NAPP’s Photoshop user website and magazine. They are
shipping out an in-depth special edition of their magazine. Layers Magazine
will be looking at the whole suite. To find a wealth of info just Google
'CS4 Photoshop', and refine the word of the feature that interests you such
as 'curves' or 'adjustment panel'.
Most of these are very short focused tutorials, taking just a few moments.
If you view several by the time you actually get the product it will feel
much more familiar to you.
Mark Laurie is a photographer, speaker, writer and studio mentor. He teaches
extensively in England and Canada. He runs Revealing Venus – Digital Nude &
Glamour Photography Workshop in Paradise Island, Bahamas each August. His
fourth book, Nude In Paradise is just coming out. You can find him at
marklaurie.com and InnerSpiritPhoto.com
3D image before decal is applied. View of 3D workspace.
After decal is applied on 3D object.
