Adobe Photoshop CS4: first impressions

Model: Sunshine

This is a picture from last year’s white wall session. I decided to use it to test the capabilities of Adobe Photoshop CS4. The original take had a slight blur and a blue color cast. Though easy to edit, such corrections can create artifacts and decrease image quality easily! I wanted to check how the new Ps would handle it. I think it did a pretty good job at it, but wait… Did I really use anything new to CS4?

• custom action: advanced sharpening (unsharp mask in LAB mode)
• curves adjustment (LAB mode)
• detailed color replacement (layer masks)

… in other words, nothing new. So what makes this version so compelling as to consider the upgrade?

Graphic acceleration

First things first, Ps CS4 is faster. Launching the program takes less time, even with custom brushes and fonts. And once started, time consuming operations such as sharpening or artistic filters feel more responsive. This is due to the fact that Ps is now tapping into your graphic card’s horsepower. You can also enable Open GL rendering for smoother zooming, panning, and 3D work. I should add that I have tested the Windows version, the Apple version will have to wait.

Zooming and scaling

Let’s go back to zooming and scaling for a while. This is a truly useful feature, as former versions of Ps did not scale images well. As a result, an image was only properly displayed if the zoom was set on a multiple of 5, any other ratio giving jagged edges and or missing information. While this happened only on display and was still manageable, it is really nice to know that this not a constraint any longer. Also, by holding the H key, the image zooms out for a second and shows you the screen area you are going to see. You then move this area, release H, and there you go! With precise zooming on the fly without using the hand tool, you gain time and thus, increased productivity.

On the scaling side, there’s a new Content-Aware Scaling (soon to be called CAS by fans). It allows you to protect certain areas of your image during scaling, so that everything scales but these. Now, this is useful! You could rescale parts of your image, say the background, without touching up the people present in it. This was possible before through layer manipulation, but this improvement makes it a breeze! I do see some use for this in my daily tasks.

User interface

The second obvious thing to notice is the new user interface. Each to his own taste, but I don’t like it. Simply put, it takes too much screen real estate. Sure, power users will constantly rearrange their workspace, but still, the palettes just look clunky to me, I much preferred CS3 on this aspect. The default workspace is more inviting to newcomers, because default adjustments are now sitting in their own panel and can be accessed in one click. Me, I spent the first five minutes remodelling. Another default view that I disabled instantly was the drop shadow on the image edges. While it may look cool to have your image “floating”, it is not efficient for professional image editing, as the edge of the image becomes unclear. I often have to produce banners and layouts that must be pixel perfect, so I cannot accomodate for such trivial matters. A clean black line showing me the edge of my image is not only clean, it is also bound to be less demanding on your processors.

A new interface feature is the tabbed presentation, akin to modern browsers. Though intuitive, I don’t really see the point of this just yet. If I’m working with only one picture, I will naturally resize it to my viewing needs. But if I must work with several images at a time, there must be a cardinal reason for this, therefore seeing them simultaneously is probably necessary. Why would I open several images to see them one at a time? In any case, dragging the picture off the border will bring back the former window mode.

3D rendering

This is not my area of expertise, so I am apprehensive to discuss this point at all. Let’s just say that, for my purposes, Adobe Illustrator CS3 did a better job than its Photoshop counterpart. But that point is kind of shallow, as we should be comparing Photoshop 3D abilities with those of a 3D application such as 3D Studio or Maya.

That’s it?

Hmm, yes, that’s pretty much what I found during my first exploration, but I fear that’s about it… My conclusion is: like me, get a demo version and see the few changes mentioned here are worth your time and money. Apart from the graphic acceleration, I don’t see much reason for upgrading in fact, and so I just may uninstall and stay away from it. At the time of writing, CS3 is good enough for me, so why not keeping it this way.

Of course there is a key difference between the hobbyist and the graphic professional: options are available if you run your own one man band, but with Adobe’s monopoly in the graphic industry, you can delay upgrading, but would eventually have to accept it in order to update your resume…