Adobe Photoshop CS4:What's New
One of the greatest news on the Photokina trade show a few weeks ago was the announcement of Adobe's CS4 suite. Photoshop's been part of the bundle for ages now. Naturally, the new version is also called CS4. A public trial version is still to arrive, but we'll try to discuss the most important new features of the application.
Easier file management
This change primarily affects the user interface. Every file window header includes a tab with basic file information and file name. For multiple documents, every tab can be shown for easier file switching and less getting lost in the workspace.
The new version supports graphics accelerator cards, which will come very handy not only when using 3D objects, but also when moving and zooming photos about the screen. Zooming is now fluid and stepless—no more boring choices of 50 to 66.7 to 100% but smooth zooming with a move of the mouse. Picture canvasses can not only be zoomed or scrolled, but also fluidly rotated.
Content-aware scaling
An interesting enhancement indeed. This is a brand new resizing algorithm which started to appear in smaller, standalone resizing apps lately.
The point is that the software tries to preserve the size and form of (supposedly) more important picture elements—for example, a face. While keeping this element, it first tries to diminish (or stretch, when enlarging) the background or other homogeneous surfaces first. We really can't tell how well it can be observed in the example below, but the lower image is the result of content-aware enlargement of the upper one.
Intelligent Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools
Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools can now smartly preserve picture tones and colors. This is really great news as this was about the only thing these tools still lacked. These brushes were able to reduce or intensify, lighten or darken the colors of the painted areas. The features remained, but they are much more careful. For example, in the previous versions, Burn tool, originally aimed at darkening, could drastically affect saturation when you just unsuspectingly started to paint with it all over the picture.
Adjustments panel
Commands of the Adjustments menu are now available from a dedicated panel, which is much faster than scrolling through a menu or using these effects as adjustment layers. Each one is represented by an icon on the panel, and whichever you click can still be applied as an adjustment layer, which means later it can be switched off, edited, or masked.
Masks panel
Another new panel in addition to the above. The Masks panel contains more important masking features and editing options. Another of those warmly welcome work-speeding, time-saving enhancements.
Merging depth of field layers
This new feature is rather hard to explain briefly. Basically, it is able to merge multiple photos taken with low depth of field, thus creating a single one with a higher depth. Macro fans and object photographers will love it. Take a photo with a sharp foreground, one with the middle parts in focus, and a third one focused on the background, then merge them to create a picture which shows everything clearly, from head to toe.
Auto-Blending, Auto-Alignment
These enhanced features are important when constructing panorama pictures. Auto-Blending merges pictures without producing noticeable borders, corrects lens defects such as distortion as well as color or lightness divergence.
Auto-Alignment rotates, moves and scales image layers by itself, once again for avoiding visible seams in panorama pictures.
Enhanced RAW management
Adobe Camera RAW is able to recognize even more RAW formats from new cameras, now supporting over 190 different models. It also supports JPEG and TIFF files, but much more important are the capabilities for selective editing and direct masking. You can use gradient editing masks, just like in the new version of Lightroom. Another novelty: in addition to controlling the lightness for corners of entire photos, you can also adjust vignetting of cropped images.
Editing and animating 3D objects
Although this is not really the field of focus for our website, one of the greatest advancements in PS CS4 are those of 3D features. The program is able to handle directly loaded 3D objects perfectly— you can rotate and zoom them in 3D. The previous version already had some 3D support, but CS4 knows way more. Performance has been enhanced, too, and several 3D accelerator cards are supported natively in order to speed things up even more.
Objects can be animated—you can make videos about rotating and moving objects.
Painting 3D objects
You can apply any previously prepared texture of graphic onto 3D objects, or you can paint directly on them with a brush. Textures and logos can still be managed in their own layers by Photoshop, so they are editable separately, even later.
Any picture or texture can be applied to previously created simple objects stored in PS.
Enhanced printing options
Novelties in this area include notifications about color ranges outside a color space, or support for 16-bit printing. In addition, Adobe promises better color management and more integration with leading printer brands, whatever this may mean...
Better integration with other applications
...such as Bridge CS4, the picture categorizing companion to PS. Integration is not much of a surprise, but one could also mention Lightroom's RAW converter. RAW files edited in Lightroom can be copied directly into Photoshop in order to construct a panorama or a HDR picture, then copied back just as easily to continue editing in Lightroom.
A similar degree of integration can be expected with Adobe After Effects, Premiere, and Flash.
And what a machine you'll need? Adobe says a Windows XP (SP2) or Vista computer with a 1.8 MHz processor and 512 MB of RAM (but you'd better make it 1 GB). 1 GB of storage space and a 16-bit video adapter supporting a resolution of 1024x768 is also required. Obviously, you'll need a DVD-ROM drive, too, and you would do well to have a 3D video card supporting Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0. Also be sure to have QuickTime 7.2 installed.
Mac owners should be able to come up with a PowerPC G5 and a Mac OS X version of at least 10.4.11–10.5.4. Storage requirements on a Mac are about 2 GB. The rest of the requirements are the same as on a PC.