Adobe Photoshop CS5 - Reviewing the goodies

If you have ever worked on your computer to do your digital photos, then you most likely have used Photoshop. with most photographers , using Photoshop has become a standard, especially with the pros. But you don't have to be a pro to take advantage of Photoshop.

Adobe continues to provide the best expert-level tools for color correction, exposure adjustments, and pixel-level editing. There is something for every photographer, or artist, and with Adobes Photoshop CS5 there are some amazing new tricks.

Some of these new tricks is like having your own personal magic show. The new content-aware fill can add or take away content from your photo's magically, say for instance, you want another row of flowers in the background, you just select an open area, choose the menu option, and photoshop will add the new pixels. Then there is this other cool feature called puppet warp. This option lets you move arms out of the sockets, allowing you to point them in any direction rather it would be up, down , or side to side. You can also bend them in any direction, or make other adjustments to a portion of an image so that you can rotate any selection on its axis.

Another addition they have added to photoshop , is the new mini bridge. Even though bridge comes with photoshop, the mini bridge works from within-side photoshop. With mini bridge you can see thumbnails, filter by rating, or other criteim, you can also open multiple images at once. Also Adobe has improved camera RAW imports, that you can select images for a new catalog in the mini bridge.

There has been much improvements with the Gee-Whiz features, which gives it a much better work-flow, and is much faster. You can now switch between workspace views - like painting or designing - and arrange documents on screen quickly to make changes.

Both photoshop CS 4 and CS 5 take advantage of the 64 bit suppoert. This means that your computer can access larger amounts of ram. Having ran a side- by-side comparison on both CS4 and CS5 on the same pc, the new version loads is 2 seconds faster, where CS4 laods at 4 seconds.

Using the zoom feature on large photo files is instantaneous , however there was occasional slowdowns. (This can be do to the graphics card support for open GL functions, having a high end graphics can add some dramatic performance boost.)

Photoshop CS5 has a snappier feel to it on just about every function - re-sizing an image, opening RAW files, applying  effects. There is rarely a 2 second wait time for about any photo tweak. In CS5 most changes you do happen in an instant. There is nothing like opening a 25 meg RAW file and run an unsharpen mask affect and see the results instantly. Granted CS4 is fast on a 64 bit computer, but CS5 is a lot faster.

Photoshop has always been about pixel-level editing, adding affect, and correcting photographic problems. With photoshop CS5, they have added some new features: the ability to select complex parts of a photo and remove them or add a new layer to make edits on just that portion. You can take a photo of someone that has their hair blowing in the wind, you can take a portion of the hair and use the refine edge option to use different radius (or shape) for the edge of what you have selected. You can adjust the feathering, contrast and smoothness of the edge. What this means with practice is that, with a few slider adjustments, you could select a few hair strands and have the program do the work for you, figuring out what part of the image you really want to select.

Photoshop is becomeing more and more like a true painting program, like coral's painter with a bevy of brushes for chalk, watercolor, pencils, and other artistic touches. The new mixer brush allows you to paint right onto a photo using a layer and even use add brush shapes like start and squiggly lines.

The new noise remove in camera RAW 6 - the import dialog box you use when opening a RAw file - is a powerful tool. You can take an image with high ISO rating that has a pixelated look to it with a lot of noise, you can just drag a few sliders up for luminance and color, and remove all traces of pixelation. Adobe gives you so much more control over your images, instead of just a "remove noise" command.

Now lets talk about the new content aware fill. (I am just supped up about this one.) You can fill an area of a photo that duplicates and extends the image. for example: in a handful of flower shots, I added an additional line of flowers. The flowers where not just duplicated, but learned from the rest of the image and "grew stems" in a logical way.

This is content- aware fill, however you can not expect it to fix a bad photo or place place a sky-scrapper in the middle of an island, it can only duplicate content that is already in the image. 

Its hard to see a professional photographer not jumping at this upgrade of Photoshop CS5, with all these new features and time saving elements,that can make even the most seasoned Photoshop editor foam at the mouth. This Photoshop upgrade can cut your editing time down by half.

when upgrading the price is really reasonable costing only a mere $199 dollars, however for those who don't have photoshop at all, you can be looking for a much, much stiffer price, weighing in at a hefty price of $699. But even at that price it is a good deal considering what this program is packed with. However if that is just to much to bite off, then they do offer a lite version called Photoshop Elements 8 which cost only $$79.99.

No matter if you are a pro or a novice everyone can find a good use for the new Photoshop CS5, whether you are an artist, graphics designer, or a photographer, with this program everyone can look like a pro.