There is new option called ‘Enable Localizes Clusters’, which when selected can carry out more advanced calculations when you add and subtract using the selection eyedropper tools to refine a Color Range Selection. The Adjustments panel in list view.Ĭolor Range has been improved. You will notice there is now a new Vibrance adjustment (just like the one in Camera Raw) and some of the adjustments, such as Curves will allow on-image adjustments.įigure 3. You can also select adjustment preset settings from the adjustments list. Figure 3 shows the Adjustments panel list view where you can select an adjustment by clicking on one of the button icons. There is a lot of scope here to work faster and more efficiently. As you tweak the adjustments for an adjustment layer you can also go directly to the Layers panel and adjust the layer blending mode.
As you click on each, you can immediately access the adjustment settings. Imagine you have three different adjustment layers applied to an image.
While this may not seem a big deal at first, doing away with the modality of the Adjustments dialogs means you can now add adjustment layers and have immediate access to the adjustment settings.
Plus you can also access the new Rotate tool, which allows you to swivel the angle of the image on the screen, thereby allowing you to retouch an image without having to turn your head sideways as you do so (see Figure 2)!Īdjustment layers are now managed via an Adjustments panel (see Figure 3). You can also flick pan images using a simple flick of the mouse. Or, drag the cursor to a new area of the image to zoom in on and release the mouse key to zoom in on that new area. Release the key and you return to a normal view again. This will zoom out to show a full-frame view, where you can. You can get a quick birds-eye view by holding down the H key as you click on the image. When this preference is switched on, zooming and scrolling images becomes a lot smoother and there are also several other little tricks that you can do when OpenGL is switched on. Photoshop CS4 can now take advantage of OpenGL video processing, so long as you are using a video card that is OpenGL enabled. Release the key and you can revert to working with the previously selected tool.
This shows the new Photoshop CS4 Application window program workspace for the Mac OS, showing the Window menu that allows you to switch between the classic mode workspace and Application Frame workspace shown here.Īs usual, you can use keyboard shortcuts to select specific tools, but if you hold the key down instead, you can temporarily switch to using the tool associated with that keyboard shortcut. I am not so keen on the all-caps panel headers, but if you set the interface preferences to Small UI, you are unlikely to be bothered much by this particular cross-product change in the UI design.įigure 1. There are some nice touches to the UI design, such as the way you can easily access different workspace settings from the new application bar at the top. The panels can be docked within an application frame window as shown below in Figure 1 (although it is easy enough to revert to the floating panel and document window behavior). The most noticeable changes are in the interface design appearance. When you combine this with the ability to non-destuctively edit a layer mask, you’ll discover that the Photoshop CS4 image editing system offers the most flexible yet for pixel image editing. Photoshop now has a smart dark gray interface and adopted a task-based approach to image editing and this can be seen in the way image adjustments are now accessible within their own panel. Well, Photoshop CS4 has arrived, hot on the heels of Lightroom 2 and it’s time to see how the new version of the ‘mother ship’ program shapes up.Īs far as Photoshop CS4 itself goes, I think photographers will be very pleased with some the new changes here. It is probably fair to say that there was a certain amount of envy among the Photoshop team to the ‘new kid on the block’. I think such responses may also have been influenced by the introduction of Lightroom 1, which was definitely designed with photographers in mind.
It didn’t have quite as many features of interest to photographers as say, previous versions of the program.