We earthlings can generally count on the sun to rise and set every day, the moon to go through its cycle every month, and Adobe to release a new version of its graphics software lineup almost exactly every 18 months. The newest version is Creative Suite 4, which should be shipping by the time you read this. Since Photoshop is the most well-known app in the suite—and arguably the most commonly used—even among non-pros—we wanted to give you a first look at Photoshop CS4, so you know exactly what’s new and cool, what Adobe still needs to improve on, and whether it makes sense to spring for the upgrade—which will cost at least $199.

In this release of Photoshop, there are lots of tweaks and a few truly cool new toys and tools. While Photoshop CS4 does not signal the dawn of a new age, it’s worth knowing what to expect if you do make the jump up from an earlier version. We put the gold master—that is, the final beta version of Photoshop CS4—through its paces to bring you this comprehensive first look at Adobe’s flagship app.

Interface Overhaul

One of the best new interface innovations is the ability to instantly and visually organize lots of open images.

When you launch Photoshop CS4 for the first time, you’ll find a number of interface changes that may or may not make you happy. In a move to standardize interfaces across apps and platforms, Adobe has created a new method for organizing documents and palettes, in an “application window,” a familiar construct for Windows users and something we’ve already seen in Photoshop Elements 6. As you create new documents, they are all contained within a single floating window and automatically appear onscreen as a line of tabs, just like in a Web browser. There are new options for arranging multiple open documents in the main window, a feature we quickly grew fond of, especially when working with a half-dozen or more images at a time. Resize one image window, and the others automatically shrink to make room. We were skeptical about the tabbed window approach when we got started with CS4, but after a few days, we found that it was tough going back to the old overlapping windows approach. We also discovered that it’s easy to spawn any image window off into its own old-style floating window, mixing the best of the old- and new-schools approaches. Overall, we came to like the overhauled interface, but there’s also a way to turn it off in case it confuses or frustrates you.

Another major interface addition is new panels for adjustment layers and mask controls, which make access to them more convenient. Instead of invoking a floating control palette for Curves, for example, you simply select the Curves tool in the new Adjustments panel, and a miniature (and fully functional) Curves control shows up in the palette, and a Curves adjustment layer appears in the Layers palette. It’s really easy to get used to this streamlined approach, especially when you realize that there’s a way to click on the current image and have your dragging motions translate directly into Curves control points. All this makes the process of doing interactive color correction faster, and it’s a subtle change that makes it harder to revert to earlier versions of the app.

Adobe says these interface tweaks allow users to significantly streamline the creative process, but the fact is that advanced Photoshop users who have been comfortable using keyboard modifiers and Actions to customize the overall interface and create procedural macros (such as automatically opening a Curves adjustment layer and applying a predefined preset), might be less impressed with some of the interface enhancements. If you’re new to Photoshop, however, you’ll definitely like what you see. We grew to appreciate the changes after a couple of weeks of working intensely with Photoshop CS4 and now find it a challenge to revert back to CS3.

Digital Darkroom...or Lightroom

Photographers are likely to be thrilled with CS4, especially if they use—or are considering using—Adobe Lightroom (4 out of 5 stars, Nov/08, p52). The Camera Raw import module in Photoshop CS4 offers a totally cool adjustment brush and gradient filter that’s lifted right out of Lightroom, allowing you to apply nondestructive, localized exposure, sharpness, saturation, and other tonal effects to selected areas of an image before importing it into Photoshop. The original RAW or JPEG file remains unaltered, while the modified image with the painted-on corrections opens in Photoshop. This is certainly a useful new tool, but we wonder why Adobe chose not to implement it inside Photoshop as a new type of nondestructive adjustment layer. On a more subtle note, CS4’s Dodge and Burn tools have a very smart Protect Tones mode, which keeps the lightening and darkening effects from going too far one way or the other. The Sponge tool sports a Vibrance switch for smooth saturation control.

Better Scaling and Stitching

Localized Color Clusters make sure your mask stays in the region you want, instead of all over the document.

One of the most striking new tools—and for some, a significant reason to consider upgrading—is something called Content-Aware Scaling, a bit of software magic that we saw demonstrated on YouTube long before it found its way into Photoshop (Adobe snapped up the coding genius who created this wonder). It’s one of those features better seen in action than described in words, but essentially it allows you to stretch images horizontally or vertically, keeping things like people and buildings relatively undistorted, while stretching uniform backgrounds (think sky, fields, grass, and so on). You can also manually mask off specific elements that you’d like to “protect” from the scaling effect, for fine-tuning your overall results. It’s simply amazing in action and will truly impress anyone who has had to do the complex masking required to accomplish this type of work the “old” way.

The panorama-stitching prowess of Photomerge has undergone some refinements and is now much better at blending the edges of overlapping images when creating panoramic images. If the pictures have been shot with a wide-angle lens, there’s some mojo that fixes some of the more problematic image distortions when creating stitches and even applies some basic color correction to the stitched images to make them match up better. If you regularly stitch together images to create panoramas, chances are you’ve already discovered the amazing Autopano Pro (4 out of 5 stars, Oct/08, p62), which blows everything else—including the newly updated Photomerge—out of the water.

Another cool innovation in Photoshop CS4 is Extended Depth-of-Field, an option within Auto-Blending that does some slick magic with a series of photos shot with different depths of field. With the same basic idea behind HDR (high dynamic range) images, Extended Depth-of-Field takes a group of pictures shot together—preferably with a tripod—with different aperture settings (where some images show objects in the foreground in focus and others show the background in focus) and blends them together to create a single, completely sharp picture, while automatically color-correcting images to ensure consistent color in the final blended picture. It’s one of those things that hobbyist and pro photographers alike will instantly understand—and deeply appreciate.

Masking Marvels 

The Adjustments and Masks panels give you direct access to many color-correction and masking controls.

One of the most elemental aspects of using Photoshop is the process of masking, which involves isolating a portion of an image in order to make changes in just that area. For example, changing the color of a single apple in a shot of a fruit basket involves selecting the apple you want to color shift and leaving the surrounding oranges, grapes, and bananas alone. There are a variety of tools and techniques for accomplishing this, and the implementation of Layer Masks that’s been a longtime feature in Photoshop allows each layer of a multilayered image to have its own specific mask, essential for precisely blending layers in the final image. In Photoshop CS4, Adobe gave Layer Masks a massive injection of steroids, resulting in an entirely new behavior that makes the layer masks “smart.” So instead of having static, pixel-based fixed feathering and density, these and other mask parameters are now constantly editable and nondestructive, mirroring how masks are handled in After Effects, the masking leader in Adobe’s software stable. If you’re an advanced Photoshop user, this is the killer reason to upgrade because it’s a major step forward that provides huge flexibility for the most demanding compositing and masking techniques.

There’s also a subtle but highly useful addition to the Color Range command, which is used to create masks by specific colors or selected colors from the image. The Localized Color Cluster checkbox, which sounds somewhat daunting, is really sweet, allowing you to limit the currently masked area to a localized region of the image. This might sound a bit difficult to wrap your head around, but it’s one of those things that will make anyone who’s ever used Color Range shout, “Eureka!”

And speaking of masking, Smart Objects can now contain layer masks, which is very, very nice. We’re also thrilled that Smart Objects can be edited with all of the Transform tools, including Distort, Skew, and Perspective. We really appreciate the fact that Adobe has not sat on its laurels with regard to Smart Objects. Everyone who uses Photoshop should learn everything they can about this often overlooked but essential feature.

Work in New Dimensions

Photoshop Extended has some neat 3D effects, including built-in shapes and texture mapping.

Until CS4, Photoshop did not take advantage of the advanced graphics and OpenGL-processing capabilities of many of the higher-end video cards on the market or the video circuitry on certain Macs, such as the MacBook Pro. CS4 is the first version of Photoshop to make use of the graphics horsepower of late-model video cards with these capabilities, and it shows up in improved performance of certain graphic-intense operations like zooming (which is now an instantaneous, fluid process), as well as scrolling around an image in extreme magnification. Photoshop CS4’s OpenGL mojo extends to some new functionality too, such as the rotating canvas, a feature long requested by artists using Wacom pen tablets. It’s a deceptively simple concept: Instead of creating a rotation effect that alters the pixels of an image, the image canvas can be rotated as a whole, making it easier to sketch, trace, and
draw on the image with the Paintbrush tool from any angle. Then you can rotate the image to its original orientation, once you’re done working with it. It’s a huge deal for digital artists, who until now have been forced to physically rotate the graphics tablets on their desks. The only downside, of course, is that this feature won’t work on a standard MacBook or older iMac that doesn’t have OpenGL support.