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Photoshop CS5: Upon Further Preview

April 15, 2010

Adobe CS5: Upon Further Preview

With this past Monday, April 12^th2010, Adobe ushered in a new era of Photoshop and the entire Creative Suite family by releasing Adobe Creative Suite 5, a suite of software applications which will change the way virtually all designers work forever. This CS5 update is definitely the biggest I can recall with some great new features which promise to be just as practical as they are cool.
I have not gotten my hands on a CS5 beta or trial yet, so I have not at all tested anything of the features of CS5, this is more or less a rough overview of what I think about Photoshop CS5. I will also do an article on Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, CS Live, and some of the other CS5 related coolness.

CS Notes:

-Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) Release: Late September 2008
-Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5) Announced: April 12^th 2010 (will ship within 30 days).

Photoshop CS5:

Photoshop is pretty well the big dog as far as the Adobe software goes. I would venture to say that it alone sells almost as much as all of the rest of their software combined, I could be way off, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me. With all the hype and excitement around Photoshop, Adobe typically has a “big” feature that it has put into the application to make it appeal to the wide range of users and prompt the upgrade.
This time around Adobe has out done themselves as I see three significant reasons to get the software, those being the new Brush engine, the HDR capability (Yes, for real in this version), and the super hyped Content-Aware Fill option. I’m going to run over each of them and give you my thoughts.

The New Brush Engine:
Right off the bat this is just a plain ole’ cool feature, giving users such “natural” control over the brush tool and making colors behave more like paint will be a great feature to have. I haven’t tested it yet, but it looks like a mix of the Brush Tool, the Smudge Tool, and the Smudge Tool with finger painting on… and then put that on steroids. I can see myself using this when, obviously, painting and illustrating, but also when I am designing website graphics, and even tweaking special effects for photographs I’ve taken. This should be a very fun and very useful tool to use. Check it out here!

The HDR Capabilities:
One huge, massive sore eye to Photoshop the past few releases has been it’s horrible HDR capabilities, boy have they been bad! HDR shooters have always needed some kind of third-party software to create a great looking High Dynamic Range photograph, but now with Photoshop CS5 it looks like Adobe has taken some large steps forward and finally we will be able to create great looking HDR photographs right in Photoshop! There is even an HDR image adjustment if you only have one shot (compared with 3+ exposures for typical HDR photography), lots of options. I really believe that there is going to be a lot more HDR coming out this year, “Year of the HDR photograph” some are already proclaiming. Check it out here!
Content-Aware Fill:
I’m actually not so crazy about this feature, but maybe when I get my hands on it it’ll make me chuckle inside and I’ll fall in love. I see a lot of potential uses for a tool like this, but it’s the kind of tool I prefer to check out on my images before I’ll fully trust it. All that being said it is nothing short of an incredible tool, and even if it is not as effective as we all think it is it should still help with complex cloning/replacement projects. Content-Aware Fill is definitely something I want to get my hands on and play with and test out to see how practical it really is. Check it out here!
With those features covered we still have not covered what I think has the potential to be one of the most incredible and game-changing features in Photoshop… ever. New to CS5 Adobe has created a Smart Edge Detection System including a brush to choose and define the edges for the engine to perfect. The demos I have seen look nothing short of knock-you-on-your-butt incredible. It is definitely in line to be my favorite and most used new feature as well as potentially the biggest time saver of everything new to Photoshop CS5. Check out the new features here!

Lots of Updates:

Photoshop CS5 has lots of other cool stuff which includes, but is not limited to, Mini-Bridge, better 3D capabilities, Lens corrections based on your lens, Puppet Warp (Think of it as an animation bone system type tool), as well as a ton of other cool little things and I’m sure we’ll all find little things Adobe has fixed up to make Photoshop CS5 better, smoother, and faster… at least we all hope right?

Notable things about CS5:

-Lightroom is still apparently not part of any of the Creative Suite Packages. Why Adobe? Why?
-A new set of online tools know as CS Live (this includes BrowserLab, Adobe CS Review, Acrobat.com, and more) will be included free for 12 months if you register your copy of CS5 before April 30^th 2011. I wish Adobe could find a way to make this a free service, or free collections of tools. I understand it’s probably a huge amount of server traffic and activity and because of that I’m probably asking for too much, but we are shelling out $500+ every 18 months to upgrade our software, just find a way to work it in and make it something every design will not hesitate to use. I think Adobe could tightly integrate this into their community system, just a thought. Check out CS Live here!
My biggest fear with CS Live is that after all of the free trials are up and expired, that the usage will drop an awful lot and the CS Review system will be worthless. Whatever way you look at it, there are some great tools on Acrobat.com and BrowserLab looks amazing and there are a bunch of other flat-out awesome tools available in CS Live, you have to check it out!

Logos:

I have been really happy with the logos Adobe has been using ever since CS (never was a fan of the Photoshop 7, or Illustrator 8 logo styles), but these CS5 logos (application icons) are terrible; I really do not like them. CS3 was pretty good and I thought CS4 nailed the logo thing almost perfectly and now this?

Packaging:

Outside of the actually application logos CS5 has some cool design elements. The crazy looking 5’s and the packaging all look killer. I am not sure I have seen the actual CS5 logo, but it should definitely be better then both the CS3 and CS4 logos (run a Google search if you have never seen them). Ahh I could complain all day about bad logos, but I suppose I’ll get used to them eventually. What do you think about them? Did they jump out at you like they did to me?

Overview:

Photoshop CS5 will have some incredible new features, but despite all the features it is still the kind of thing where I am going to get it because I want it, not really because I need it. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of great time-saving features and Adobe has promised all kinds of speed increases as far as the actual programs go, but if you like to buy every other edition that comes out I would keep doing that and not make an exception for this upgrade. If you do upgrade to CS5, wow it does look pretty jaw-dropping and incredible, but we say that about every upgrade now don’t we?
CS Live is the big thing you will be missing out on as far as stuff you just will not be able to do (again, I haven’t actually used CS5 yet so I am taking a bit of a shot in the dark here, just judging from past releases), but CS Live looks like it’s going to be awesome, for me worth the upgrade alone, not to mention all the awesomeness in the rest of the Suite.

Rock on Adobe! Looks like you have done your homework; now please keep listening to the community and continue making great software!
What do you think about CS5? Upgrade or not? Tell me why.