I’ve been a user of Adobe Photoshop since its first release, and this is my fourth (or is it fifth?) review of a major update to this software. At this point what could I possibly have to say about yet another version? First off, this is not just another version. Over the years I’ve seen Photoshop evolved, devolved and recreated to what it has now become, and I have to say I’m impressed. So what, exactly, has it become? With vastly expanded 16-bit color capabilities, new effects, new image manipulation tools and enormous new workflow capabilities–plus a few extra goodies thrown in for good measure–it is, in short, the most powerful version of the most powerful image editing tool on the market to date.

Now, I don’t make this statement lightly. But Photoshop CS is a serious overhaul and a major improvement to what was already one of the great graphics programs out there. I’d characterize this release in two ways. First, it’s the release for which Adobe rolled up its sleeves and took care of some under the hood issues that have been nagging at this application for quite a while. The 16-bit features alone required major surgery, but there’s so much more. Second, this is an expansive release, one that continues to add new features that are not only variations on the old, but that open up new possibilities. We’ll get into all of these now, starting with the 16-bit functionality and then moving into new features for photographers, new support for video professionals, new and enhanced tools and effects and, finally, workflow improvements.[an error occurred while processing this directive]16-bit color features
Without a doubt, the most major surgery done to Photoshop CS was in the area of overhaul features, specifically the integration of real 16-bit per channel color support. Now, obviously, Photoshop had some degree of 16-bit support in the past, but it was so limited that I never would have previously referred to this application as a 16-bit image editor. You could open 16-bit files; you could apply a few adjustments; but you could never do anything in the way of real image manipulation before.

Now all of this has changed. This application is now truly a 16-bit graphics program. More, it’s the most full-featured 16-bit graphics program I’ve seen to date, offering all of the application-level functionality afforded to 8-bit images, the kind of functionality that has justified Photoshop’s position as the dominant image manipulation and effects tool for creative professionals. (As many of us know, particularly Mac users, not all software rises to the top based on quality, and ubiquity is often bought rather than earned. Photoshop, in my mind, has always been the chief exception to this. It’s simply a great graphics tool.)

So what do I mean when I refer to Photoshop CS as a “full-featured 16-bit image manipulation tool?” I mean you can do just about anything with a 16-bit image that you can do with an 8-bit image, only at a higher bit depth. This means painting. It means full layer support. It means all of the layer options, including layer styles, nesting, comps and the like. It means transformations, pattern creation and the use of all of the tools in the Tools palette. And this means, of course, that you will be able to perform all of these functions with truer color and smoother gradations. You won’t always be able to see the results on your screen, since your screen most likely doesn’t support 16-bit per channel color. But you will see it in your prints, and you’ll see it in your histograms, and you’ll see it in images that are processed extensively.

Now, on the Web, I can’t show you the differences between a 16-bit image and an 8-bit image. But I can show you the difference between two identical images that have been processed while in different color depth modes.

So, in short, 16-bit color isn’t just for photographers. It can also be a benefit for anybody who does extensive image processing on 8-bit source files.

Now, this is not to say that Photoshop’s 16-bit color mode will give you access to every single feature available for 8-bit images. For example, most of the filters that ship with Photoshop CS still do not support 16-bit mode. But these, being plugins, can be updated for 16-bit use over time, and I expect that most of them will be. Plus, the list of third-party 16-bit filters is growing. For now, here’s what you have.

I should note that, of the Stylize filters, only Emboss, Find Edges and Solarize are available at a 16-bit color depth. And, of course, the list gets narrower when using 16-bit color in CMYK mode.

Also excluded from 16-bit images are the following functions: Trap, Variations, Extract, Filter Gallery, Liquify, Pattern Maker and direct saving of images to 8-bit formats, though of course you can use the Save for Web option for saving JPEGs and GIFs, or simply switch to 8-bit mode prior to saving out to other formats.

I can’t overstate the importance of vastly improved 16-bit color coming to the world’s most popular image editor. But obviously I can’t show you everything about it. Suffice to say that if 16-bit color is in your workflow, you will not be disappointed with the functionality you’ll find in Photoshop CS. It isn’t the only major change in Photoshop CS, but, for me, it alone seems a reasonable justification for upgrading.[an error occurred while processing this directive]Camera raw formats
Before we move on to the more exciting new features in Photoshop CS, I should touch on one that’s related to the new 16-bit color functionality–the incorporation of the next-generation Camera Raw plugin, which allows for manipulation of raw data files in 8- and 16-bit modes from higher-end digital cameras.

The available controls are wide and varied and include functions like white balance, temperature, tint, exposure, size, resolution, details, lens adjustment, calibration, color space and depth, etc., along with a histogram and preview of the image.

Camera Raw settings can also be applied to multiple images through the FIle Browser, which we’ll get to below in the section dealing with workflow enhancements.

Now obviously this feature isn’t going to be much of an advantage to those who don’t have a digital camera that supports a raw format. But for professional photographers, it means the ability to open camera data directly in Photoshop before it’s processed, giving you extensive control over the image. A current list of supported cameras is available on Adobe’s site.

For the video professional
Also expanding Photoshop’s capabilities are new features designed specifically for video professionals. Obviously Photoshop is a critical tool in video production, and Adobe has begun to recognize this with the addition of three new enhancements, two minor and one fairly major.[an error occurred while processing this directive]In the minor category, Photoshop CS has an enhanced New Document dialog, which includes several presets for working at various video resolutions. (Interestingly, the DVD NTSC 720 x 534 was dropped from this release for whatever reason. But it can be added back manually.)

Also in the minor category is the addition of action and title safety guides as presets in the New Document setup. I say this is minor because the guides are not omnipresent. They can only be generated automatically when creating a new document, not later in the process. (Of course, if you want some really good NTSC action/title safety generators, you could always download my collection of Photoshop Actions here.)

But the more major addition is support for pixel aspect ratio correction, something video professionals have been requesting for quite a while. With this feature, regardless of the size or type of file you’re working with, Photoshop can display your image as either square or rectangular pixels (or both). First, when you create a new document, the dialog presents you with the option of setting the pixel aspect ratio.

Or, if you’re opening a file that has already been created, you can set the pixel aspect ratio manually through a new menu item under the Image menu.

You can also use the Custom Pixel Aspect Ratio to define and store your own settings for later use. (This feature is also accessed through the Image menu.)

And, finally, you can choose to show pixel aspect ratio correction or not via a new item in the View menu. You can also open multiple views of your image to see it in corrected or uncorrected aspects.

New image manipulation functions and effects
In the area of new tools, Photoshop CS introduces several new functions that are, at time, nearly miraculous in what they can do, at other times just plain useful. We’ll start with one of the less publicized new features, called “Match Color.” If you’ve ever tried to create a color map in Photoshop, you know the hoops you had to jump through to accomplish it: Convert your source image to indexed color, generate a color palette from it, convert your target image to indexed color and then apply the color map, all the while scrunching up your image to a total of eight bits for the privilege. The new version, however, lets you simply take an image and apply its color to another image (or portion of an image) to match colors easily, an especially useful feature for compositors working with files that were shot under different lighting conditions and that would otherwise require a lot of color correction time.[an error occurred while processing this directive]

So, for example, you can take any single image and apply the colors from another image to get color variation. The examples below show a butterfly that has been mapped with the colors of four different source images.

This works in a way similar to using a gradient map adjustment layer, except that the color mapping produces smoother results because the colors are indexed automatically prior to the application of the source image colors.

Another new image manipulation tool is Shadow/Highlight. This new tool performs complex image manipulations under the hood and provides you with a simple front end for getting the job done quickly. Essentially it allows you to pull detail our of excessively bright or dark areas of your images, details you might not even know were in your file. And it does this through a simple interface, allowing you easily to select the amount of detail you want to draw out of the highlight and shadow regions.

It also provides more advanced (and extensive) parameters for fine-tuning the extraction of detail.

I’ve already spent four pages covering this feature in a previous article, so I won’t repeat myself here. You can find this exploratory tutorial here. I will add that Shadow/Highlight does affect the range of your image because it lightens shadows and attempts to neutralize highlights, so it may not be perfect for every application. But it does do a fantastic job uncovering areas of your image obscured by shadows, and it does about as well as can be expected with highlights. (Keep in mind that with highlights, there may not be any data whatsoever available for recovery. So bracketing your images and applying a plugin like Blend Exposures from Reindeer Graphics’ Optipix collection is still the better option when possible.)

The last of the major new image manipulation tools is the Color Replacement tool. This one functions just like the regular Brush tool, except that it extracts data from your canvas as you draw to allow you to colorize, rather than color-replace, your image. If you’ve ever used Mask Pro from Extensis, this brush feels a lot like the Magic Brush tool in that software, except that instead of masking, you’re painting. It allows you, for example, to place the brush on the canvas and paint only on areas that contain similar colors, as in the purple sand in the image below.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]You can allow the brush to sample only once (at the point where your brush first touches down) or continuously (for smoother transitions), or you can use a predetermined color (the background color of your choice) as the color to paint over. You can also set the tolerance of the brush, anti-aliasing, limits (contiguous, edge detection or “discontiguous”), the brush size and softness and the brush mode. Modes include color, hue, saturation and luminosity.

Crossing over between image adjustments and effects are two new features in Photoshop CS–Photo Filter and Lens Blur. Photo Filter is a new tool that appears in the Adjustment menu. As its name implies, the new function emulates photographic filters as a post process, providing presets for a variety of filter types or direct access to custom filter colors. You can also set the density of the filter and preserve the luminosity of your original image.

Photo FIlter, incidentally, can also be applied as an Adjustment Layer.

Also in the photographic category is the new Lens Blur effect. Located within the Blur filter category, Lens Blur nevertheless distinguishes itself from the rest of the blur functions in a number of ways. First, it’s designed to simulate a photographic lens blur with respect to the characteristics of a camera iris (shape, radius, blade curvature and rotation). It also allows you to use a depth map (transparency, layer mask or any stored channel). And it provides controls for specular highlights and noise.

The only other new filter introduced in Photoshop CS is one called Fibers, which resides in the Render filter category, alongside Clouds, Difference Clouds and the rest. Fibers is a simple filter that creates vertical striations, with controls over strength and variance, along with randomization.

Though simple, this one has actually come in handy for me on a few occasions, especially for creating source textures for brushes, as well as light rays. Obviously it can also be used to create textures for fabrics as well. So play around with it, and you’ll find some uses.

Finally, most of the effects filters in Photoshop CS receive one major overhaul in the area of workflow: the all-new Filter Gallery. This function groups together many of the filters in the categories of Artistic, Brush Strokes, Distort, Sketch, Stylize and Texture and allows you to preview the results of each individual filter or combination of filters. It provides previews of each of the individual filters and shows the results of the filters on the image in the main preview window. It also provides direct controls for each of the supported filters and allows you to apply multiple filters (or multiple instances of filters) in one central location. Plus, it allows you to rearrange the order in which the filters are applied.[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Filter Gallery can be accessed directly through the Filter menu, or it pops up automatically anytime you select one of the supported filters. I find this feature to be an excellent addition to Photoshop’s effects capabilities, and I have only two negative things to say about it. FIrst, it doesn’t work in 16-bit color mode (since none of the filters in the Filter Gallery support 16-bit color). And, second, it doesn’t work with all of Photoshop’s filters. These are, most likely, temporary problems though, and I can foresee an expanded version of this Filter Gallery in a future Photoshop release.

Text enhancements
In the category of text, Photoshop receives three critical improvements, one of them indirectly. This first indirect one comes in the form of text integration with Adobe Illustrator CS. For those of you who own both applications, you can now share documents much more easily, retaining not only the format of the text, but editability as well. And this applies for both copying text to and from the Clipboard and to opening complete Illustrator documents that have been saved in the Photoshop format. I’ve covered this feature fairly extensively in my review of Illustrator CS, which you can read here, if you’d like more information about it.

The more direct new improvements to text are at least equally critical. The first of these is a feature that users have been waiting for so long that it’s almost a surprise that it finally happened. I refer, of course, to text on a path. Yes, text on a path is at long last here. In Photoshop CS, this feature is implemented much the same as you would find in other graphics programs. You can apply text to both shapes and paths, whether freeform or not. Text on a path is oriented in the direction in which you draw the path, and its direction can be reversed. It can also be aligned parallel or perpendicular to the path, using either the horizontal or vertical text tools. And, in the case of text on shapes, it can be placed on the inside or outside of the shape.

Unlike text on a path in Illustrator CS, you can’t link paths to continue your text onto multiple shapes. But you can position the text freely along the path, and you can also lengthen the path after the fact if your text is overset.

Finally in the area of text, Photoshop CS also gets improved support for OpenType fonts. Any application can display OpenType fonts, provided the application is running on an operating system that supports these fonts. But Photoshop CS takes it much further. Photoshop 7 could handle nothing more than ligatures, discretionary ligatures and old style. But Photoshop CS adds ordinals, swash, titling, contextual alternates, stylistic alternates, ornaments and fractions (when such features are offered by the font in question).

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Unlike Illustrator CS, Photoshop CS does not have a Glyphs palette for OpenType fonts (though you can find glyphs in the Mac OS Character Palette and the Windows Character Code Table), and it doesn’t ship with the hundred-plus OpenType faces that Illustrator includes. But the more robust base capabilities are there in the new version for when you need them.

Workflow enhancements
Now, what would any Photoshop upgrade be without improvements to the workflow? Photoshop CS packs a multitude of them. Along with 16-bit color support, the most significant–surely the most numerous–improvements in Photoshop CS come in the form of workflow enhancements. And of these, I’d say the two most important have to do with layers and the File Browser. We’ll start with layers.

Photoshop CS includes three improvements to layer functionality that are so great, you’ll wonder how you ever did without them. These are: Layer Comps, nested Layer Sets and the ability to export layers and Layer Comps as individual files. For those of you who haven’t already read up on this new feature, Layer Comps allow you to store the current state of your composition as an individual composition. So, for example, you might create aversion of your document displaying text, one hiding the text, one with a drop shadow, one with a bevel, etc. Layer Comps record the state of your document so that you can easily create variations and move freely between them.

A Layer Comp will track layer visibility of layers and Layer Sets, layer position (not the stacking order, but the physical position of the content of the layer) and effects, and it includes support for any Blending Options you’d care to apply, such as channels, knockout, blending mode, etc. It also allows you to name your individual Layer Comps and provide notes for future reference.

Another new and major enhancement to layers is in the form of nested Layer Sets. Now, instead of simply being able to create Layer Sets, you can place them within one another up to five deep, with multiple Layer Sets nested within any other Layer Set.

Finally, Photoshop CS provides an automated method for exporting layers and Layer Comps as individual files, a benefit for both designers and video professionals. I don’t think this feature requires too much explanation. It does what it’s supposed to do and solves the otherwise prohibitive task of manually saving out individual layers. And, using Layer Comps for export, you can easily generate multiple versions of your document–not just individual layers, but arrangements and combinations of layers as well.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]You can choose the output format for your file and specify options at the time of export, rather than having to–for example–manually set JPEG compression for each layer, BMP bit depth, PDF encoding, etc. Note that if you have difficulty with this function (as I initially did), it’s likely a conflict resulting from using your old Photoshop Plug-Ins folder as your secondary Plug-Ins folder in Photoshop CS.

The other truly major workflow enhancements come tot he File Browser. Photoshop CS offers a number of goodies in this area that make it, for me, the first usable version of File Browser. I don’t mean this as a slight to the old FIle Browser, but I never found it particularly compelling. Now, however, it does offer several advantages that force me to take notice.

These include much more flexibility in terms of the layout of the browser, the ability to search and add keywords to images, the ability to modify and add metadata, the ability to rearrange images in the folder view, the ability to flag individual images and the ability to automate certain functions without ever opening the images in Photoshop.

Now, I certainly don’t want to make it sound like these are the only two important workflow enhancements in Photoshop CS. They’re not.

Take for example, the addition of customizable keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? Well, quite a while. And now I can customize my commands, not just modifying those that already have keyboard shortcuts, but also adding to those that previously had no keyboard equivalent, such as the dreaded Hide/Show Selection Edges. Or transformations. Or brush creation and renaming. Or individual filters. Or whatever else you’d care to do that previously required you to break from your work to navigate the menu structure. It’s all there.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]There are also new automation tools to help save you time, probably the most significant of which is the new Crop and Straighten Photos function. This one allows you to scan multiple images on a single page. It then interprets the scan, straightens out any rotated images, crops them and delivers them all in their own individual new document window. Sadly, I can’t display a good example of this for you, but you have to see it in action. It’s just incredible.

For you Picture Package fans out there, the new version also includes the ability to create custom layouts on the fly. To do this, you apply the Picture Package command as usual, then click the Edit Layouts button. You’re then taken into the layout editor, where you can interactively adjust the number and size of the regions, as well as other parameters.

Also on the automation side is a new feature called Photomerge. This one allows you to select multiple image files to assemble them into a single composition, such as for the purpose of stitching images in a panorama. To use it, you select File > Automate > Photomerge, and then select the files you wish to include in the merge.

Photoshop can then automatically attempt to stitch the images together, or it will allow you to go in and arrange them manually inside the main Photomerge interface. It includes options for blending, rotation, perspective and other features.

And then there are the dozens of little enhancements that make Photoshop CS just that much more of a pleasure to work with. For example, remember back when, in Photoshop 7, you’d select a brush, change around some of the parameters and then lose those parameters the next time you selected a different brush? Well, now you can lock and or all of the parameters you set for one brush and make them apply to any other brush you choose.

You also have some little navigation niceties, such as the ability to move around the canvas when you’re in full-screen mode and the ability to synch up navigation between two document views. (For example, if you have one view at 50 percent and one at 200 percent, you can scroll up on the 50 percent view, which will also cause the 200 percent view to scroll up to the same portion of the image.) This is accomplished simply by opening up multiple windows for a document and navigating using the Hand tool while holding down the Shift key.

In the miscellaneous category, there’s now a full-time floating Histogram palette, which can be docked with your other palettes and called up when needed, or simply left open for you to examine any changes that occur when applying edits to your images. (While you’re in the midst of an edit, incidentally, it also displays a before and after histogram, seen below while in the preview stage of a Gaussian Blur.)

[an error occurred while processing this directive]For production management, it also includes the ability to export a History Log, either attached to the image you’re working on or as a separate file, for tracking your work. (No, this is not the same as having the ability to save your actual History to resume where you left off.) And it includes metadata customization, including the ability to create new metadata templates. You can save templates from the FIle Info window and then edit them easily within a text editor. And you can append metadata temples automatically to multiple files through the File Browser.

Finally, Photoshop CS also includes improved integration with other Adobe applications–such as Illustrator CS, as discussed previously–and through Version Cue, for those of you who plan to purchase the complete Adobe Creative Suite. It provides, essentially, centralized management of projects, files and file versions and also incorporates version notes and the ability to rank files as final version, current version, draft and the like. It’s designed, of course, for environments where multiple users will be working with the same files and modifying them and provides easy, automated naming conventions to help avoid the confusion that can occur in these situations. (I’ll be bringing you a separate look at Version Cue in the near future.)

Disappointments
All right, so I’ve just spent the last billion or so pages praising the new features of Photoshop CS. Are there any areas where the software falls short? Well, I’ll say this: There’s nothing that any previous version of Photoshop that Photoshop CS can’t do at least equally well. In other words, it won’t be a step backward for anybody in any way. I mention this because there have been recent versions of applications from other developers that actually have been a step backward, and so I think it’s important to mention that this is not the case with Photoshop.

Nevertheless, there are some things about Photoshop that I’ve wanted to see improved for quite some time but that still haven’t been addressed by the latest release. Chief among these is performance. All things being exactly equal (memory, hard disk, dual G4 processors, etc.), Photoshop CS ran at virtually the same speed as Photoshop 7. In several batteries of tests involving both application-level functions and plugins, Photoshop 7 came in at 970 seconds, while Photoshop CS came in at 912 seconds, a difference accounted for mostly by arbitrary rotation and flipping of very large canvases. SO despite the overall 6 percent speed gain, for most common functions Photoshop CS is no faster than its predecessor, which wasn’t that fast in many ways to begin with. I still think that Adobe needs to focus on tuning its software to take better advantage of dual processors on the Mac. (That said, I should note that Photoshop can’t be touched by most other applications in a number of areas, such as real-time Gaussian Blurs on even huge canvases.)

And there are other areas where I still sense that Adobe is holding back, especially in the area of animation. I’d like to see a frame manager built into Photoshop (maybe in a special edition of the program) for rotoscoping and animation; I’d like to see the ability to import image sequences for the same reason, especially now that it can export layers as individual images; I’d like the ability to export History (not just a History Log) with a document; I’d like to see faster text on Mac OS X, since there’s still the occasional slowdown when working with text; and I want to see all plugins updated as soon as possible to support 16-bit color depth.

But compared with what the new version offers, my disappointments seem fairly minor.

Source

Buy this software here:

http://www.softster.net/P27/Photo_Editing/Photoshop_CS_v8_0_CE.html

for MAC:

http://www.softster.net/P248/Macintosh_Software/Photoshop_CS_MacOsx.html