Some of us have been eagerly awaiting it, others have been casually disinterested and some have even expressed irritation. The fact of the matter is, though, that this September 23rd saw the official announcement of Adobe’s latest release of their Creative Suite. Here at Psdtuts+ we thought it fair to give fans a taste of what’s new in Photoshop CS4.
The following information and more is available from adobe.com. See the announcement here: Adobe Photoshop Extended CS4.
Editing Power
Two new panels to help you with Photoshop editing.
Adjustments Panel
The new ‘live and dynamic’ adjustments panel allows complete adjustment of your images’ tones and colours, including on-image controls.
Masks Panel
All the controls you need for pixel or vector-based masks in one panel. Live and non-intrusive editing of feathering, density and so on.
Content-Aware Scaling
(Only available with Photoshop CS4 Extended). Described by Adobe as ‘revolutionary’ this feature allows automatic detection of vital elements within an image, scaling only those which you intend. Scaling in this manner eliminates cropping and retouching from the process. Visit the Adobe site and witness the surfers below remain unaffected as the background is stretched across the canvas..
Workflow and Efficiency
Adobe have pulled out all the stops across the CS4 product range to help improve workflow.
Tabbed Documents
The familiar modern way of working with multiple documents or windows. Tabs or n-up views will allow you to switch between and move objects across to other open documents with ease.
Fluid Canvas Rotation
Click to turn your canvas at any desired angle or perspective for viewing purposes.
Smoother Panning and Zooming
Photoshop’s Pixel Grid allows perfect clarity even when zoomed in to maximum depth and new smoothness adds to your level of zoom control.
3D and Motion Based Images
A large number of new 3D and video capabilities for Photoshop.
Revolutionary 3D Painting and Compositing
(Only available with Photoshop CS4 Extended). Paint, apply gradients and wrap images directly onto 3D models, create depth to layers and text and export the results to supported common 3D formats. Use Adobe’s new ray-tracing rendering engine for print-quality output, or animate your 3D objects for video output.
3D Object and Property Editing
(Only available with Photoshop CS4 Extended). An on-image interface allows full manipulation of 3D objects without extra panels and dialogues. Position cameras, lighting, objects, meshes, grids – all with the intuitive mouse axes controls.
3D/Video Support
(Only available with Photoshop CS4 Extended). An impressive addition to Photoshop’s 3D funtions whereby video layers are treated as textures for projection onto a 3D surface.
Efficient Collaboration
(Only available with Photoshop CS4 Extended). High priority for Adobe in developing CS4; collaboration between applications. Use the U3D interchange format to migrate your 3D projects seamlessly with Adobe Acrobat® 9 Pro Extended and Adobe After Effects for presentation or production output.
Online Services
Adobe Community Help
Search Adobe’s product help online with improved search facilities. Help contributions from 3rd party community members keep this resource growing and current.
Adobe Kulerâ„¢
Kulerâ„¢, the colour palette feed available from Adobe Labs previously accessible for CS3 users and now a permanent feature of Adobe’s CS4 products, giving you access to colour, theme and swatch contributions from a huge online community.
Now it’s Your Turn.
Let’s hear it then, are you impatiently drumming your credit card on the desk, waiting for CS4 to be made available? Or are you quietly resentful at the thought of investing more hard-earned cash for tools which you’ll rarely make use of? We want to hear your thoughts.
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Sounds great but I can’t see my self justifying the price tag for those new features, I’ll stick with CS3 for now.
Photoshop is sooo expensive.
I’m honestly the most excited about the 3D elements. For designing in my college classes as well as work it will add a whole new depth to my work. I love how PS CS3 already can import 3D objects, but a huge limitation is that you can only edit textures attached, and not add your own. Looks like CS4 will break that and allow you to polypaint, which is going to be awesome.
Yes, it’s pricey. Way too expensive for dabblers. I’ll be in college still so I’ll get the student discount – huzzah! But still way expensive.
I like how Adobe makes it out that they made the “Content-Aware Scaling”, it was invented by a group of people here is the link to it: http://graphics.csie.ncku.edu.tw/Image_Resizing/ they have a very early post on digg but I cannot locate it..
Adobe is either out of their mind on the pricing from CS3 suites.. CS3 was a broken product and to charge that much for it is absurd.
Wow, I can’t wat for this one. Looks fantastic!
I’m really looking forward to Content-Aware Scaling. I just hope that I’m going to be able to afford this right after CS3.
A lot of really sweet features in the new PS !!!
looks awesome….. :D
who cares about the price it’ll be available as warez anyway and i know for a fact that most of you posting on here get it via that way so why moan?
pz.
(:
On the way to the store :D
Content-aware scalling is available in Photoshop’s standard version http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/compare/
im still on cs. the only good news i care about from this is cs2 price will come down even more
Agreed about the 3D – quite amazing stuff!
I am so impatient to have it. :D
Awesome I love the integration of the 3D……Way to go Adobe. But, can ya drop the price =)
You think the changes are worth the update cost (from CS3 to CS4)?
It doesn’t seem that much different for image editing.
I’m not sure if we’ll upgrade – upgrading the whole office is expensive! But these features are definitely cool.
If you want to see content aware resizing now then you can either check out the GIMP plugin here – http://liquidrescale.wikidot.com/en:start
or you can go to http://rsizr.com and try it out online for free!!
All pretty clever stuff really but as said here before Adobe did NOT invent this technology.
Best wishes,
Mark
Can’t wait!!!!!!
- Greg
So, does anyone know if GPU usage made the cut? There was some talk of it but I haven’t heard it mentioned anywhere since the big announcement…
I was like:
cool
cool
cool
kuler huh…. YES!!!!
So far most pumped about rotating the canvas. its about freaking time. there’s no reason they left it out at least back to cs2. makes no sense.
i really want/need to know if i can build in 3d though. can i build 3d type effects etc in PS now? thats all the 3d i do, it would be great if PS did that now instead of just editing premade stuff.
I am very exciting to see new Photoshop CS4! Actually there are no many new features to give a reson to really buy new photoshop.
I was expecting a bit more in this version. I was really wondering what cool new icons they would come up with for my dock but they stuck with the same CS3 boxes. I’ll probably stick with CS3 for a bit.
Everyone here must not be in the profession if you’re only reason for not upgrading is a steep price. Drop the dough, put it in your expense column, pay less taxes and move on with life! And if you’re a student, the price is quite reasonable. And if you’re neither, start a business or go to school! :)
I love the move to panels for such common tasks like adjustments and masking. They’ve done a good job of reacting to how people actually use the interface. Wonderful. Can’t wait.
I will immediately be purchasing this and making unicorns.
I like the new ‘Smoother Panning and Zooming’ its going to make editing those minute details a whole lot easier =D
CS4 seems to have leaped ahead, I saw the presentation at adobe.com. I can’t wait!
i love the evanto series of tutorials, but its going to be a while before i can afford cs4 stuff, their future tuts wont mean as much if they start emphasizing cs4.
I love the non-obtrusive editing windows. Everything is integrated into the side panels, that is really cool, especially the adjustments…that will make life so much easier, especially because at my job I have dual monitors and half the time I load up an adjustments panel is loads up on the monitor I don’t want it on…it’s frustrating :)
and the 3d tools should be interesting to mess with. I have some buddies that make some amazing 3d work, might have to borrow their stuff to test it out.
I’ve been stuck with v1 since it came out. I was close to getting v3.3 in the amazon sale last week. So glad I didn’t now, as v1 owners can upgrade to v4 for the same price as from v3-4. Come to daddy. It will feel like Christmas has come early for this geek. :D
I cant freaken wait having more control over my masking is amazing and will help me out so much also the new tone adjustments is awesome! The easier it will be to texture a 3d model the better thank you adobe my credit card is waiting for you.
Oh I like the Fluid Canvas control. That’ll make package layout a bit easier.
I wish they would have done the same thing they did with the Live Gradient
Tool in CS4 Illustrator. Overall the entire suite has some nice upgrades.
but as always the cash issue makes it hard to jump
I can appreciate the new features (especially the smooth zooming, canvas rotation and tabs), but CS3 was released less than two years ago. This update is too soon and doesn’t include enough new features.
I guess I fit into that irritated group. :P
wow!!!nice features.i cant wait to have it
all i can say id wow!. but it cost a thousand of dollars.
Too bad content-aware scaling will only be included in the Extended version. I wish there was just one Photoshop version.
sound cool. i will try it so…
I’m still stuck wid Photoshop cs for financial reasons. I only wish I can somehow buy this one :(
and its too bad dat all those sooper nice features come only with the extended version.
nice features there, but a way too expensive ;)
Looks great, I upgraded to CS3 about 3 months back. One thinks he should have waited a bit longer! I posted a link on the community feed for the Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Masters Addition where you could check out every application. Did everyone take a look?
So not worth the upgrade.
I personally think that CS4 has features will allow some to justify the upgrade (including the £900 price-tag if you upgrade to Master Collection, which includes Photoshop CS4 Extended, and one of everything else while they’re at it. Or a £200 price-tag if just upgrading the single app.)
Personally, I just began using Photoshop in general (CS3 Extended) a few months ago. So its more likely than not that my dock will show the Blue and White logo (CS3), Rather than making the switch to the Blue and Black Logo (CS4) for a while longer. I could possibly see upgrading Illustrator to CS4 for features like multiple work boards but I highly doubt that I’ll be upgrading my entire suite (Design Premium) for a while.
CS3 Eats too much o memory. I just hope this is not the same with CS4
Amazing stuff .. but ooooohh the price tag. It going to take me a while o lay my hands on this one but wait, is it even necessary?
I love Adobe Photoshop and the Fourth version of the Creative Suite is SUPERLATIVE!
Now we are waiting for your tuts on the CS4 ;)
Thanks guys!
I love some of the changes, but my purchase of the CS3 suite only a year ago makes it tough to justify the expenditure… even if I could expense it.
Tabbed documents!! It’s about time! :D
Another important feature is the use of Open GL to perform the faster pan and zoom funtions. This means that the software will be using the graphic cards to process the images, instead of the CPU which will result in much smoother effect without slowing down the machines. I think this is probably the most important overall advancement in PS4.
I love my PSCS3 eheheheheh
and i dont plain to buy a new one