Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended Review

It has already become a good tradition to release two versions of Photoshop – normal one and extended. Photoshop CS3 Extended has been released in April 2007 and contained some of rare features. This application was targeted at professionals who needed advanced digital imagery and suited well specialists working in such areas as healthcare, science, video or film industry, and, certainly, 3D modeling. Standard version of Photoshop was good for digital artists and designers the most, while Extended one was the nest step into meeting specific needs of certain industries. Only in Photoshop Extended you can perform such actions as import 3D models and manipulate them is a number of ways – change camera views, orientation and size of model, render modes, textures, lightning, etc. This makes Photoshop a good choice for fitting requirements of architectural designers. New measurement and analysis tools allow viewing not only sectional parts of buildings, but also combine various rendering modes in order to get fantastic results.

Newest version of Photoshop Extended comes in Creative Suite 4 with such famous applications as Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Flash, After Effects and many more. Photoshop CS4 Extended continues tendency started by previous version and enhances 3D capabilities. Also you will find here better 2D imaging and some other features that may be helpful for various groups of users.

Interface is definitely the first thing you notice when you start a program. Photoshop CS4 has slightly updated UI and you will notice this. Finally Adobe developers included tabs into program and now it’s much easier to navigate, switch pages and move them around. Panels can be collapsed to header rows with just one click and that is really helpful as you may not need some of individual panels at the moment. Overall, customization properties have sufficiently grown up in CS4 version as you can adjust complete interface including panels and windows according to your taste. I liked new design as it allows document arranging on completely new level.

Several new updates are related to image editing tasks. If you need to make such changes as Brightness/Contrast, adjust Curves or Levels, newly appeared Adjustment panel is your best friend. While the mentioned controls are nothing new to Photoshop, Adjustment panel is truly time-saving as you don’t need to use separate dialog boxes. Also new Vibrance adjustment has appeared. This option provides total control over color saturation, but unlike many tools it preserves delicate tones. Such adjustments as Curves and Hue/Saturation are also now available “on-image” basis. More than 20 new presets make it easier to find proper starting point for convenient editing process and faster tasks performing.

Masks panel also need being mentioned as it’s a great way to simplify the creation and editing of vector and pixel masks. Handy sliders allow fast masks adjustment. Refine Mask option controls mask edges and size, while Color Range is great for creating detailed masks that are based on single or multiple colors. These are not all image editing updates and you may also find Burn, Dodge and Sponge tools that will be definitely helpful if you need to keep image tones, but edit exposure and saturation. I have found useful such options as live preview for Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools as now it’s much easier to replace or ‘heal’ exact areas or image.

During work many of us face the situation when we need to adjust image according to specific proportions, but this should be done with minimal changing in image. Content-Aware Scaling is new feature in Photoshop CS4 that will help to keep all vital areas of image in order. The system automatically analyses image and tries to keep all most interesting parts of it unchanged. If your image is quite complicated, you can use selection tools and mark all important areas manually. Content-Aware Scaling tools really works an you can see this on the next picture. The first image is the original photo. The second one shows this photo that has been scaled using regular scale, while the last one features Content-Aware Scaling usage.

Automatic alignment and image layers blending first appeared in Photoshop CS3. These functions quickly found their fans as it was much easier to perform such tasks as, for example, creating advanced image composites. Photoshop CS4 goes deeper and enhances this feature, adding two additional options. Open Photomerge command an you will see there newly appeared Vignette Removal and Geometric Distortion Correction. When you create a panorama image, it’s recommended to keep these options turned on as this improves final result. These updates are useful for performing more complicated tasks as creating 36—degree panoramas and ‘fish-eye’ effects.

There are numerous smaller updates in Photoshop CS4 that include such options as canvas rotation in angles, advanced zooming that allows expanding image up to pixels but still get clear view, rebuilt printing interface with detailed colors preview. Mac users can enjoy 16-bit printing that provides increased depth and clarity and many other additions that may not be seen at a glance, but they become vivid during work.

Any Photoshop review cannot be complete without mentioning Adobe Bridge, CS4 is no exception. Abode Bridge is ultimately useful application that performs managing, previewing and finding all graphic files much faster. Adobe Lightroom 2 is quite popular among digital photographers, who will definitely be pleased to know about tighter connection between two programs. Better processing of RAW images means faster work as it tales less to see image preview and all adjustments are made ‘on the fly’ without waiting. As usual, Adobe programs can be equipped with various plug-ins. Some of them are very useful, for example, Adobe Configurator is dedicated to creating custom palettes for Photoshop CS4.

Photoshop CS4 Extended holds all of the updates mentioned above, but it also have some unique improvements that concern 3D capabilities. One of them concerns creating 3D images from 2D ones. As you can see on a picture, wood texture can be easily turned into cylinder and image with plain pink color can be turned into multicolor cube. Such multicolor scheme is made with Brush tool that can be applied to 3D objects as well.

When you needed to edit 3D image in Photoshop CS3 Extended, you first had to activate it. In CS4 there’s no need to perform this action as all 3D images and their layers can be edited directly.

Usually all 3D tasks are very sensitive to your system capabilities and if your computer is not the fastest one, you will need to wait to see changes applied. Photoshop CS4 has totally re-written engine that now uses not only computer’s main processor (CPU), but video card as well. This update fastens 3D image processing and editing.

Photoshop CS4 Extended understands the majority of popular 3D formats including 3DS, COLLADA, KMZ, U3D and OBJ.

Video and animations support is also improved in CS4 version. You can export and preview audio content from video file only or use frame comments only. Non-square pixel images previewing is much better in the last version of Photoshop. Animation panel has new shortcuts that allow faster frames and keyframes editing. 3D objects can have video layers, so you can turn any surface of 3D object into screen.

Photoshop CS4 standard will be valued high by many users, but Extended version is by far more interesting. Adobe becomes more focused on fitting specific needs of various professionals and does this pretty good, turning to universal product for all tasks.

Also check out: Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended for Mac and Adobe Premiere CS3, Encore CS3 and SoundBooth CS3