Adobe Photoshop CS5

To celebrate Photoshop’s 20th anniversary, software giant Adobe has released a new Creative Suite featuring Photoshop CS5.

According to Adobe, Photoshop has become the software choice for over 10 million users across the globe. A new version is half expected every 1.5 to 2 years and after the key developments in CS4, Photoshop CS5 has its work cut out if it’s going to make a worthwhile purchase for newcomers to photo editing, or those looking for a decent upgrade.

All-new features
Photoshop CS4 offered lots of useful tools in Camera Raw 5, like the Adjustment Brush and the Graduated Filter. Adobe has further developed Camera Raw in CS5 by introducing the Camera Raw 6 plug-in. Featuring an all–new engine for RAW processing, it supports over 275 camera models and although there are no new tools in the toolbar, there have been some developments in the Detail and Effects tabs.
Noise Reduction has been refined with new algorithms to eliminate the worst Noise in high ISO images. Instead of three sliders you’re now given five, including ones to control Luminance Detail, Luminance Contrast and Color Detail. Also in Camera Raw 6, it’s now possible to apply grain effects non-destructively in the Effect tab and the Post-Crop Vignette option allows you to lighten or darken the corners of your images with five sliders.
In Photoshop itself, there are a number of tools and features to enhance efficiency and workflow. Below the menu bar, Adobe has introduced a Mini Bridge icon that lets you browse and search for files in a separate palette. It’s a great way of scrolling through thumbnails and saves you switching constantly between Photoshop and Bridge. Adobe has spent a lot of time developing its selection technology and this is most noticeable in the new Refine Edge dialog. The Edge Detection option automatically identifies the boundary of subjects and when you need to fine-tune Selections, the new Refine Radius tool can be used to expand the detection area, helping recognise highly detailed edges in your image such as hair strands. The Output option at the bottom of the Refine Edge dialog also makes it easy to produce a Selection on a new Layer or as a Layer Mask.
Great for retouching is Content-Aware Fill, which can be used with Selections or with the Spot Healing Brush. Rather than sampling the pixels to use for replacement, Content-Aware Fill studies the tone, lighting and Noise of pixels around a Selection or area you’re brushing and fills the distraction relevantly for near-invisible results. It’s a feature that has to be seen in action to be believed, so check out our video on www.photoanswers.co.uk/CS5
Elsewhere Adobe has introduced HDR Pro into the Automate options. Designed for those who want to preserve the full tonal range in a scene, it features a de-ghosting system to maximise clarity and sharpness. There are nine adjustment sliders in the HDR Pro dialog, giving you options to tweak the Gamma, Exposure and Detail before committing to the final result.
The Lens Correction filter, first seen in CS2, has also been developed. No longer in the Distort fly-out menu, it’s now found under Filter in the menu bar and corrects for three common lens-based problems under the Auto Correction tab including geometric distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting. There’s the option of selecting your camera manufacturer, camera model and lens model in the search criteria, but if your lens isn’t listed it’s possible to create your own profiles for your lenses using the new Lens Profile Creator. This will be available as a free download from labs.adobe.com, but if you want to control lens correction manually you’re still given many controls under the Custom tab at the top of the dialog. 
Other new features include a Mixer Brush in the Toolbox. This is designed to be used with the 10 new bristle brushes and can create wonderful painting effects in seconds. There’s also a Puppet Warp function, found under Edit in the menu bar, which allows you to drop pins on specific areas of an image you’d like to warp.

Interface & Performance
Anyone upgrading from CS4 to CS5 won’t notice a lot of difference in the layout. It still owns the clean-look of CS4, but the Applications bar has changed slightly. The Workspace picker is now laid out horizontally on the right making it quicker to select the workspace for the type of imagery you’re working on. On the far left there are minor changes, with the addition of the Mini Bridge icon alongside the Launch Bridge icon. Anyone upgrading from CS2 or CS3 will benefit from the improvements in the image rendering process, which offers a smoother performance when scrolling across or zooming in and out of images. The tabbed document display, first seen in CS4, is still present, making it easier to work across a number of images at once. Loading our Mac version of CS5 onto our machine was stress-free, and it was ready to open and use within 10mins. RAW files loaded rapidly into Camera Raw and our 200MB test image took 16secs to open and appear on screen. Overall, the speed of use was impressive, so provided you’ve got a powerful enough machine, you should never be interrupted by a sluggish performance.


What’s new in CS5
HDR Pro
HDR Pro preserves the full tonal range of an image and offers extra control over the HDR merging process with nine sliders in the dialog box.

Content-Aware Fill
Lets you remove distracting objects. It studies lighting, tone and pixel Noise to work out suitable replacement pixels then rather impressively, fills the chosen area in one go.

Refine Edge
Designed to make it easier to create accurate Selections and Masks around the most difficult-to-select subjects. You can now output Selections on a new Layer or as a Layer Mask under the Output options.

Mixer Brush
Behaves like a paintbrush and lets you use a number of different colours on a single brush tip. There are 10 bristle tips to use in the brush-preset picker.

Lens Correction
The option to select your camera and lens combination in the new Auto Correction tab. If your optic isn’t listed, create a custom lens profile using the Adobe Lens Profile Creator, http://labs.adobe.com

3D Repoussé
Available in Adobe CS5 Extended Editions only, the 3D workspace option, located in  the Applications bar, lets you convert 2D artwork into 3D objects very easily, using Repoussé. The Repoussé dialog gives you 18 Shape Presets to choose from at the top and there’s the option of changing extrusion properties such as the Scale, Bend, Depth, Inflate and Twist. If you’re really after the 3D functionality in CS5 you’ll need the Extended Edition, which works out at £289 more expensive than the non-extended version.

Adobe Camera RAW 6
The latest version of Camera Raw 6 features all the impressive tools that were introduced in Camera Raw 5 like the Graduated Filter and invaluable Adjustment Brush. The latest developments are found in the Detail and Effects tabs. Most significantly the Noise removal controls that we’re used to seeing at the bottom of the Detail tab have been refined with new algorithms. These have been designed to remove more Noise from our high ISO images. Colour Noise can be removed by dragging the Color slider to the right and the Luminance slider removes the worst of the graininess. The other two new sliders, Luminance Detail and Luminance Contrast offer further control of the graininess and at the far bottom you’ll find the last new slider, which is Color Detail. The FX icon among the tabs is the Effect tab and it’s here you’re given the option of recreating realistic film grain non-destructively for the first time in Camera Raw. There are three sliders to control Grain, including Amount, Size and Roughness. Beneath these are the sliders for the new Post-Crop Vignetting function. This basically allows you to add creative lightening or darkening effects to the corners of your RAW files after you’ve cropped, and offers five sliders to control Amount, Midpoint, Roundness, Feather and Highlights.

Lose distractions with Content Aware-Fill
The latest command that’ll help with retouching is Content-Aware Fill. It’s designed to account more fully for the structure and detail of the image elements that surround a painted or selected area. It can be
used with the Spot Healing Brush or with Selections and when it’s used with the former, you’ll find that it is an option alongside Proximity Match and Create Texture in the Options bar. We found the quickest way of using it was with Selections,  and after making a Selection around our distraction with the Lasso we hit Shift+Backspace to load the Fill dialog. Content-Aware Fill is one of the options, and after hitting OK the new command goes to work and replaces the distraction with relevant pixels from the surrounding area. If you need to retouch quickly, this latest feature will benefit you hugely.

The Mixer Brush
The latest tool in CS5’s Toolbox is the Mixer Brush. Located beneath the Color Replacement tool, it will redefine the way we paint with brushes. It can be used creatively to define multiple colours on a brush tip or it can be put to good use to create painterly effects from an image. Adobe has developed 10 new bristle tips, which are found in the Brush Preset Picker, specifically for use with the Mixer Brush. Using it to create a painting of Edinburgh castle was good fun, and the brush responded well to angling our pen on our graphics tablet. Selecting a bristle tip revealed a live view of the brush in the top left corner of the image as we painted and there are many controls in the Options bar to change the way the brushes react on the canvas. The Wet option determines how much paint is picked up from the image and the Load option controls the amount of paint on the brush tip.

AT A GLANCE
Photoshop CS5: £644 Photoshop CS5 Extended: £933
Upgrade Price: £186.82 (from CS2,CS3 or CS4) £549 (from Elements 6, 7 or 8)

Minimum Recommended Spec (Windows)
Operating System: Windows XP with SP 3, Vista with SP 1 or 2 or Windows 7 Processor: Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor Memory: 1GB of RAM
Hard Disk: 1GB of available hard-disk space
Display: 1024x768 display with hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card. 
Multimedia Features: QuickTime 7.6.2

Minimum Recommended Spec (Mac)
Operating System: Mac OS X v10.5.7 or v10.6
Processor: Multicore Intel processor
Memory: 1GB of RAM
Hard Disk: 2GB of available hard-disk space
Display: 1024x768 display with hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card.  Multimedia Features:
 QuickTime 7.6.2 Hard disk 2GB available space
Screen 1024x768 with 16-bit video card

Verdict
In CS4, many new features were found in Camera Raw, and this time round, more seem to be found in Photoshop itself. The enhanced Noise reduction in Camera Raw 6 will benefit anyone who shoots regularly at high ISOs and testing the new Noise algorithms against CS4 revealed sharper results when viewed at 100%. The big news for cloning and healing work is Content-Aware Fill. It worked better in some shots than others, but generally speeded up the time it takes to lose awkward distractions from our shots. The Automated Lens Correction is a welcome addition for removing lens-based inaccuracies. The Lens Profile Creator hadn’t gone live on Adobe Labs at the time we went to press, but it should be available by the time you read this. The latest developments in Refine Edge will be useful for fine-detailed Selection work and HDR users will benefit from the new adjustment options in HDR Pro.
The Mixer Brush and Puppet Warp are both highly specialist tools. Yes, they worked well and they’ll be handy on occasions, but in everyday imaging their use will be limited. If you’re a CS4 user, the latest features in CS5 make it a very tempting upgrade and best of all, you’ll be familiar with the interface. Those running CS2 or CS3 can take advantage of the £187 upgrade price and it would be a worthwhile purchase for the Camera Raw 6 alone. Adobe has placed a £550 upgrade price for Elements 6, 7 or 8 users, but if you’re going to be buying your copy from scratch, you’ll need to save £644 for a boxed copy or £933 if you want to make use of all the 3D tools in the CS5 Extended edition. To give CS5 a go before splashing out, there’s a free trial at www.adobe.com/uk