 | Photoshop CS5 has been with us now for a little over a month now, there was a lot of hype prior to its release. Adobe really wanted to push its new functionality, features such as the content aware fill and new HDR engine. |
I have been using CS5 on a Mac and PC since it’s release so thought I would put together a little review based on my findings. The two platforms play very different, something that has annoyed and intrigued me.
| Photoshop’s layout has remained relatively the same for many versions. Adobe has continued this with CS5 changing only a few minor things. The main visual changes are the addition of the ‘Mini Bridge’ application and the ‘CS Live’ community. Both of which we will cover in more depth further on in the review. |  |
When I first moved to Digital, HDR really intrigued me. I know allot of people frown upon HDR or heavily enhanced shots but HDR is here to stay. Many photographers use HDR to give their work a little boost. CS4’s HDR function was very basic and never really worked for me. The new HDR engine in CS5 is much improved. The new engine allows the user much more control similar to that of 3rd part HDR applications.
HDR Example
3 original files
One of the most exiting additions in CS5 in ‘Content Aware Fill’. I could not wait to try this feature, I shot allot of landscape and aircraft panorama’s. When building the panorama’s on CS4 I was always left with blank borders and areas will no picture detail. In order to solve this you could either crop out the blank area’s resulting in a smaller picture or you could build them out using the clone tool.
I tended to use the clone tool to keep the size of my pictures as large as possible, this was a massively time consuming process. Some pictures taking upwards to 10 hours to complete.
CS5’s Content Aware Fill promised to solve this, by selecting the area hitting the delete key and selecting ‘Content Aware’ Photoshop uses a clever algorithm to fill the blank spaces with a very believable clone of the area sounding the blank areas.
I first tried this on my Mac and it worked very well, I was left with a little tidying up to do around the edges but overall the tool worked well. However when I tired this on my PC I was continually hit with an error, ‘Not Enough Memory’. My PC was pretty much the same spec as my Mac but it just would not cope when using this tool. I played around with mu scratch disk location as advised by Adobe Support but to no avail.
I had planned to upgrade my PC from 4GB to 8GB of RAM fairly soon so when I saw a deal online I upgraded. At first the additional 4GB made a massive difference. Content Aware worked, fast and effectively.
This video demonstrates Content Aware in action.
Digital File Handling. High ISO, Photoshop CS4 was pretty good at handling high ISO shots, CS5 is much better. ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) 6 handles noise very well and allows the photographer much more room to move.
With the consumer sales of DSLR’s rising month on month, there are thousands of users out there that will find noise a problem. Shots of school shows, displays and weddings are the kind of picture that people want to keep, low light in many of these situations forces the user to bump up the ISO.
CS5 also includes a Lens Profile Creator, it enables user to create lens and camera profiles that can be used to correct photographs taken today or next week. The system also allows users to share these profiles, I personally think this is a great move by Adobe. Not all lenses and camera bodies have profiles available from the manufacturers so profiles created by users will be a greatly welcomes social addition.
Here is an example of what CS5’s noise reduction can do.
Shot with Sony A200, CZ16-80mm @70mm f10 ISO 800
Original Edited
CS5 also includes a mini version of its very useful Bridge application. The new ‘Mini Bridge’ allows you asset control from within Photoshop without the need to swap between the two applications.
Within mini bridge you can;
- Batch name your files from within search and replace.
- Batch convert to JPEG
- Watermark your work with text or an image when exporting to PDF
I personally think this is a great addition, I use Bridge allot and find the mini version very useful, especially when working on my laptop at an event.
Conclusion
I know I have not covered every angle of CS5 but I only wanted to give a quick overview including what I have found over the past month or so.
CS5 is not just an upgrade to CS4 it is a vast improvement, Adobe have listened to customer feedback and introduced feature that photographer and digital artists have asked for.
Content aware fill, the new HDR engine and high ISO handling really save time and are very welcome features.
I will post updates of problems, resolutions and anything else I stumble upon over the coming months.
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