Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Alright, you know Photoshop pretty well and they just came out with a new version, CS4. How exactly do you get up to speed with the new stuff without having to hash through the old just to find the differences? Well, just ask Deke! Get online and in Photoshop CS4 New Features from Lynda.com; he will show it to you.
Deke McClelland has put together a short course that focuses just on the new features of Photoshop CS4. As a leading expert in Photoshop, he covers the latest developments in Adobe's image editor, and he leaves no stone unturned. This course lasts 1.5 hours.
After a brief welcome, he gets right to business by exploring the new interface. In Photoshop CS4 you have this whole new tabbed window interface, and he goes through it like a hot knife through butter. He then moves on to show you how to work with the new panels setup.
Next he takes on the navigation and OpenGL aspects of CS4, and the new zoom behaviors. In this version, the Bridge received new enhancements and so he shows you that as well. Some of the changes include new workspace layout such as the essentials, filmstrips, metadata, and output. Then there are the new collections, multiple loupes, and the keyword search.
One of the bigger changes in CS4 is the Adjustments panel. This is the panel located to the central right part of the screen, and it contains all of the adjustment controls in one place. Then he goes on to the target adjustment tool, as he calls it, and shows some pretty impressive features. Other features he examines are the mask panels, how to drag and drop between tabs, smarter Smart Objects, the improved toning tools, and scaling a brush.
Then there is the new Camera Raw. In this new version you now get the ability to apply independent color modification to selective portions of an image using either a brush style tool or a graduated filter. With the Panoramic Vignette removal feature you will see how this can fix the darkening between images that can happen at the edges of photo stitching. Add to that the blending and you have new, more powerful Panoramas.
Finally there is the Content Aware Scaling feature that is truly amazing. This feature, while does not work in all situations, when it does work it will have your jaw dropping to the floor. This feature scales the low detail areas in an image while keeping the identifiable objects intact. This allows you to change the size of an image while keeping the important items looking good.
Photoshop CS4 New Features is only available as an online training course and you can get it one of three ways. Monthly at $25 USD/month gets you all of the videos that are available online (approximately 21,811 videos on 318 topics at this time). Annually at $250 USD per year or Premium at $375 USD per year which get all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are not included with the monthly or annual subscriptions. They are included on the DVD and Premium subscriptions.
You can use Photoshop CS4 New Features as a training program for the individual student, as well as the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It is of benefit to anyone who needs help understanding Photoshop CS4 New Features. You can also try out most of the several sections of this lesson for free at Lynda.com.
Once again in his witty and conversant style, Deke McClelland comes through with another winner in Photoshop CS4 New Features. Keeping it simple and to the point, and only focusing on the new features, you don't have to waste your time looking at the stuff that your already know, but instead can focus on what you need to know to get up to speed with the latest version of Photoshop CS4. If you want to target your learning to just the new features then I highly recommend Photoshop CS4 New Features.
