What's New in Photoshop CS5

Content-Aware
Content-Aware is the big boast of Photoshop CS5 and it comes in two forms.
The Spot Healing Brush is like a Clone Stamp with brains and is very useful in many situations. It's now been taken further with the addition of the Content-Aware option. Click on a spot to be cleaned up and it takes a better analysis of the surrounding area and uses this content to make the repair.

It can work very well, but like most things automatic there are times
when a more manual approach is necessary.

There are many occasions when a great deal of manual repair work is necessary.



Masks with Refine Edge Tool
Selecting delicate objects like hair could always be done with enough effort, but now the task has been made much easier, once you master the system.

Adobe claim how it is much easier to make complex selections, but that will depend very much of the background. With the Masks panel, good background knowledge of its components is necessary then the Masks and Refine Edge panels become among the best new features of Photoshop CS5.



Mixer Brush Tool
This should be great fun for illustrators but will be of little interest to photographers and those who cannot draw.
The tool can be used with any brush. It starts off primed with the foreground colour and will also pick up some of the canvas colour, blending the two together. The proportion of each can be control, along with the fade of the stroke and the amount of wet-look it gives.

It can give realistic textured brush strokes which work well,
if you can handle it properly.



Camera Raw
Working on Camera Raw is preferable to working on the image derived from it. Any changes will not change the original file so they are all non-destructive.

Noise reduction has been greatly improved and that's a big bonus, especially as a lot of the fine detailed can be retained.
Conversely more realistic photographic-style grain can be added to an image. There are also better controls for adding vignetting.

Lens Correction comes with built-in profiles for a large range of lenses, making removal of lens distortions a much more automatic affair.
This is in both Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5 itself.



High Dynamic Range
High Dynamic Range is an advanced feature to merge several exposures of the same scene in order to extract maximum detail out of the scene, which cannot be done with a single exposure.

HDR has been boosted with improvements with better control and speed.
If there is movement between the exposures, removing any unwanted ghost images has been improved too. The surrealistic visual effect that can result from HDR merging is not to everyone's taste, however.



Puppet Warp
Pins can be attached to an image and the different components can be moved and repositioned. A person's arms can be moved around, plants and leaves adjusted to new positions and flags made to curve and fold.

Good fun and useful.



Mini Bridge
Bridge is a separate programme with access to all Adobe products.

Mini Bridge will open as a small panel in Photoshop enabling the use of many of its functions without going into the full version of Bridge.

How to use the new CS5 features is covered in Photoshop In A Day



Rule of Thirds
Little improvements come along in different sections. The Crop tool can lay down a frame to display an image with the Rule of Thirds grid. The image can then be cropped to fit these principles.

Is Photoshop CS5 Worth Buying?

Users with version CS3 or older will find the upgrade more useful. Someone with an older version of Photoshop can pick up CS4 at a real bargain price right now.

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