Dan Margulis Applied Color Theory

Photoshop CS4: Early User Feedback

CS4
Posted by: Russell Brown
Thu Sep 25, 2008 1:42 am (PDT)

So, is it just me? Am I missing something, or after waiting with bated breath for the release of CS4, expecting to see some genuinely useful additions, I find just a bunch of crappy, Booboisie-friendly nonsense?

After all the discussion here about them, I don't see any mention of individual channel-curving in ACR or any improvement in Custom CMYK. Without these, I'm afraid I won't be getting the new version and will stay with CS2 until they appear. There is nothing I can sse in the new release which would be of any use and certainly not worth spending my Hard-Earned.

Very frustrating.

Or am I missing something....?

Russ Brown
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Lee Clawson"
Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:35 am (PDT)

on 9/25/08 4:29 AM, Russell Brown wrote:

There is nothing I can sse in the new release which would be of any use and
certainly not worth spending my Hard-Earned.

That was my feeling too.

Lee Clawson
2/\V/\7 Studio
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Jeremy Schultz"
Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:37 am (PDT)

Russ, I think your assessment is fairly accurate. I?ve been using the CS4
beta for a month or so in my daily work, a lot of which is color correction and handling images to go in ads. CS4 hasn?t changed my work much, and in some cases it is harder to do things (Adjustments panel). The one change that?s been hardest to get used to are new keyboard commands for the Curves dialog box and Curves in the Adjustments panel:

CURVES DIALOG BOX
Cmd/Ctrl-2 or Opt/Alt-2: RGB or CMYK
-3: R or C
-4: G or M
-5: B or Y
-6: K

CURVES IN ADJUSTMENTS PANEL
Same as dialog, but Cmd/Ctrl is not an option‹they are used for channel selecting

These keyboard commands are two keys to the right of where they are in CS3, and I find myself putting my fingers in difficult positions in order to switch to B/Y or K.

But I haven?t thoroughly tested all of CS4?s features and I?m only using a beta, so I?m withholding judgment until I get the real thing.

Jeremy Schultz
Design and illustration for print and the web
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Alex Kent"
Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:07 pm (PDT)

i have to say i think CS4 is a worthwhile upgrade. i have been working with the beta versions for a while.

in my opinion the best bits are: the behaviour of the canvas (the new OpenGL'ness) is wonderful, smooth pixels at any scale factor (why didn't we get this 5 years ago!), fast scaling and new rendering approach make the 'feeling' of moving around and working with the image very much faster and less jarring. the updated interface (Application Window), some people are going to love and some hate, i think it's excellent (when i saw early screenshots i thought it looked awful, using it completely changed my mind).

the speed with large documents (>1GB) is improved significantly even on my Mac (no 64bit for me).

the masking and selective correction tools in ACR (as in Lightroom2) are fantastic; not for every image, but if i want to push out some mockups or do very simple colour work this is great.

and no, i'm never going to use the 3d stuff, just like i've never used the video stuff that was in CS3 ... i'm sure Someone finds them useful (?)

also, much less talked about but bridge has made some good steps as well. the no.1 new feature: "Improved speed and stability". very few actual new features, but it is faster and more stable, enough so that it might convince people to actually use it.

alex kent.
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "merlot3000"
Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:07 pm (PDT)

Jeremy,

Is there no way to use cmd-M for curves? I don't know of another way to apply a curve to the L channel while in LAB without first converting to Grayscale (and discarding a and b) and then going back to LAB.

David Barrack
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Bruce Albrecht"
Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:07 pm (PDT)

I think the big improvement in CS4 is the availability of a 64-bit version. If you have a machine that can accommodate, it'll definitely be worth every penny. Otherwise, it doesn't look like there's all that much there for us color-correction folks.

Bruce
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Alex Kent"
Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:29 pm (PDT)

yes this still works.

it is only the adjustment layers versions of the controls which have had their interface changed. the Image > Adjustments > stuff is still the same as ever.

alex kent.

On 25 Sep 2008, at 18:15, merlot3000 wrote:

Is there no way to use cmd-M for curves?
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Jeremy Schultz"
Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:25 am (PDT)

Right, Cmd-M is still for Curves. As for the keyboard shortcuts within the Curves panel and dialog box, I had the idea to change them with the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box but it appears they can?t be altered.

Jeremy Schultz
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Alex Kent"
Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:20 pm (PDT)

there is a solution.

if you really can't stand the new keyboard shortcuts, there is an Optional Plugin which i believe is called "UseOldShortcuts.plugin" if you add that to photoshop cs4's plugins folder, it will reset shortcuts to previous defaults. i believe this will either be on the Photoshop CS4 install disk with the other optional plugins or it'll be available from adobe.com on release.

alex kent.
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CS4
Posted by: "Davide Barranca"
Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:04 pm (PDT)

Russell,

my feeling is that PS upgrades have always been, at least for me, a couple of wow-features plus some minor improovement (minor if considered within my own personal workflow). After a while that top features, let's say the healing tool when appeared, became part of the "standard" arsenal, and I found myself appreciating more and more those little things at first I disregarded.

While the content aware resizing is a big wow to photographers (it was when I showed to a friend of mine a demo video coming from the original research), IMHO the greatest step forward in CS4 (even, and maybe particulary, for us color-correction oriented people) is the flash support within the program architecture. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty confident that it will lead to unexpected future transformation in how PS software will be considered and used. Former Hydra, now PixelBender, will integrate with Photoshop and could be used within it. For those who don't know it, PB is a C-like programming language (and a developing environment) that is now available as beta from AdobeLabs: custom filters writing and power image manipulation for either bitmap, vectors and video (GPU based, so quite fast) is what you get from it. Currently there's a lot of Flash developing around it, but John Nack confirmed in his blog that it'll be integrating with a lot of Adobe software (Photoshop, AfterEffect, Flash). Depending on how much visionary you are, this could lead to many different and exciting scenarios.
Regards,

Davide Barranca
Bologna, Italy
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CS4
Posted by: "Russell Brown"
Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:12 am (PDT)

Thanks Davide for your comments. Yes, I'm sure there will be things that are useful and perhaps things whose usefulness will become more apparent in the near future. I am still disappointed however, that the two much-needed features that Dan and others here in particular have been crying out for have been ignored yet again.

It is incredible to me that there seems to be still no individual channel adjustment possible in ACR. Whatever your opinion on this, (and there have been many here!) I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to add and it would certainly be a huge benefit to many, particularly as Dan has pointed out many times, in what is supposed to be a professional application.

Perhaps I have been too critical though - it does come in a very pretty box!

Russ Brown
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Michael Jahn
Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:12 am (PDT)

Davide Barranca, Bologna, Italy - points out

Former Hydra, now PixelBender, will integrate with Photoshop and could be
used within it. For those who don't know it, PB is a C-like
programming language (and a developing environment) that is now
available as beta from AdobeLabs: custom filters writing and power
image manipulation for either bitmap, vectors and video (GPU based, so
quite fast) is what you get from it.

Well, and there you have it it is all about accessing that the GeForce GTX 280 (D10U-30) and the GeForce GTX 260 (D10U-20)

The GeForce GTX variants differ mainly in terms of number of shaders and memory bus width. Also on the GTX 260, 48 stream processors will stand disabled besides the GTX 260 shipping with a 512-bit memory bus capable of supporting 1GB GDDR3 memory and a 448-bit bus capable of supporting 896MB.

Like Nvidia's GeForce 9800GTX, GTX 280 and GTX 260 has PCIe 2.0, OpenGL 2.1, SLI, and PureVideoHD. The two new graphics cards support two SLI-risers for three-way SLI support.

While the GTX 280 enables all features of the D10U processor, the GTX 260 has a greatly sized-down version of the same GPU. The D10U-30 will have all 240 unified stream processors designed into the processor.

So, for us in the image processing world, STAND BACK AND WEAR PROTECTIVE CLOTHING.

blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/05/pixel_bender_no.html (just add that http stuff)

--
Michael Jahn
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Michael Jahn
Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:41 pm (PDT)

nvidia.com/object/io_1222263345260.html (just add the http and www)

why we upgraded - but we are doing image processing - not your typical color correction type stuff - more paper to PDF stuff - (color pages are scanned, color scans 'converted' - auto-deskew, descreening, text enhancements, border removal, yada yada)

--
Michael Jahn
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CS4
Posted by: "Russell Brown"
Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:30 am (PDT)

Thanks Michael. Worth knowing about!

Russ Brown
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CS4
Posted by: "Alessandro Bernardi"
Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:37 am (PDT)

Russell Brown wrote:

I am still disappointed however, that the

two much-needed features that Dan and others here in particular have
been crying out for have been ignored yet again.

Russell, I haven't seen yet a final copy of PS CS4 but if what I've seen around it's true, I strongly agree with this statement. Especially if you consider, for example, that now the Convert to profile command has been modified with the addition of "Abstract", "Device Link", and "Multichannel" option, while AFAIK Custom CMYK is always the (old) same.

It is incredible to me that there seems to be still no individual
channel adjustment possible in ACR. Whatever your opinion on this,
(and there have been many here!) I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult
to add and it would certainly be a huge benefit to many, particularly
as Dan has pointed out many times, in what is supposed to be a
professional application.

Again, nothing more to say except that thousands of color/prepress professionals are still waiting single curves adjustment in ACR and LR from several years.

Capture One and DxO have this possibility, and they are not so diffused as PS, so I think it's not a question of R&D or any budget related problem.

And what about the absence of a valid digital moirè suppression command on Raw files?

Or other very basic but useful features that everyone can use in daily work?

I hope that in CS4 you can select and delete multiple channels and/or paths from their palette but I would not be surprised if I couldn't.

Perhaps I have been too critical though

I don't think so, every request coming from all the people that spend a lot of money EVERY 18 months should be important for a software house, especially if the request is not so dramatic to develop. Do you think it's easier to develop the content-aware resize feature or a picker in the Selective Color command window?

Next time that someone will ask to us what we would like to see in the next version of Photoshop, I think it should be better to give him a list of what they haven't yet put in the actual version.

Or am I too severe?

Best regards,
Alessandro Bernardi
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Frank Collins"
Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:02 pm (PDT)

Amen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

William L. (Frank) Collins

I don't think so, every request coming from all the people that spend
a lot of money EVERY 18 months should be important for a software
house, especially if the request is not so dramatic to develop.
Do you think it's easier to develop the content-aware resize feature
or a picker in the Selective Color command window?

Next time that someone will ask to us what we would like to see in the
next version of Photoshop, I think it should be better to give him a
list of what they haven't yet put in the actual version.

Or am I too severe?