Adobe have now shipped their new CS4 suites, I installed my copy of Web Premium CS4 suite which includes Dreamweaver CS4, Flash CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Fireworks CS4. There’s some excellent new features amongst all of these apps and I’m really enjoying using Photoshop, there are a lot of new features but there’s three in particular that I really like and will be useful in my every day use of Photoshop CS4:
Pixel Grid
Photoshop CS4’s pixel grid makes working at the pixel level of detail much easier by putting a white grid outline around each pixel once beyond a certain zoom level. It can be switched off if you don’t like it but it’s a handy feature when doing user interface work where you need to make pixel accurate selections.
Smooth panning
Photoshop CS4’s smooth panning makes moving around when zoomed in much simpler. If you’re used to using an iPhone or iPod Touch then this sort of flicking movement will be familiar.
Content Aware Scaling
Photoshop CS4’s Content Aware scaling is pretty impressive stuff! You can basically resize an image and it detects the areas in between main features such as face or figures and only scales the areas in between. Great for landscape shots or even resizing user interface elements like capsule buttons etc.
There are a lot more features to Photoshop CS4 that make it worthwhile, you can see a quick overview on the CS4 Top Features page.
There are also trial versions for a lot of the apps available on the Adobe downloads page.
Also, if you want to show some love for my blog you can also purchase the CS4 apps by clicking on the CS4 ads featured on this site or by clicking this link to the Adobe Store! ;)
~Rick