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Photo Editing Software

Photoshop CS5?

akeigher
 
Posts: 239

Photoshop CS5?

Post Wed Jul 28, 2010 1:54 am


Has anyone tried CS5 yet? Is there any worthwhile new features that would make me want to upgrade from CS4?

Thanks in advance.

dougj
 
Posts: 2276

Re: Photoshop CS5?

Post Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:00 am


I did the upgrade a couple of weeks ago. I was interested in the addition of 'content aware' cloning & healing, upgrades in the raw converter, Bridge and few others. So far so good, I'm still learning some of the new features, I would do the upgrade again with what I've learned so far. The key question we ask ourselves - is it worth the cost to upgrade? Tough to answer upfront, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

castledude
 
Posts: 869

Re: Photoshop CS5?

Post Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:21 am


For me yes...
The new content aware fill is pretty good and works great when you need to rotate a picture.
The new selection tool does have a bit of a learning curve but it does work and hair selection is a lot better.
I haven't found any use for the puppet warp (like most Photoshop stuff it probably won't really work until the next version)
Mini bridge is OK but not great. I does come in handy for picking clipart.

So yea it was worth the $ for the upgrade.
You might as well go up and pick up the 30 day trial to check it out.

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: Photoshop CS5?

Post Wed Jul 28, 2010 4:01 am


I'm happy with it. As others have mentioned content aware fill is a big selling point, though you have to be sure that you make the right selection to avoid having ghosted outlines. While I don't make a habit of obliterating content from my shots there have been the odd occasions and content aware fill can save me a stack of time (and often give better results) than the traditional clone stamp tool. The other feature that I wanted was the new and improved HDR feature, though I've yet to nut out how best to use it. Since I was coming from CS3 I also wanted to pick up the improvements that had occurred in CS4 like the improved dodge and burn tools.

To my mind an upgrade every version might be hard to justify given the cost (though I had both CS2 followed by CS3), but there are too many goodies loaded into this one not to go for it. JMHO, YMMV.

sthuman
 
Posts: 97

Re: Photoshop CS5?

Post Wed Jul 28, 2010 4:22 am


Ive used Photoshop for many years. I have upgraded every version since 2. I upgraded just because I like to stay up to date.

I'd say yes, it is worth the upgrade. If for no other reason than to be able to use the new Camera RAW 6 engine. It's a very good improvement. CameraRAW 6 won't work with CS4.

That being said, I don't use Photoshop CS5 very much anymore, even though I have been a Photoshop/Bridge user forever. For 99% of my photo work I use Photoshop Lightroom 3. It uses the CameraRaw 6 system. I find that while CS5 is much more powerful or does more, Lightroom is quite enough. And Lightroom has some big advantages in the workflow area. It allows you to tweak NEF files without saving a PSD, TIFF or JPG copy of each file, so you use less disk space. And since it does non destructive tweaks (because the edits are stored in XMP sidecar files) and never actually alters a NEF file, you can always go back later and start from scratch. Does that make sense? With CS5 anytime you open a file, any changes you make have to be saved as a separate file. So you at least double how much disk space a photo uses, and often (if saving in PSD or TIFF) use up many times as much space per file. LR doesn't do layers and there are some things that are quite useful in CS5, so some people may still use CS5 a lot, but I feel most people would do fine with just a LR workflow. You may want to look into spending money on it rather than an upgrade for Photoshop? Or perhaps consider the best of all worlds, upgrade to CS5 AND Lightroom 3?

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: Photoshop CS5?

Post Wed Jul 28, 2010 10:32 am


sthuman wrote:You may want to look into spending money on it rather than an upgrade for Photoshop? Or perhaps consider the best of all worlds, upgrade to CS5 AND Lightroom 3?


I opted against getting it (because I didn't see the advantages in Lightroom, but I take the points that you've made), but if you upgrade to CS5 you can get Lightroom 3 as well at a substantially reduced price (30% off). Not sure whether that was an Australian-specific offer, but I'd be surprised if it was. Worth being aware of though.


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