It must be said that some of the changes are arguably more suited to the beginner or relative newcomer to image editing, rather than the more advanced user who would no doubt have their own workflow sorted in such a way that, for example, the need for a simplified adjustments panel would never occur to them. And with this in mind it begs the question... if you’re a newcomer to image editing, are you going to be willing to spare nearly £600 for editing software? If you do, you’ll get the market-leading program, but surely it will only be a matter of time before the headline features in CS4 make their way through the Adobe family to more accessibly priced and easy to operate products.
Interface
The first major change that strikes you when you start CS4 is the changes to the interface. Adobe has taken a lead from current web-browsing trends and has decided to integrate a tabbed user interface, so, say if you are editing four images at the same time, they can now be combined within the same window, rather than four separate windows, and as such tidies up your workspace.
There is also now an ‘arrange documents’ button that organises the images back into their separate windows, but in a range of convenient set-ups, such as an evenly distributed ‘4-up’. Besides the tabbed innovation and tiling options sits fully integrated workspace shifting, allowing quick hopping between Adobe-family products, such as Lightroom, InDesign and the like.