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.
Masking Overhaul
Another area that sees an overhaul is the masking dialogues and interface.
In previous Photoshop versions, masking was a bit of an inexact science. Quite often if you wanted to apply a quick gradient mask, for example, getting it to cover the area of the image you wanted might take four or five inaccurate drags of the mouse.
However, areas masked in CS4 can now be adjusted after the masking has taken place, meaning it’s simpler than ever to select a specific area of the image.
Dodge and Burn tools were two more that weren’t always the most precise, though the tools now come with a ‘protect tones’ option, meaning that more local changes can be carried out over a wider area.
Again, these changes will no doubt benefit those who have, in the past, been put off from using the more ‘advanced’ side of Photoshop due to the steep learning curve it possessed, one that has now been significantly levelled out.