Author: Xue Xin [email protected]
To be honest, Photoshop has reached this point and is already close to perfection. It is unlikely and unnecessary that there will be drastic changes. Many functions have only undergone some detailed changes.
1. In the adjustment panel, a new natural saturation (Vibrance) adjustment command is added, which is a function called "detail saturation" derived from Camera Raw. Similar to the hue/saturation command, it can make the picture more vivid or darker. Relatively speaking, the Vibrance effect will be more delicate and will intelligently process the less saturated parts of the image and ignore the already saturated colors. Some minor updates have also been made to the color levels and curves panels, adding some convenient functions.
Figure 1: Natural saturation panel ( click to enlarge ) [Photographed in Longting]
2. Photoshop CS4 can easily adjust the size of the brush and the degree of edge softening through shortcut keys such as Alt and Shift and the right mouse button.
Figure 2: Cool brush control method
3. In Photoshop CS4, not only does the Clone Stamp support five clone sources, but the Healing Brush tool also supports this function. You can use it with the Clone Source panel.
Figure 3: Upgraded copy source ( click to enlarge ) [Photographed at Yanming Lake]
4. The Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools have been redesigned in Photoshop CS4. These three tools that have remained unchanged for thousands of years have finally come into their own. Intuitively, the Dodge and Burn tools add Protect Tones, and the Sponge tool adds a Detail Saturation (Vibrance) option. When processing images, important information such as color, tone, and texture of the original image can be better retained, and the dark parts and brightness of the image can be avoided from being over-processed. The modified image will look more natural.
Figure 4: Comparison of the effects of traditional deepening (top) and protective tone deepening (bottom) [Photographed at Provincial Expo]
5. Usually when we use the free transform function to compress and expand a picture, all elements in it will be scaled, deformed and distorted. Using the Content Aware Scale command of Photoshop CS4, when an image is resized to a new size, important areas will be intelligently retained proportionally. If before, scaling will require extensive, complex patchwork.
Figure 5: Content-Aware Scale Menu
Figure 6: Comparison of the effects of free transformation (top) and content scaling (bottom) [Photographed in Haiyue]
6. Automatic layer alignment has always been used as a prelude to merging HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, creating panoramas, and processing burst photos to accurately and quickly align and connect multiple pictures. This time it has been further enhanced, adding practical alignment methods and lens correction options.
Figure 7: Enhanced automatic alignment function [Photographed on the Yellow River Beach]
After experiments, the author found that CS4's automatic layer alignment function is quite powerful. The control of the panorama is a bit exaggerated. Even if you take multiple pictures without a tripod, the roughly repeated areas and the backlight of individual pictures can be synthesized almost perfectly.
Figure 8: The author did not use a tripod, but took the shot hand-held after rough estimation ( click to enlarge ) [Photographed at Greentown Plaza]