It seems that Photoshop CS4 has made such changes to fundamentally make the software and its functions more accessible to a range of user levels. Tools and applications have been made extremely obvious in their fly-out palettes, in the panels area to the right of the work area. A great example is the Adjustments palette. The original source of these related effects, such as Levels, Hue/Saturation and Photo Filter, was hidden away in a drop-down option set at the foot of the Layers palette. A recognisable, large icon now represents each of these options. Previous means of access to options is still available, though.

Adjustments can still be applied in an editable layer capacity in the Layers palette, but likewise live fine-tuning of effects can now be made to each option within the actual palettes. A time-saving and comprehensive function, for sure. New editions within this palette are a range of tool presets, which again make the application of effects even more manageable. All other palette options coincide with this manageable approach.

Make the most of masks: The Mask palette is another noticeable interface edition, allowing users to control and build more precise masks more intuitively. Users can control Density and Feather amounts through slidebars, and define with Refine options

Photoshop CS4 has not only taken big steps in providing accessible creative functions, but also the means to organise your toolsets and palettes efficiently. This makes for a more organised workflow and, in turn, optimum productivity. The palettes themselves can be detached, rearranged, regrouped and floating in any correlation that you wish, anywhere in the workspace. This means they can be discreet and accessible all in an instant to suit a multitude of users.

Potent palettes: Never before has Photoshop been so concerned with clear and concise creativity, demonstrated through its dynamic effects-related palettes

Those of you who source from a variety of open images in previous Photoshop editions, especially when working in graphic and manipulation projects, will certainly appreciate Photoshop CS4’s new tabbed document system. The behaviour of this operation eradicates the need to constantly visit and revisit the Window option to switch between documents. Users can now alternate instantly in a coherent fashion by clicking in the titled image tab.

The top option bar still presents specific option sets when selecting individual tools from the toolbar, but now it also includes a streamline and consistent option set. These are useful in enhancing users’ capability to scrutinise imagery. Included is a View Extras icon, allowing you to select and apply Grids, Rulers and Guides, useful when laying out compositional elements. You can also specify Zoom Levels and operate Hand, Zoom and Hand Rotate tool options to define on-screen orientation and placement of documents.

Arrange Documents is an option that is as inventive as it is practical. Here, users can select from a range of novel layouts for opened documents. For instance, the New Window option in Windows>Arrange permits live comparisons while working on images. In this option set, you’ll also find the new home for Screen Mode options, which include Standard Screen Mode, Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar and Full Screen Mode.

Users will also discover the new Workspace-related drop-down menu. These are noticeably extensive in comparison to CS3’s similar set. Users will be able to select from presets that relate to other specific project setups. This intuitive option allows users to once more declutter and streamline their palettes and workspace, allowing more time to get creating. Included in the option set are Color and Tone, Painting, Proofing and Web, among others. What’s New in CS4 is another helpful selection, highlighting all new tool and filters throughout your CS4 option sets.

First things first, it helps to know what a GPU actually is. It stands for graphics processing unit. The GPU either sits on top of the video card or will be integrated directly into the motherboard – what you ideally want is the former. With Photoshop CS4 being such a resource-hungry application, by making use of the GPU and taking the strain off the CPU, you get better graphics and faster workflow. You can run Photoshop CS4 without having a dedicated GPU, but it does unlock added features and speed. In order for Photoshop to access your GPU and give you these benefits, then your display card must have a GPU that supports OpenGL, have 128MB RAM and a display driver that supports both OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0.

If you have CS4, it’s easy to find out if you have a compatible GPU or not by simply going to Photoshop>
Preferences>Performance and looking in the GPU section, which will be greyed out if you can’t access the functions. Of course, you’ll find out soon enough anyway, as soon as you select the Rotate View tool and it won’t let you do anything! If, however, you want to know if your video card is supported before investing in Photoshop, then there is a full list of tested cards on the Adobe Knowledge Base (some cards not on the list may also work, but they haven’t been tested for compatibility) at
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405711&sliceId=1. Make sure that whatever card you have, you have got the latest driver, which you can check on your manufacturer’s website. In order to check what card you have installed, on a Mac you need to go to About This Mac from the Apple menu, then hit More Info to open the System Profiler. From here, select Graphics/Displays to see everything you need to know about your GPU setup. On a PC, you will find this information over in the Device Manager, which is accessible from the Control Panel.

If you don’t have a supported card, you’ll either need to upgrade to one that is supported (see the boxout for our recommendations) or make do without the extra features and speed.

So what does GPU acceleration actually mean for Photoshop CS4? Quite a lot, actually. For a start, everything works faster, and this is especially noticeable when you’re panning or zooming your way around large images. The Zoom tool is instantaneous, with no lagging, and completely smooth no matter how close you get. When you get to 500 per cent, you can get right down to a pixel-by-pixel view with no bleeding between the pixels – this pixel grid is perfect for extremely precise editing.

Pixel grid: When you zoom in over 500 per cent (and up to 3,200 per cent), you will see a pixel grid, giving you crisp separations between individual pixels for incredibly accurate editing

A new function is the Birds-eye View. If you’re zoomed into an image, you can hold down H and click with your mouse to zoom right out. Reposition the viewing rectangle and you’ll automatically zoom back into the new position, which is simply brilliant for fast navigation.

The Rotate View function is fantastic – a compass comes up on-screen and you can literally pull the image in any direction to spin it, without any need to enter an exact rotation angle as before. Similarly, the Hand tool has been updated with the ‘flick pan’ ability, where you can drag across the image and it will then pan in real-time in any direction you want.

Fluid rotation: The rotation compass lets you drag an image in any direction smoothly

There are plenty more advantages, especially if you are going to be using the 3D functions, as the GPU acceleration really does make things a lot quicker and easier here. It’s worth the video card upgrade if you’re shelling out for CS4.

The idea behind it is that you might not always have the exact images that you want to incorporate into a project. For example, the proportions could be all wrong, but the content of the image is just right. Rather than just giving up and looking for another image, Content-Aware Scaling enables you to protect the content that you want to keep in the image and scale the image without affecting these areas. For example, you might want to turn a standard image into a panoramic without sacrificing the main subjects, be it a background or people. And it takes almost no time to do, which means that it saves you hours of searching for a new image or trying to painstakingly rework an existing image by hand.

This hasn’t come out of nowhere, however. The seam-carving algorithm was developed by Shai Avidan (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs) and Ariel Shamir (The Interdisciplinary Center and MERL) for content-aware image resizing, but it has only been since its integration into Photoshop CS4 that it has come to the public’s attention. The feature is designed to let you rescale and recompose at the same time, analysing the image while you are resizing it. If no area has been specified, then it will intelligently keep the most visually interesting areas. It can intelligently recognise skin tones, so that people are automatically preserved when resizing. However, if you want to select an area for yourself that you want protecting, it’s as simple as making and saving a selection.

There are two ways of using Content-Aware Scaling, depending on whether you want to define an area yourself or let Photoshop analyse the image for the most important areas.

If you want Photoshop to make the decisions, then all you need to do is select any unlocked layer in a document and select Edit>Content-Aware Scale. You will then get corner handles come up the same as if you were using Free Transform or the Crop tool. Drag it into your new scale and Photoshop will protect the areas of the image that it thinks are important.

This isn’t always going to work as you expected, though, so it pays to make a selection first, using any of your preferred selection tools. Save your selection when you have made it (Select>Save Selection) and the saved selections for any image will then appear in the Protect drop-down menu in the top toolbar when using Content-Aware Scaling.

Choose your selection: If you have created a selection, you can choose to preserve it from the Protect drop-down menu

However, you do need to bear in mind that this isn’t a foolproof solution, and there are going to be times when it’s just not going to be possible to massively rescale your image without affecting the composition. The other thing to bear in mind is that there is a lot going on in the background with this technology, so it isn’t quite as instantaneous as you might expect. On our iMac, there was noticeable lag when we were making adjustments, which can be frustrating when you’re trying to make tiny adjustments again and again.

Still, it does a generally good job that will save you plenty of time on complex resizing projects and is certainly worth a play with.

Before: We wanted to reduce the image size here without losing any scale in the penguin itself, so we created a selection of it first

After – Free Transform: If we were just to Free Transform the image to the scale that we wanted, this is what would happen

After – Content-Aware Scaling: The difference between using this and cropping is that the penguin has been preserved, but Photoshop has also recognised other elements (like the bits on the ground) and kept them, too

When you’re working with type, the obvious way to change colour is to highlight the text and then pick a new hue by double-clicking the Foreground square and choosing from the Color Picker. Trouble is, because the text is highlighted, you can’t see the colour change. There is a way around this. Type your text and then highlight it. Instead of clicking the Foreground square, click the colour square in the Options bar. This will bring up a Color Picker. As you change the colour, you’ll see the type alter accordingly.

To access the Liquify filter, simply select Filter>Liquify. Liquify fundamentally enables you to push, pull, rotate, reflect, pucker and bloat any given image. It does so through a set of specific toolbar, brush and masking options.

At the top of the toolbar you will discover the Forward Warp tool, which works in a straightforward capacity, enabling you to push pixels in any direction you wish by dragging them around. In the section beneath this are six other tools with their own individual distortion properties that are useful for various effects.

First, you have the Twirl Clockwise tool. This does exactly as you’d think – it rotates pixels in a clockwise fashion when holding down the mouse button or dragging the mouse. Holding Opt/Alt when doing this will allow you to apply a counterclockwise effect.

The Pucker tool follows, allowing you to direct pixels, inverting them essentially to the centre of the brush area (again, by holding the mouse button). The Bloat tool is vice versa, and both these tools can be used to great effect when distorting figurative imagery in model photography projects, or exaggerating and streamlining features.

The Push Left tool works on two levels: moving pixels left when dragged up and right when dragged down. It also allows you to expand visual values when rotated clockwise.

The Mirror tool copies pixels to the brush area when dragged in a perpendicular direction. Holding Opt/Alt and dragging the mouse will mirror the area in the direction opposite to that of the stroke. The Mirror tool can be utilised to create sophisticated water reflection effects when applying overlapping strokes. The Turbulence tool is equally useful in creating specific visual properties. It functions by smoothly scrambling pixels in an image to create fire, clouds and wave effects in your desired imagery.

Directly beneath the Forward Warp tool is the Reconstruction tool, which can be applied through its own options set. These can be found within the Reconstruction options and the best effects can be easily obtained when using this tool with the Liquify filter’s Mask commands.

Masks can be applied in numerous ways. Specific application is obtained by using the Freeze and Thaw Mask tools. These dictate masked and unmasked image areas respectively when coupled with your Brush Option values. To instantly apply a mask to all, select Mask All from the Mask Options.

Finely i-tuned: This iPod-style artwork has benefited from using the Liquify filter

There are eight Reconstruction options and Reconstruction tool modes – including Rigid, Stiff, Smooth, Loose and Revert – and they all apply variant effects with fundamentally similar outcomes. Most dissimilar is Stiff, which functions with weak magnetic properties. This means that when you increase application distance from your frozen areas, the effects lessen. Reconstruction tool modes include Amplitwist, Affine and Displace, which seem most useful for those working on photographic compositions. The Displace option allows you to reconstruct unfrozen areas to match the displacement at the starting point of your reconstruction. Simply put, it allows you to replace all or parts of your image to a different image area by clicking and spiralling out from the starting point in the brushed area.

All the commands mentioned are accessible through a set of hot keys for selecting tools more efficiently, speeding up the application. We’ve listed them for you to remember:

W – Forward Warp tool
R – Reconstruct tool
C – Twirl Clockwise tool
S – Pucker tool
B – Bloat tool
O – Push Left tool
M – Mirror tool
T – Turbulence tool
F – Freeze Mask tool
D – Thaw Mask tool

Just for fun: When used appropriately, the Liquify filter can provide creative hours of fun, as well as superior application in order to create stunning effects

The Pen is great for selecting areas in an image, but the Magnetic Pen is ideal for a simple object, as it snaps to defined edges and creates paths with ease. Select the Freeform Pen and click the arrow next to the Custom Shape icon. In the Freeform Pen Options window, click the Magnetic checkbox.

RAW images are minimally processed in-camera (or in-scanner) so that you have all of the image information present in the picture when you open it in your post-production, image-editing software. This means you have much more flexibility when it comes to the way that your images look, and you don’t have to worry that you’ve made the wrong decisions when shooting – things like the white balance can be adjusted afterwards, rather than committed to at the time of shooting. They are much like the negative in film photography and are often referred to as a ‘digital negative’.

Using RAW has some major benefits for photographers, including better image quality and better control over the look of your images, plus they don’t apply any compression, as is the case when you’re shooting with JPEGs. However, the files are a lot bigger than if you shoot a JPEG, and as a result it takes longer to write a RAW image to your memory card, which is no good if you need to take many shots one after the other. The biggest problem, however, is that there is no universal RAW standard.
Every camera manufacturer uses their own RAW format, which means you have to ensure software support for these formats if you want to edit your pictures. Software like Photoshop’s Camera Raw needs to be updated with the latest specifications on a regular basis to ensure support, or you will need to use the camera manufacturer’s own conversion software.

Camera Raw: RAW files can be edited precisely using the same sort of controls you’d use in-camera, such as selecting White Balance

Adobe’s DNG is one solution to this problem. Introduced in 2004, the Digital Negative file format is a royalty-free, universal format. The idea is that software need only support DNG rather than lots of different RAW file formats, and these formats can be easily converted to DNG using Adobe’s free DNG Converter program. All of Adobe’s editing software (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom) supports DNG files, as does some software from other companies, such as The GIMP, ACDSee Photo Manager and Apple Aperture. The Converter program supports lossless data compression when converting, so you keep the high quality expected from a RAW file.

More and more cameras are starting to support DNG natively, meaning that in many cases you won’t even need the Converter program to edit them. Samsung, Casio, Pentax and Leica are all notable brands that now produce some cameras with DNG support. By having all RAW files in the same format, you are future-proofing your image collection, meaning that the file format won’t become obsolete over time, as many of the older formats might.

So now we’ve convinced you of the benefits, how do you actually use the DNG file format? First you need to round up all your RAW files from different sources and convert them. The Converter is a very quick download and incredibly simple to use.

From the opening dialog box, select the location of the images you want to convert and the location of where you want to save them (you can choose either the same location or select another folder). Choose a name for your new images and set the Preferences as needed (more often than not, the default Preferences will be fine). You can, for example, opt to embed the original RAW file inside the DNG file (which means larger file sizes) or remove the Compression. Then you simply hit Convert. A new window will open showing you the status of conversion on each of the files you selected. We converted 12 files in around 30 seconds.

The newly created DNG files can now be opened in Photoshop where Camera Raw will automatically open for you to make your edits. When you’re done, hit Open and you can then continue working on your image just as you normally would.

The pic above shows a RAW image as it was shot (inset), and after some basic tweaking (main) in Camera Raw before any proper editing in Photoshop

The Custom Shape tools are ideal for vector graphics. Each time you use a Shape tool, you create a new layer with the shape and a path. But if you just want the shape, click the third icon from the left in the Options bar (Fill Pixels). This creates the shape only, and you can put multiple shapes on the same layer.

The alternative Photoshop’s latest software releases offer an attractive option that can help photographers and digital artists simulate the effects generated by some of the tangible filters on the market with the Photo Filter feature.

Although it’s not enough to make us want to ditch our much-loved set of filters, the Photo Filter feature does bear some relation to the way in which physical filters are used to modify the properties of the image recorded by the photographer.

Accessed via the Image> Adjustments menu or by selecting Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Photo Filter, the Photo Filter option offers you the choice of selecting a filter type and colour, then adjusting the density of the filter to produce the final effect. This is a crude method of adjusting the colour balance of your photograph, but it’s a useful means of learning about the effect of using filters in your photography. While the dialog does look incredibly simple, there are ways of adjusting it to meet your needs.

Conventionally, tangible filters were of great importance in film photography, in order to correct for colour casts caused by the varying colour temperatures of different light sources. With the invention of digital photography, this is no longer necessary, as colour casts can be corrected for in-camera, using your camera’s white balance presets, or they can be removed digitally post-shoot if necessary.

Hot and cold: Using filters can change the ‘temperature’ of an image. On the left a warming filter has been applied and on the right a cooling filter

Photoshop’s Photo Filter options represent a method of not only quickly removing colour casts, but intentionally introducing them to create a particular effect.

When creating a digital masterpiece, you often have an image in your mind that you want to create. Say you want to generate a moody portrait of a brooding artist, but your image straight out of the camera was shot under tungsten lighting and it looks far too warm and optimistic. Simply add a Photo Filter adjustment layer. Click Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Photo Filter, then in the dialog box, select a Cooling Filter and experiment with the Density slider until you’ve introduced enough blue into your shot to emulate the atmosphere you had in mind to begin with.

For more surreal effects, experiment with the other colours available, adding red, green or emerald casts to your images. For digital artists it’s not always about realism, and you can use this over photomanipulation projects to give atmosphere and effect.

For greater control over the final look of your image, you can create your own photo filters using Lab values in Photoshop. Open an image with a colour cast that you want to correct and click Image>Mode>Lab Color. Select the Eyedropper tool, hold down Shift and click on an area where there should be a neutral tone. Note the a and b values down, then add a new Photo Filter adjustment layer. Use the Color Picker to select the point you clicked on before, displaying the Lab values for that colour. Invert the a and b values, adding a minus in front of a positive value and vice versa, before clicking OK. Increase the Density in the Photo Filter dialog box until your colour cast is neutralised. If the effect needs to be intensified, simply duplicate your adjustment layer and adjust the Density slider until you achieve the desired result.

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Lab correction method – Before (left): A little too warm. Set image mode to Lab, hold down Shift and use the Eyedropper tool to select where there should be neutral colour. After (right): When you have applied the Photo Filter, adjust the Density slider to achieve the desired result

Photoshop’s Photo Filters offer enough options to get you started, but there’s a whole host of third party plug-ins out there that can increase the creative possibilities even further.

Tiffen – one of the leading manufacturers in optical photographic filters – has a set of digital filters available, called Dfx. Available from www.tiffen.com, Dfx offers a range of filters that expand the capabilities offered by Photoshop’s Photo Filters. The digital filters included in the Dfx software simulate the effects of optical glass filters, matching the Kodak Wratten industry standard, making Dfx not only a versatile creative tool, but a learning resource too.

If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, have a go at creating your own ‘filters’ in Photoshop. To simulate the effect of a Neutral Density Graduated filter (ND Grad), enhancing the sky for example, simply add a gradient to your image. Add a new adjustment layer to your image, and set your Foreground Color to black, leaving your Background Color white. Next, select the Gradient tool, picking the Linear Gradient setting from the toolbar. Set the Foreground to Transparent and drag the Gradient tool from the top of the sky in your image to the horizon. Finally, experiment with the Opacity slider until you’re happy with the final effect.

Learning how to use filters effectively can make a huge difference to your photography, so it’s worth experimenting with them. Next time a colour shift is called for in your photos, use the Photo Filters in Photoshop to take control of the look and feel of your images, and create the photograph you originally had in mind.

Here’s a handy tip if you want to get an image to follow a specific angle. With your image open, go to the Measure tool (in the Eyedropper tool’s fly-out menu) and click and drag a line to the angle you want. Now go to the Edit menu and pick Transform>Rotate. The layer will then snap to the line you drew.