Last week most of the design team here at E-dreamz went to an Adobe CS5 Seminar. After seeing the demo of the suite, I believe making the jump – especially if going from CS3 to CS5 - will greatly improve the way designer’s work. We discovered how we could finish routine tasks, from masking images to adjusting layouts to customizing strokes, more quickly and efficiently with new features in Photoshop CS5 Extended, Illustrator CS5, and Flash CS5. I’m most excited about the new version of Photoshop. Some of my initial impressions of its most notable new features:
Content-Aware Fill
This
is Photoshop's biggest and best new
addition. Select an unwanted person or object in your picture, hit “Content
Aware Fill” and it disappears as if it were never a part of the original
composition. Amazing! Small items,
like rocks, are removed seamlessly. The background must have some regularity to
it, and ideally not on a perspective or uneven angle. When it works, however, it's
much faster than using the Clone Brush.
Puppet Warping
Puppet
Warping is a very interesting new distortion technique. I think, if you really
master it, this new tool can be a huge timesaver. Cut out a figure and
Photoshop will work out a mesh that fits its shape. By adding pins to the mesh,
you can move the limbs around one by one, with the rest of the form following
suit. It's an almost creepy effect, where with subtle edits someone or
something’s stance can be completely altered. The
most impressive demo – an elephant’s trunk that gets curled in and out of
itself on multiple levels.
Refine Edge
If you retouch images or make complex selections in Photoshop on a regular
basis, the way you work could completely change. The new Refine Edge
enhancements in CS5 are absolutely amazing and make it incredibly easy to just
select part of an image and then run the cursor around the edge to snip out
complex selections of hair, fur, or any other texture with unbelievable
accuracy. No more hours working on a channel mask.
3D Text
Photoshop
now offers a simple solution to creating and manipulating 3D text. Adobe
Repoussé in Photoshop CS5 Extended will allow the mix of 3D elements with 2D
workflow. The addition of unique 3D elements to projects, including stunning 3D
logos and artwork, can now be done without having to emulate the effect using
perspectives and vanishing points.
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