Photoshop CS5

Wasn't the release slated for today? Why is it not out yet?

 

because Adobe knows how impatient you can be and decided to delay the release just a bit to annoy you.

April 12th was the product introduction for CS5 including Photoshop. The product is in a 30 day public beta with formal release/sales commencing in mid-May.

Or that is what is plastered all over adobe.com and the bazillions of news releases. Could be wrong.

 

Yeah, but if you buy now you get free shipping

It appears to be a great product, but most people should keep in mind you'll need a pretty advanced system to take full advantage of the improved GPU speed enhancement features.

 

Pretty advanced?

Basically any midrange dedicated GPU would be enough - heck, the Intel X3100 with a registry fix on CS4 is faster than using the CPU - however there are other problems in Windows on CS4 with the X3100 for some.

As long as you haven't got a low end system it can be worthwhile.

However I wouldn't ever count on GPU acceleration for an integrated GPU.

 

The features in CS4 that used the dedicated gpu were minimal and far from needed. I had them turned off for a while with no ill effects until there was a performance patch that fixed the issues I was having.

I had dual ATI 4870's more than enough power, way more than enough lol. I do not think it was very heavy work for the GPU in the first place.

CS5 will probably up the bar some though.

They need to find a way to run those intensive filters with gpu acceleration, that would actually make a difference. To make something that takes long now take less time.

CS4 did not really make anything faster it just added some new features that were only available if you had the gpu thing turned on.

The largest boost in CS4 for me was the introduction of 64bit so I could use more RAM, and now in CS5 they supposedly made it even better making the hard disk used as little as possible. Also now MAC gets 64bit as they did not have it for CS4. I am pretty sure CS4 was multithreaded, but I know for a fact CS5 is.

 

Well, creating HDRs with the X3100 was much faster than with the CPU - I suppose it really depended on what you did...

And CS4 really required the GPU for 3D objects in Photoshop Extended.

 

Hmm I did not notice a difference. I guess it would depend a lot on the cpu too. I had a 2.7ghz quad core in the laptop and a 3.6ghz quad core in the desktop.

I never read any feature like HDR being accelerated by the gpu, but it may have just flown under my radar.

 

Well, I've only got a 2,5GHz Duals Core - as CS4 is very good at multi core support that's quite a large difference.

HDR creation is - as far as I am aware - GPU accelerated, Photomerge (i.e. panoramas) isn't.

Else... scrolling... (not really important)

And as I mentioned before - 3D

 

I was not a big fan of the merge to HDR in CS4 I ended up doing my own HDR via layers and got better results. CS5 looks way better and the presets for toning look just as good as I can do it by hand.

While the toning improvement is great by far the largest advance is the "remove ghosts" option it now has. That is a big improvement and may even steal HDR fanatics away from photomatrix.

I got some pretty good results with photomatrix in the past, most people do that unrealistic surreal HDR effect with it that drives me kinda nuts. I believe a proper HDR image is the one you cant tell is HDR or atleast not what most people would call HDR.

I never used 3D even though I do have the extended version so I have no input on how well 3D work was handled.

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Another CS5 thing I found today is it will use ACR 6.0 and it uses the exact same processing engine as Lightroom 3 that is going to be nice as well.

I am still trying to determine if I want to invoke lightroom 3 as part of my workflow or stick with bridge/ACR. Considering how little retouching I do to my photo's I probably have little to no reason to start using Lightroom and should just stick with Bridge/ACR.

I have to say CS5 is looking way more revolutionary to me than any other CS series so far, the new tools is going to make stuff that was one hard now so easy. But this is being met with mixed criticism. Pro's are now thinking some of there turf is going to be easily stolen or filled by beginners also people think now a new trend of heavy photoshop photos will appear all over where people abuse tools like content aware fill to remove objects/people/stuff.

I think its for the better, I dont get paid for my photoshop work so it it becomes better and easier thats great and I am sure if your a pro you will just find ways to use the new tools in a more productive way than the beginner users, or still do things the manual way for a more professional final product. Though I have to admit it would be hard to beat the quality produced by auto fill in the examples I have seen so far.

 

HDRs - I played around with it, it can be great for sunsets to get the full beauty of them.
I'm not after that surreal HDR effect either - and now with my new EOS my Vaio is too weak for an HDR image... (at least at full resolution).

3D - I couldn't tell - I wasn't using it either - I just clicked around on it out of curiosity once

 

Nothing new really. I suppose though, they'll just be better at it? Anyway, talent, creativity and artistic ability will always be an exclusive element of the upper echelons.

 

or not...

Nowadays its not how good you are at shooting photographs, it's how good you are at Photoshop that counts.

If you edit a photograph, a worse image can be more successful...

I'm too lazy to learn layers for one and spend a lot of time on every image - all I use is cameraRAW - at least I don't tend to bother with more - this also means I only take about 15s or maybe a bit more in some cases per Photograph.

 

I hope they will finally add a tablet-friendly crosshair...

 

If not mistaken, Apple decided to drop Adobe Programs and this causes Adobe to sue Apple. They're now still arguing if not wrong. You can find this news on Tom's Hardware.
So, I guess they will be no more Adobe Programs made for Mac, perhaps. Hopefully, YES, so, the BLOODY APPLE PRODUCTS will have cheaper price.

I didn't use GPU Acceleration for PS even though I have Radeon HD5870. Find it's not something very important to me.