Adobe Creative Suite 5 — Picture Soup

Adobe Creative Suite 5 NOW SHIPPING

May 1, 2010 By PictureSoup 1 Comment

By Diane Berkenfeld

Adobe (www.adobe.com) announced yesterday that it has begun immediate shipping of the Creative Suite 5 collections and the 15 individual software titles that make up the CS5 Master Collection.

More than 250 new features have been integrated into the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection. Adobe offers all 15 software titles that make up the CS5 Master Collection individually, as well as in collections designed to incorporate those programs that photographers would need, or graphic designers or web designers. These are: Creative Suite 5 Master Collection [everything but the kitchen sink —Ed.], Creative Suite 5 Design Premium, Creative Suite 5 Design Standard, Creative Suite 5 Web Premium and Creative Suite 5 Production Premium.

Click here to read more about some of the great new features packed into Adobe’s Creative Suite 5.

? Look for reviews of Creative Suite 5 programs coming to Picture-soup.com soon!

Filed Under Gear - New Product Announcements, Special of the Day Tagged With Adobe Creative Suite 5, Adobe CS5, availability, Diane Berkenfeld, new product announcement, Photoshop

Teaser: Photoshop CS5 Extended's Content Aware Fill

April 17, 2010 By PictureSoup 1 Comment

By Photoshopman a.k.a. Gary Small

Hi everyone! Well, I know the buzz is on with the announcement by Adobe of CS 5! As one of the people privileged to work with the beta/pre-release of Photoshop CS 5 Extended, I can tell you it’s an amazing upgrade. There are not only a bunch of new tools and features, but most of the tools and functionality of Photoshop across the board have been greatly improved. It’s like a whole new program!

I was going to write a long article, covering all the new features, but since I know many of you are dying to see what’s new as quickly as possible, I decided to put out a few teasers a little at a time, just to whet your appetites. I’ll try to publish as many as I can as quickly as I can.

So on that note, here is the first installment—what I think is by far the best new feature in Photoshop CS 5: Content Aware Fill.

Content Aware Fill is like the Patch Tool on steroids. I won’t even attempt to explain the technology behind it (because frankly I don’t understand it myself!), but the way it works is incredible. Let’s say you have an object, or even a person, or just about anything (trees, cars, telephone poles, exit signs) that you want to remove from a picture. In the past, it would take hours of Cloning, Healing, and Patching. Along comes Content Aware Fill, and reduces the work to mere seconds.

Here’s a nice outdoor scene with a bride and groom by a bridge. I love the scene and would like to re-use it, or make a background image out of it. But I need to get rid of the bride and groom to do so. All I have to do in Photoshop CS 5 is select the bride and groom (I used the Lasso tool to make a loose selection), then either hit the Delete key (if you’re working on the Background layer), or go to the menu and click Edit>Fill. Then in the dialog box that pops up, click the drop down box and select Content Aware and then click OK. Then watch what happens.

Original image of the bride and groom. Photo © Gary Small.

Photoshop CS5 Extended screenshot of the selection around the bride and groom. Photo © Gary Small.

The final image, after Photoshop CS5 Extended worked its magic with Content Aware Fill. Photo © Gary Small.

It doesn’t always work perfectly, but in almost all cases, Photoshop analyzes the surrounding area and fills in the selection appropriately, to make it look like the object (or people) selected are replaced with the scenery they were standing in. In the same example, I used Content Aware Fill to fill in the patch of white sky in the upper left corner. It was much faster than cloning the trees or using the patch tool and with better results too!

My next installment will talk about the new “Refine Edge” command, and as a bonus, we’ll see how I combined the two to make a completely new picture in under 30 minutes! Stay tuned!

• Gary Small a.k.a. Photoshopman is a Professional Photographer, Photoshop Guru and master of color management. Check out his work at www.jsmallphoto.com.

Filed Under Photoshop Tips Tricks & Techniques Tagged With Adobe Creative Suite 5, Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended, Content Aware Fill, feature teaser, Gary Small, Patch tool, photoshopman, professional photography, software

Adobe Unveils Highly Anticipated Creative Suite 5 Family

April 12, 2010 By PictureSoup 10 Comments

By Diane Berkenfeld

Today is the day photographers, graphic designers, webmasters and illustrators have been waiting for—the day Adobe announced the latest version of its Creative Suite. New versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and brand new web components for generating content without the need to write code were unveiled. More than 250 new features have been integrated into the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection.

Adobe offers all 15 software titles that make up the CS5 Master Collection individually, as well as in collections designed to incorporate those programs that photographers would need, or graphic designers or web designers. These are: Creative Suite 5 Master Collection [everything but the kitchen sink —Ed.], Creative Suite 5 Design Premium, Creative Suite 5 Design Standard, Creative Suite 5 Web Premium and Creative Suite 5 Production Premium.

Adobe’s website www.adobe.com has a helpful product chooser, to help you figure out which product is right for your needs based on what you need to do, or what products you need to utilize. Check it out if you’re not sure which collection is right for you.

The fifteen different titles, available individually are: Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5, Acrobat 9 Pro, Flash Catalyst CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Flash Builder 4, Dreamweaver CS5, Contribute CS5, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, After Effects CS5, Soundbooth CS5, Adobe OnLocation CS5, Adobe Bridge CS5, Adobe Device Central CS5 and Adobe Dynamic Link.

What’s New!

With 250 new features we can’t list them all here, but here’s a taste of what you can expect:

- InDesign CS5 powers the transition to digital publishing with new interactive documents and enhanced eReader device support;

- New stroke options in Illustrator CS5 allow users to create strokes of variable widths and precisely adjust the width at any point along the stroke;

- Dreamweaver CS5 now supports popular content management systems Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, allowing designers to get accurate views of dynamic Web content from within Dreamweaver;

- Using Flash Professional CS5, designers and developers can create, test and deliver Web content across mobile platforms and devices such as smartphones, tablets, netbooks, smartbooks and other consumer electronics.

Since Picture-soup.com is devoted primarily to photographers, lets take a deeper look at what’s new in the latest version of Photoshop:

- Photoshop CS5 Extended offers improved edge detecting technology and masking in less time;

- Users will also be able to remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels with Content-Aware Fill;

- Native 64-bit support for both Mac and Windows;

- Next-generation high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities. When combining multiple exposures into a single HDR image, Photoshop CS5 preserves the full tonal range of a scene. The new HDR Pro offers exceptional ghost artifact removal and greater tone mapping and adjustment control. With HDR toning, users can emulate the striking look of an HDR image with any single-exposure image;

- A new Mixer Brush that blends an infinite combination of colors onto a single paintbrush tip, and Bristle Tips that offer lifelike brush strokes;

- Puppet Warp gives lets you precisely reposition or warp any image element, such as straightening a bent arm in a photo or manipulating the landscape to generate a new perspective;

- More than 30 features and enhancements were requested directly by the Photoshop community, and have been added to this release. These features directly impact the everyday workflow but may not always be at the top of the development list for a new release. These features include automatic image straightening, rule-of-thirds crop tool, color picker and the ability to save 16-bit images as JPEGs. A new customizable Adobe Mini Bridge panel is also available directly in the software for faster file browsing and management.

- Photoshop CS5 Extended includes everything in Photoshop CS5 plus tools for editing 3D and motion-based content.

Estimated Street Prices & Availability

Adobe Creative Suite 5 and its associated point products are scheduled to ship within 30 days.

Estimated street prices:

- Adobe Photoshop CS5 is $699 and $999 for Photoshop CS5 Extended.

- Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection – $2,599

- Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium – $1,899

- Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Standard – $1,299

- Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium – $1,799

- Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium – $1,699

Tiered upgrade pricing from previous versions is also available. For more detailed information about features, upgrade policies, pricing and international versions, go to www.adobe.com/creativesuite.

? We’ll be posting reviews as soon as we receive our copies! Stay tuned.