Digital images are everywhere - from the photography studio to the X-ray lab, from the glossy magazine to your website. With two new versions and a heap of new features and enhancements, wherever great digital images are found, Photoshop is there. Adobe Photoshop CS4 refines and redefines the professional image-editing experience, with faster, nondestructive ways to accomplish core tasks like image adjustments and masks, and new tools and enhancements that let you work more easily, efficiently, and naturally.
In Photoshop CS4 Extended, you can now work with 3D objects and video frames as easily as with any traditional image. Paint directly on 3D objects. Combine 2D layers and video files into 3D layers. Easily convert any image into a 3D object or volume. And do it all with a brand new 3D engine that provides dramatic performance and capability improvements. In motion graphics, single-key shortcuts let you move through and edit video layers faster and more precisely than before, and new controls enable you to preview and export audio tracks as well. Image analysis improvements include multiple counts with the Count tool and volume rendering of DICOM files.
Main Features
Live, nondestructive corrections. with the Adjustments panelPhotoshop CS4 speeds workflow performance with the Adjustments panel, cutting the time it takes to make nondestructive adjustments like Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation, and much more. There’s no dialog box maze to navigate - just go straight to the task at hand. The Adjustments panel brings the right tool for the right job to your fingertips, dynamically, saving precious time. The panel features the new Vibrance adjustment, giving you greater control over color saturation while preserving delicate tones, such as skin colors. On-image adjustments are now available for Hue/Saturation and Curves. Plus, for even greater convenience and time savings, the panel features a wide variety of modifiable presets for each type of change, including more than 20 new preconfigured, customizable starting points. Photoshop CS4 speeds you through countless tasks with the Adjustments panel.
Re-editable, feathered, density-controlled masks. The new Masks panel smooths and speeds the creation and adjustment of pixel and vector masks, making it easier than ever to apply effects to precisely defined areas of an image. Now, with simple sliders, you can adjust the density and feathering of a mask, to control both the sharpness of the mask edge and how much of the adjustment effect you’d like to reveal. The Refine Mask feature allows simple yet fine-grained control over the mask size and edges. And ColorRange has been upgraded for better accuracy and power. It’s a fast way to automatically create powerful and detailed masks based on single or multiple colors, with simple controls for the spatial tolerance and “fuzziness” of the color sampling.
More refined, natural results with Dodge, Burn, and Sponge. In the days of film, paper, safelights, and chemicals, photographers dodged and burned their prints during exposure, to darken and brighten areas of an image as they created it. It was an art that required steady hands and practice to master. The newly refined Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools in PhotoshopCS4 take the pain and practice out of preserving tonal quality while you spot-correct exposure and color saturation. Simply paint the area you want to adjust and get advanced results in a fraction of the time.
Enhanced Auto-Align, Auto-Blend, and new 360° panoramas. The automatic alignment and blending technology in Photoshop CS4 enhances a wide variety of features, but nowhere are the improvements more obvious than in Photomerge. Now, when you stitch a sequence of images into a panorama, enhanced blending combines with new vignetting and geometric distortion corrections to bring you even better results - a panorama with more natural colors blended from one end of the scene to the other. Additional improvements include the ability to create 360-degree panoramas, automatic detection of fish eye lenses to compensate for their inherent distortion, and the new Collage option which rotates and scales individual images as they are combined using Auto-Align and Photomerge.
Extended depth of field. Whether it’s the extreme close-up, the microbial world, or simply low-light conditions, there are times when the depth of field you can capture with your camera is extremely shallow. Now, you can shoot the scene with a series of focal points, and use the enhanced Auto-Blend Layers feature to automatically create a new, single image with a depth of field encompassing the entire series. You can even color-correct the images at the same time, automatically. This feature provides breathtaking enhancement of any scene where lighting and depth of field are in short supply.
Fluid canvas rotation. Photoshop CS4 introduces a revolutionary new feature that lets you paint and draw as easily and naturally as sitting down at an easel. With the new Rotate View tool, you can nondestructively spin your canvas to any orientation you desire - a boon to every illustrator, whether you paint by mouse or tablet. No pixel distortion, no craning your head to get the perspective you want, and no matter how you spin your canvas, Photoshop CS4 adjusts your selections, grids, rulers, and other tools and features to match your chosen orientation.
Adjustments panel - Simplify image adjustment by easily accessing every tool you need to nondestructively adjust and enhance the color and tone of your images; on-image controls and a wide variety of presets are also included in the new live and dynamic Adjustments panel.
Masks panel - Quickly create and edit masks from the new Masks panel. This panel offers all the tools you need to create editable pixel- and vector-based masks, adjust mask density and feathering, easily select noncontiguous objects, and more.
Nondestructive image editing - Experiment without harming your original photo. Visualize different effects and manipulate objects using nondestructive Smart Filters and Smart Objects.
Industry-leading color correction - Enjoy dramatically enhanced control with reengineered Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools that now intelligently preserve color and tone details. Make precise adjustments with Brightness/ Contrast and Curves controls, the histogram, channel lines, and a clipping preview.
Better raw image processing - Enjoy superior conversion quality as you process raw images with the industryleading Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 5 plug-in, which now offers localized corrections, post-crop vignetting, TIFF and JPEG processing, and support for more than 190 camera models.
Richer painting and drawing toolset - Create or modify images with a wide assortment of professional, fully customizable drawing tools, paint settings, and artistic brushes. Simply drag to resize brushes and adjust for hardness as you paint and preview brush strokes.
Quick Selection tool - Loosely draw on an image area and the Quick Selection tool automatically completes the selection for you. Then use simple sliders to preview and refine your selection.
Improved Adobe Photoshop Lightroom workflow - Select multiple photos in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software (sold separately), and automatically open them in Photoshop CS4 to merge them into a panorama, a high dynamic range (HDR) photo, or a multilayered Photoshop document. And seamlessly roundtrip back to Lightroom.
Enhanced auto-alignment of layers - Create accurate composites with the enhanced Auto-Align Layers command. Move, rotate, or warp layers to align them more accurately than ever before. Or use spherical alignment to create breathtaking panoramas.
Enhanced auto-blending of images - Easily create a single image from a series of shots that have different focal points with the enhanced Auto-Blend Layers command, which smoothly blends color and shading and now extends your depth of field, automatically correcting vignettes and lens distortion.
Extended depth of field - Combine a range of images, each with a different exposure, color, and focal point -with options to preserve tones and colors - into a single color-corrected image.
Powerful printing options - Get outstanding prints with superior color management, tight integration with leading printer models, and the ability to preview out-of-gamut image areas. Support for 16-bit printing on Mac OS offers increased color depth and clarity.
Efficient file management with Adobe Bridge CS4 - Get instant access to Adobe Bridge CS4 with faster start-up, use new workspaces to jump to the right display for every task, easily create web galleries and PDF contact sheets, and more.
Broad file format support - Import and export hundreds of file formats, including PSD, AI, PDF, NEF, CRW, TIFF, BMP, Cineon, JPEG, JPEG2000, FXG, OpenEXR, PNG, and Targa.
Profiles to support the color-blind - Design with sensitivity for color-blind individuals by creating soft proofs of your images using built-in Color Universal Design Organization profiles.
Extensibility - Get and share Adobe Flash technology-based panels that developers create to accomplish customized tasks. Plus, get tips and tricks from the thriving worldwide community of Photoshop users through the new Adobe Community Help online service.
System Requirements
Hard Disk 10 GB.
Memory 2GB.
Processor 1.8GHz or faster processor.
Platform Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and 32- and 64-bit Windows Vista).
