The Download Now link will direct you to a form on the developer's site that you must fill out before downloading the file.
Now in its 10th year, Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, which also comes as a bundle with its video-oriented sibling, Adobe Premiere Elements 10, offers photo enthusiasts and beginners a lot of imaging power for a lot less than its big brother. This version brings parity to the Mac for Organizer search, expands social tagging capabilities, some basic video support and path text, as well as enhancements to a few existing tools. It's a basic update that doesn't radically change the usability or capabilities of the program unless you shoot raw--and that's because it updates to the latest engine of Adobe Camera Raw. (However, if you do a lot of raw shooting, I recommend you try Adobe Lightroom instead.)
First, Adobe has beefed up the Organizer a bit to improve its video support, since it's serving Premiere as well. It allows for hierarchical tagging, as well as Smart Tags, which can automatically classify your media as high, medium, or low quality, as well as tag what it thinks is in focus, low contrast, blurred, and so on. This can be hit or miss; for instance, it classified a host of photos with shallow depth of field as out of focus. The new object search works reasonably well on rectangular objects--for instance, I used it to try to isolate the photos of cage cards--but not so well on others. It can search based on shape or color, and you can control how the two are weighted. There's a new Duplicate search based off the visual similarity engine, but it performs too inconsistently to rely on it. Plus, if you shoot raw+JPEG, it counts every pair as a duplicate. In general, PSE doesn't handle raw+JPEG well at all.
That said, if you're using the search tools to find images with a certain feel or color scheme to use in projects, the visual similarity search will suit.
From the Organizer you can do quick fixes, launch project creation, or share to a variety of popular sites. The Facebook integration comes in the People recognition view; there, you can download your Facebook friends' list to tag, so they upload pretagged; you can upload full or reduced resolution. New is YouTube uploading--it can directly upload unedited videos.
Photoshop Elements has the same task-oriented interface it's had for years, split into Edit, Create, and Share. In edit, you have a range of choices for how sophisticated you want the interface to be--Full, the traditional Photoshop-like experience; Quick, which provides a Lightroom-like panel with a handful of options; or Guided, which walks you through more complex adjustments and effects. There are a few new Guided adjustments. One's a gritty-glowy-diffuse-saturated transformation called the Orton Effect (here's how to do it in Photoshop.) Another is Picture Stack, which takes a single image and divides it up into a mosaic-like array. Of course, the images can be edited within the full editor after you've applied the effects. I have to say, I like the way Adobe intelligently handled the Picture Stack so that it really is possible to edit it (as opposed to panoramas). Finally, Adobe added a basic depth-of-field effect.
Another big addition for this version is text on a path. You can choose from a variety of preset shapes, which include heart and butterfly, as well as attach it to a shape or a selection. While it's easy to use and nice to have, you can't really fine-tune the appearance. There's no way to change the letterspacing to fix awkward breaks and as far as I can tell you can't edit the curve once you've clicked Done.
This version of the program supports Adobe's new Touch API, which means you can probably expect third-parties to create tablet apps to drive tutorials in PE as well.
On my Mac, at least--a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM running OS X 10.7.1--found the software slower than I'd like. And my least favorite words of the day are 'Loading the Adobe Photoshop Elements Workspace..' Photoshop loads faster on my Windows XP system. Plus, there are various 'Click here to learn..' links at the bottom of the screen (such as 'Click to learn to use the Organizer') that want you to sign in to Adobe which is just irritating.
That said, while there's nothing terribly whizzy in this version of Photoshop Elements, the product itself remains the same solid, full-featured piece of imaging software it's been for the past years. While existing users may not find this a must-have upgrade, first timers should find everything they need here.
What do you need to know about free software?
Adobe Photoshop is one of the best image editing programs money can buy. Fortunately, you can take advantage of a trial period to avoid spending even a penny on it.
Below are instructions for downloading an absolutely free version of Adobe Photoshop for your Windows or Mac computer. You get access to all the same features and tools as with the one you can purchase, with the only difference being that it will become unusable after seven days.
Dozens of free online image editors have similar features as Photoshop but without the time restriction, like Adobe Photoshop Express Editor. We also keep a list of free downloadable photo editors that you can use in place of Photoshop, like the popular GIMP.
How to Get a Free Trial of Photoshop
Though the whole installation process takes awhile to complete, nearly all of it is automated, which means you have to click through just a few screens to install Photoshop.
You'll need over 3 GB of free hard drive space to install the necessary tools to use Photoshop on Windows, or over 4 GB for macOS. Go here if you're not sure how to check the remaining free space of a hard drive in Windows.
Be sure to use the trial when you'll be most apt to try out all the features. After having the Photoshop free trial for seven days, you cannot install the trial again, regardless of whether or not you actually used it every day during the trial period.
Open the Photoshop Free Trial page on Adobe's website.
Select Start your free trial to immediately start the download of Photoshop_Set-Up.exe. It should only take a moment or two.
Open Photoshop_Set-Up.exeto start the Photoshop install.
If Photoshop doesn't start to install or you get an error message, be sure to check that your computer meets the minimum system requirements for Photoshop; you might not have the right amount of system resources available or the right hardware to run the software.
When the installer asks, you need to sign in to your Adobe account and agree to the license terms.
If you don't have an Adobe account, use the Sign Upbutton on the installer to make a new Adobe account, or sign up through your web browser.
Follow through the installer, answering any questions you might be asked. For example, you might need to enter a few details, like your occupation or the reason you're trying Photoshop.
Select Start Installing to begin the Photoshop installation. The program automatically opens when finished.
Also included in this download is the Creative Cloud program, which is a downloader and updater for your Adobe products. Total installation time might take an hour or longer depending on the speed of your computer.
How to Cancel the Photoshop Free Trial
Sometimes, when you're trying an application for free that limits usage to a certain number of days, the software automatically starts you on some sort of subscription or sells you the full product automatically at the close of the trial, but this isn't the case with the Photoshop free trial.
Because you didn't provide any payment details to purchase Photoshop, you don’t need to manually cancel any type of subscription or service. After seven days of being installed, whether you use it throughout those days or not, Adobe Photoshop simply ceases to work unless you choose to pay for it.
More Photoshop Freebies
Plenty of free resources are available to use with this image editor. Whether you have the Photoshop free trial or the full version of the software, be sure to check out all the free add-ons you can get along with it.
At tons of free stock photo websites, you can find free images to edit in Photoshop. There are also full PSD templates available for download that include all the layers necessary to edit a project in the PSD format. If you'd rather use your own photos and just include some free textures, patterns, or shapes to spice things up, that's an option, too.
Also available for free are tools necessary to do the editing, like Photoshop actions that can speed up your editing steps, and filters and plugins to add more functionality to the program.
Learn how you can take your photography further with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom with this Adobe demo video.
The bottom line: Photoshop CS5 greatly expands the toolset that Adobe offers in its flagship product, charting new ways to make image manipulation easier while making older tools work better than before. Don't worry about the lack of a new interface; the new ways to get your project done make this version a must.
Photoshop has been in the English lexicon as a term to edit images for a long time, but the latest version of Adobe's flagship program stretches the canvas of manipulation much further than ever before. The look of the program has changed so little from Photoshop CS4 that users of that version should be instantly comfortable with this major update, but Photoshop Creative Suite 5 Extended gives photographers, artists, designers, and LOLcats obsessives a stunning array of new tools. Among the new features in Adobe's flagship image-editing software are automatic lens corrections, High Dynamic Range toning, automated editing tools, and significant improvements to creating 3D images.
Installation and setup
Photoshop installation is straightforward, although it does require an Adobe account. Users can choose to purchase a license key immediately, which you will receive by e-mail, or try out the program for 30 days. When you receive your key, you can copy and paste the entire string directly from your e-mail into the first dialog box, and the other boxes will automatically populate. Both Photoshop CS 5 and the Extended come from the same 980MB installer for Windows, or 1.1GB on a Mac.
Depending on your Internet connection, Adobe says that users can expect download times of anywhere from 14 minutes on a corporate LAN to nearly 90 minutes on slower connections. On a Windows 7 computer with 2GB of RAM and a 2GHz processor on a T1, the download took around 40 minutes.
The Adobe installation process doesn't play well with Mozilla programs such as Firefox and Thunderbird, so those must be shut down before the installation can be finished. You can use other programs while installing, but CPU slowdowns are likely on many computers.
Adobe still refuses to have a Windows installation process that's respectful of standard program installation behavior. Associated program icons do not install into an Adobe folder in your Start menu, but are rather unceremoniously dumped into your Start menu's All Programs pane. First-time upgraders should note that Adobe will not override your previous installation of Photoshop, so you'll have to remove it manually. This may be annoying to some, but it's actually reasonable behavior given the cost of the program and the desire of many users to fully explore the trial. It would be nice if Photoshop came with a utility for removing previous versions, instead of having to go through the imperfect Windows uninstallation tool.
The installation and uninstallation frustrations aren't deal-breakers, obviously, but a little bit more attention here from Photoshop would result in a smoother process.
Interface
Unlike the dramatic interface overhaul that accompanied its predecessor, there's so little new to the look and feel of Photoshop CS5 that it's barely worth mentioning.
The Workspace switcher has been modified so that you can drag it out of the drop-down menu across the menubar. Doing so can push the menubar itself down to a second level, which might take up too much screen space for some people. Pre-existing workspaces can be deleted, custom ones added, and generally the workspace concept has gotten a bit more user-friendly.
Toolbox icons have been redrawn with a softer touch. This has the unfortunate effect of making them look mushy and out-of-focus against their gray background. At least the iconography is the same, so the spot healing brush tool still looks like a band-aid, but this was not a welcome change.
Despite lacking the aesthetic sensibility of its cousin Lightroom 3 (Windows|Mac), the overall layout of Photoshop remains consistent. It's not easy to use, nor is it hard to get used to the modular layout of adjustable panels. Further optional improvements can be made courtesy Adobe Labs' Configurator, for customizing some parts of the navigation. Although the CS4 interface improvements were appreciated, the UI is essentially mundane and in desperate need of refinement. It's sadly ironic that the premiere image editor looks like a cockpit.
Features and support
The new features in Photoshop CS5 completely sell the program. It's a bit hard to fathom that a program that's been around for 20 years continues to innovate and improve as much as Photoshop has, but this version of Photoshop, officially v12, doesn't just stretch itself here. It expands the limits of editing achievement, simplifying previously complex tasks and introducing new ones. It's not reinventing the wrench as much as it's making it do new things that everybody can immediately understand. This review won't cover all the new features and enhancements since there are more than three dozen feature changes alone, but we'll look at some of the best and most important.
The new Mini Bridge should directly affect every user's workflow. It opens a functional version of Adobe Bridge in a panel, speeding up processing by cutting down how often users have to jump out of the main Photoshop interface. Mini Bridge can be launched from the top of the interface to the right of the menubar, from the MB icon. As with any of Photoshop's panels, the Mini Bridge can be resized and moved around the window as needed.
On first launch, the Mini Bridge took longer than expected to read files before it could be used. After that initial sluggishness, it loaded smoothly, even after rebooting the computer. Alat pemadam kebakaran. It was noticeably faster to launch images from either Bridge or Mini Bridge into Photoshop compared with the previous version, but sticking Bridge access directly into Photoshop is a long-overdue innovation.
Automatic Lens Correction automates a task that previously could be completed by hand only. As CNET has noted elsewhere, Adobe based the tool on close measurements of multiple camera bodies and lenses so that Photoshop can take over the time-consuming effort of removing barrel and pincushion distortion, darkened corners from vignetting, and colored fringe on the edge of images from chromatic aberration.
You can tell that Adobe expects this feature to be a big selling point because it's one of the few new features that comes bound to a hot key. Ctrl+Shift+R will bring up the lens correction panel, also accessible from the Filter menu. You can toggle on or off vignetting, chromatic aberration, and lens distortion correction, which are the three major fixes that the filter looks for; adjust how the filter affects the edge of the image; edit camera and lens profile search criteria; or create custom profiles. The camera profiles seemed to be limited in our testing to more-recent models. For example, the tool lacked profiles for Canon bodies older than the 50D.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing debuted back in CS2, but it's been greatly enhanced for this version. A new feature in the Merge to HDR panel called Remove Ghost will tidy up any minor alignment issues between your three HDR source images, and you can select which of the three images to base the final image on. The new HDR toning under Adjustments lets you fake that trendy HDR look without having to merge multiple images. This works fairly decently, but expect best results on images that have tricky lighting situations or are underexposed.
Content Aware Fill improves Photoshop's ability to intelligently replace part of an image with pixels derived from other, nearby colors, noise, and tone. The feature can be used as part of the spot healing brush tool for fine replacements, or lassoed selections to replace large or unusually shaped chunks from an image.
The feature introduces a redone method of resampling from the image. The differences between how the tool performs here versus in CS4 are not readily apparent since the changes in pixelation and accuracy depend too greatly on the situation. Tests with the spot healing brush revealed no differences to its CS4 predecessor, but that doesn't mean its not working. In general, it felt like there was less of a problem with incorrect sampling, but this wasn't really quantifiable, as it still occurred in some cases.
One of the most difficult Photoshop tricks has just gotten strikingly easier thanks to what Adobe calls 'intelligent selection.' It allows users to define a selected area, and then gently refine using the Refine option under the Select menu to more accurately include challenging selection areas such as fur, clouds, and feathers. It worked extremely well with hair, and slightly less so with the more discernible echidna spikes.
It sounds simple, but the introduction of the Smart Radius and Decontaminate colors functions in intelligent selection provides a stunning breadth of control during image masking. Following the tutorials for this is essential, because learning to do it right can impressively enhance your image control while cutting down on your workflow from CS4.
Puppet Warp sounds like it could be a filter to Muppetize people in your photo. It's actually a localized warping tool that gives you the ability to accurately recompose selected aspects of an image, such as changing a straight leg to bent. It can't add content where it hasn't existed, so it works best when used on a subject shot in profile, but the tool itself worked well.
Once you've created a selection, choose Puppet Warp from the Edit menu and apply pins where you want to create pivot points in the image. Playing around with them, you can stretch a selected area between two pins. Unlike the complicated intelligent selection, Puppet Warp took seconds to learn. Of all the new tools, this is probably the most fun to use. The tool may not appear to have much practical use, but it can easily lend itself to basic but creative 3D implementation without having to upgrade to Photoshop Extended.
Photoshop is not the best digital painting program around, but the new Mixer Brush and Bristle Tips features give it a much stronger easel to stand on. Briefly, the Mixer Brush lets you add multiple colors to a single brush tip and then blend them to whatever colors already exist on your canvas. Users can define how wet the canvas is, how fast paint gets re-added to the tip, the mix rate between brush and canvas colors, and whether the brush is refilled, cleaned, or both after each paint stroke. Bristle Tips provides similarly fine-tuned control over the brush tip, including shape, length, stiffness, thickness, angle, and spacing.
Although some photographers might swear otherwise, it's not necessary to use a tablet for photo editing. This was not the case with the new painting tools, where a standard mouse did not provide the kind of detailed control required to manipulate the tools properly. Still, by building out the painting options, Adobe's clearly trying to keep Photoshop competitive across all major disciplines.
Enhanced 3D tools remain the clearest difference between regular Photoshop and Photoshop CS5 Extended. If you don't need them, don't get the more expensive version. If you do, though, there are several notable new features. Adobe Repousse streamlines the process for converting 2D artwork into 3D, then provides a bucketload of options for altering the design. There's nothing revolutionary here except a reasonable, solid effort at reducing workflow. It's effective, and it's hard to argue with less than six steps to creating a 3D letterform.
Photoshop Extended users will get an equally quick workflow for adding realistic textures to 3D models. The program comes with a stack of textures, which users can edit and save as their own, as well as create custom textures from scratch and download new ones off the Web. There's also new options for introducing image-based lights for dynamic light sourcing on complex models, shadow capturing, and improved ray tracing. Much like the painting tools, the 3D options are not a full-on replacement for a 3D renderer, but they will do quite admirably for users looking to regularly add 3D pop to their art without having to shell out for a modeling suite.
Other changes include tweaks to everything from the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in to tool menus. Raw processing has earned itself some better tools for reducing noise, and adding vignettes and grain to give stills a more filmlike quality. The Raw tool in general also feels less jittery than its CS4 predecessor, and it now will automatically downsample your 16- or 32-bit raw image down to 8-bit JPEG when you save it. The relatively complicated process of straightening images has been replaced by a Straighten button in the Ruler tool. Throw in the Alt or Option key and you'll straighten without cropping. (Note that to fully undo the straighten, you have to go back through your Actions panel. Ctrl/Cmd+Z won't work.)
When cropping, you can add an overlay grid after you set your crop boundaries. You can now prevent the Sharpen tool from creating artifacts by using the Protect Detail option, copy colors as a hex number, and gain a modicum of collaborative tools via the deeper hooks to Adobe's online CS Review. This crosses over tightly with Illustrator (Windows|Mac), Premiere (Windows|Mac), and InDesign (Windows|Mac).
You can now change the opacity of more than one layer at a time, create layer masks from transparent layers, and use lens correction profiles when stitching using Auto-Align in Layers. Layer settings will also remember your previous settings.
Mac users will see some specific improvements for their computers. A 64-bit Photoshop is no longer a pipe dream, with a 32GB RAM ceiling. The Finder-to-Photoshop workflow finally supports drag-and-drop, and the Cmd+H hot key will ask you whether you want to hide Photoshop or hide Extras the first time you use it. Trackpad gestures can be disabled, too.
There's no doubt that the major features changes create a strong framework for CS5, but its the addition of these detail-oriented fixes that sell the picture of CS5 as an upgrade worth getting.
Photoshop support is available on several levels. There are the free Adobe-sponsored forums, FAQs, and knowledge base articles. Given Photoshop's popularity, these should be sufficient for individual users. However, Adobe also offers per-incident support that can range in cost from $29 to $249. Technical phone support is available Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. To 7 p.m. PST, and customer service phone support is available seven days a week during the same hours.
Though this may seem stingy, Photoshop's complexity is best-suited for users who don't mind learning stuff on their own or from a forum. The Help menu also comes with a direct link to Adobe's Photoshop Support Center, which provides an Adobe AIR-based interface for accessing Adobe's collection of how-tos and community advice.
Performance
For users who didn't make the jump to CS4, the new version of Photoshop will feel like it's got jet boots on. It opens faster, opens complex raw, PSD, and TIFF images faster, and processes faster. There are still noticeable lags during resource-intensive tasks, but without a doubt it feels like a better-performing version.
As noted above, CS5 is fully compatible with Mac x64, although it won't run on legacy PowerPC computers or any version of OS X older than 10.5.7. Windows XP users should have Service Pack 3, whereas Vista users are recommended to use at least Service Pack 1. Of course, Photoshop is compatible with Windows 7 as well. The minimum requirements for basic Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended are fairly rigorous, so if you've got an older computer it's recommended that you make sure it's compatible before purchasing.
Benchmarks from CNET Labs will be added to the review when they become available.
Conclusion
Because of its position as the industry standard for professional image-editing and the use of its name as a colloquialism for all kinds of image manipulation, many users mistakenly believe that Photoshop is a must-have program. It's needed for professional work, but contains far too many tools, far too much power, and is far too complicated for casual use. Not convinced? Hopefully the $699 price tag ($199 for upgrades) will scare you off. There are effective alternatives to Photoshop, including Adobe's own Photoshop Elements (Windows|Mac), as well as a multitude of freeware.
That said, some photographers might not want to wait for the upcoming Lightroom 3. For them and others considering upgrading or buying new, there's simply no reason not to get it. The comprehensive range of improvements to Photoshop CS5 makes this version compelling and nearly impossible to ignore.
What do you need to know about free software?
Adobe Photoshop is not a free program and downloading illegal copies puts you at risk for viruses or claims of copyright infringement. However, you can download a fully-functional 30-day tryout of Photoshop from Adobe. If you wish to continue using the software after the free trial period, you will need to purchase it.
Photoshop Is Now in the Cloud
Photoshop CS6 was the last boxed version of Photoshop. It was withdrawn in 2014 when Adobe's Creative Suite changed to the subscription-based Creative Cloud service. It is now only available with an ongoing subscription, although a free trial period for Creative Cloud is still offered.
The full Creative Cloud package includes more than 20 desktop programs and mobile apps, including Photoshop and Illustrator. It is useful for designers, photographers, and other creative professionals who rely on a variety of Adobe software.
Some people find that this complete package offers too much for the type of work they do. If you don't want all of the applications in the Creative Cloud, you can subscribe to a single application or the photography plan, which includes the latest versions of both Photoshop and Lightroom. These options have proven to be popular with professional and amateur photographers.
Lost Installation Media
If you have lost your installation media for Photoshop and you have a legitimate serial number, install the trial version. Enter your serial number during the installation process to convert it from a trial to a non-expiring full version.
Stay Away From 'Free' Photoshop Downloads
Don't be tempted by a free Photoshop download online. Many sites will try to trick you into thinking you are downloading a legitimate or official product. However, the files they are distributing are actually almost always infected with malware or a virus.
The safest place to obtain a legitimate download of Adobe products is from Adobe.com. Only the most recent versions are distributed as trials, though you may have some luck finding older versions of Photoshop on Adobe's FTP site. There is no guarantee that you will find an installer for the version you need, however.
If you need to re-download an older version of Adobe Photoshop from a non-Adobe site, research the safety of the source and run a virus scan on anything you download.
Save Money With Photoshop Elements
If the cost of Photoshop is too much for you, consider Photoshop Elements instead. Photoshop Elements offers about 99 percent of the functionality of Photoshop at about a sixth of the price. It was designed to meet the needs of most non-professionals who will never use many of Photoshop's advanced features.
A free 30-day trial version of Photoshop Elements is also available for download from Adobe.
Consider Another Image Editor
The software market is so saturated with options for free and inexpensive Photoshop alternatives that there is no need to pirate Photoshop.
If you're unable to obtain Photoshop legally, try one of the very good photo editing programs available for free. Many offer the same features found in Photoshop, so you're really not missing out on much.
Learn how you can take your photography further with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom with this Adobe demo video.
The bottom line: Photoshop CS5 greatly expands the toolset that Adobe offers in its flagship product, charting new ways to make image manipulation easier while making older tools work better than before. Don't worry about the lack of a new interface; the new ways to get your project done make this version a must.
Photoshop has been in the English lexicon as a term to edit images for a long time, but the latest version of Adobe's flagship program stretches the canvas of manipulation much further than ever before. The look of the program has changed so little from Photoshop CS4 that users of that version should be instantly comfortable with this major update, but Photoshop Creative Suite 5 Extended gives photographers, artists, designers, and LOLcats obsessives a stunning array of new tools. Among the new features in Adobe's flagship image-editing software are automatic lens corrections, High Dynamic Range toning, automated editing tools, and significant improvements to creating 3D images.
Installation and setup
Photoshop installation is straightforward, although it does require an Adobe account. Users can choose to purchase a license key immediately, which you will receive by e-mail, or try out the program for 30 days. When you receive your key, you can copy and paste the entire string directly from your e-mail into the first dialog box, and the other boxes will automatically populate. Both Photoshop CS 5 and the Extended come from the same 980MB installer for Windows, or 1.1GB on a Mac.
Depending on your Internet connection, Adobe says that users can expect download times of anywhere from 14 minutes on a corporate LAN to nearly 90 minutes on slower connections. On a Windows 7 computer with 2GB of RAM and a 2GHz processor on a T1, the download took around 40 minutes.
The Adobe installation process doesn't play well with Mozilla programs such as Firefox and Thunderbird, so those must be shut down before the installation can be finished. You can use other programs while installing, but CPU slowdowns are likely on many computers.
Adobe still refuses to have a Windows installation process that's respectful of standard program installation behavior. Associated program icons do not install into an Adobe folder in your Start menu, but are rather unceremoniously dumped into your Start menu's All Programs pane. First-time upgraders should note that Adobe will not override your previous installation of Photoshop, so you'll have to remove it manually. This may be annoying to some, but it's actually reasonable behavior given the cost of the program and the desire of many users to fully explore the trial. It would be nice if Photoshop came with a utility for removing previous versions, instead of having to go through the imperfect Windows uninstallation tool.
The installation and uninstallation frustrations aren't deal-breakers, obviously, but a little bit more attention here from Photoshop would result in a smoother process.
Interface
Unlike the dramatic interface overhaul that accompanied its predecessor, there's so little new to the look and feel of Photoshop CS5 that it's barely worth mentioning.
The Workspace switcher has been modified so that you can drag it out of the drop-down menu across the menubar. Doing so can push the menubar itself down to a second level, which might take up too much screen space for some people. Pre-existing workspaces can be deleted, custom ones added, and generally the workspace concept has gotten a bit more user-friendly.
Toolbox icons have been redrawn with a softer touch. This has the unfortunate effect of making them look mushy and out-of-focus against their gray background. At least the iconography is the same, so the spot healing brush tool still looks like a band-aid, but this was not a welcome change.
Adobe Photoshop Trial Reset Mac
Despite lacking the aesthetic sensibility of its cousin Lightroom 3 (Windows|Mac), the overall layout of Photoshop remains consistent. It's not easy to use, nor is it hard to get used to the modular layout of adjustable panels. Further optional improvements can be made courtesy Adobe Labs' Configurator, for customizing some parts of the navigation. Although the CS4 interface improvements were appreciated, the UI is essentially mundane and in desperate need of refinement. It's sadly ironic that the premiere image editor looks like a cockpit.
Features and support
The new features in Photoshop CS5 completely sell the program. It's a bit hard to fathom that a program that's been around for 20 years continues to innovate and improve as much as Photoshop has, but this version of Photoshop, officially v12, doesn't just stretch itself here. It expands the limits of editing achievement, simplifying previously complex tasks and introducing new ones. It's not reinventing the wrench as much as it's making it do new things that everybody can immediately understand. This review won't cover all the new features and enhancements since there are more than three dozen feature changes alone, but we'll look at some of the best and most important.
The new Mini Bridge should directly affect every user's workflow. It opens a functional version of Adobe Bridge in a panel, speeding up processing by cutting down how often users have to jump out of the main Photoshop interface. Mini Bridge can be launched from the top of the interface to the right of the menubar, from the MB icon. As with any of Photoshop's panels, the Mini Bridge can be resized and moved around the window as needed.
On first launch, the Mini Bridge took longer than expected to read files before it could be used. After that initial sluggishness, it loaded smoothly, even after rebooting the computer. It was noticeably faster to launch images from either Bridge or Mini Bridge into Photoshop compared with the previous version, but sticking Bridge access directly into Photoshop is a long-overdue innovation.
Automatic Lens Correction automates a task that previously could be completed by hand only. As CNET has noted elsewhere, Adobe based the tool on close measurements of multiple camera bodies and lenses so that Photoshop can take over the time-consuming effort of removing barrel and pincushion distortion, darkened corners from vignetting, and colored fringe on the edge of images from chromatic aberration.
You can tell that Adobe expects this feature to be a big selling point because it's one of the few new features that comes bound to a hot key. Ctrl+Shift+R will bring up the lens correction panel, also accessible from the Filter menu. You can toggle on or off vignetting, chromatic aberration, and lens distortion correction, which are the three major fixes that the filter looks for; adjust how the filter affects the edge of the image; edit camera and lens profile search criteria; or create custom profiles. The camera profiles seemed to be limited in our testing to more-recent models. For example, the tool lacked profiles for Canon bodies older than the 50D.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing debuted back in CS2, but it's been greatly enhanced for this version. A new feature in the Merge to HDR panel called Remove Ghost will tidy up any minor alignment issues between your three HDR source images, and you can select which of the three images to base the final image on. The new HDR toning under Adjustments lets you fake that trendy HDR look without having to merge multiple images. This works fairly decently, but expect best results on images that have tricky lighting situations or are underexposed.
Content Aware Fill improves Photoshop's ability to intelligently replace part of an image with pixels derived from other, nearby colors, noise, and tone. The feature can be used as part of the spot healing brush tool for fine replacements, or lassoed selections to replace large or unusually shaped chunks from an image.
The feature introduces a redone method of resampling from the image. The differences between how the tool performs here versus in CS4 are not readily apparent since the changes in pixelation and accuracy depend too greatly on the situation. Tests with the spot healing brush revealed no differences to its CS4 predecessor, but that doesn't mean its not working. In general, it felt like there was less of a problem with incorrect sampling, but this wasn't really quantifiable, as it still occurred in some cases.
One of the most difficult Photoshop tricks has just gotten strikingly easier thanks to what Adobe calls 'intelligent selection.' It allows users to define a selected area, and then gently refine using the Refine option under the Select menu to more accurately include challenging selection areas such as fur, clouds, and feathers. It worked extremely well with hair, and slightly less so with the more discernible echidna spikes.
It sounds simple, but the introduction of the Smart Radius and Decontaminate colors functions in intelligent selection provides a stunning breadth of control during image masking. Following the tutorials for this is essential, because learning to do it right can impressively enhance your image control while cutting down on your workflow from CS4.
Puppet Warp sounds like it could be a filter to Muppetize people in your photo. It's actually a localized warping tool that gives you the ability to accurately recompose selected aspects of an image, such as changing a straight leg to bent. It can't add content where it hasn't existed, so it works best when used on a subject shot in profile, but the tool itself worked well.
Once you've created a selection, choose Puppet Warp from the Edit menu and apply pins where you want to create pivot points in the image. Playing around with them, you can stretch a selected area between two pins. Unlike the complicated intelligent selection, Puppet Warp took seconds to learn. Of all the new tools, this is probably the most fun to use. The tool may not appear to have much practical use, but it can easily lend itself to basic but creative 3D implementation without having to upgrade to Photoshop Extended.
Photoshop is not the best digital painting program around, but the new Mixer Brush and Bristle Tips features give it a much stronger easel to stand on. Briefly, the Mixer Brush lets you add multiple colors to a single brush tip and then blend them to whatever colors already exist on your canvas. Users can define how wet the canvas is, how fast paint gets re-added to the tip, the mix rate between brush and canvas colors, and whether the brush is refilled, cleaned, or both after each paint stroke. Bristle Tips provides similarly fine-tuned control over the brush tip, including shape, length, stiffness, thickness, angle, and spacing.
Although some photographers might swear otherwise, it's not necessary to use a tablet for photo editing. This was not the case with the new painting tools, where a standard mouse did not provide the kind of detailed control required to manipulate the tools properly. Still, by building out the painting options, Adobe's clearly trying to keep Photoshop competitive across all major disciplines.
Enhanced 3D tools remain the clearest difference between regular Photoshop and Photoshop CS5 Extended. If you don't need them, don't get the more expensive version. If you do, though, there are several notable new features. Adobe Repousse streamlines the process for converting 2D artwork into 3D, then provides a bucketload of options for altering the design. There's nothing revolutionary here except a reasonable, solid effort at reducing workflow. It's effective, and it's hard to argue with less than six steps to creating a 3D letterform.
Photoshop Extended users will get an equally quick workflow for adding realistic textures to 3D models. The program comes with a stack of textures, which users can edit and save as their own, as well as create custom textures from scratch and download new ones off the Web. There's also new options for introducing image-based lights for dynamic light sourcing on complex models, shadow capturing, and improved ray tracing. Much like the painting tools, the 3D options are not a full-on replacement for a 3D renderer, but they will do quite admirably for users looking to regularly add 3D pop to their art without having to shell out for a modeling suite.
Other changes include tweaks to everything from the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in to tool menus. Raw processing has earned itself some better tools for reducing noise, and adding vignettes and grain to give stills a more filmlike quality. The Raw tool in general also feels less jittery than its CS4 predecessor, and it now will automatically downsample your 16- or 32-bit raw image down to 8-bit JPEG when you save it. The relatively complicated process of straightening images has been replaced by a Straighten button in the Ruler tool. Throw in the Alt or Option key and you'll straighten without cropping. (Note that to fully undo the straighten, you have to go back through your Actions panel. Ctrl/Cmd+Z won't work.)
When cropping, you can add an overlay grid after you set your crop boundaries. You can now prevent the Sharpen tool from creating artifacts by using the Protect Detail option, copy colors as a hex number, and gain a modicum of collaborative tools via the deeper hooks to Adobe's online CS Review. This crosses over tightly with Illustrator (Windows|Mac), Premiere (Windows|Mac), and InDesign (Windows|Mac).
You can now change the opacity of more than one layer at a time, create layer masks from transparent layers, and use lens correction profiles when stitching using Auto-Align in Layers. Layer settings will also remember your previous settings.
Mac users will see some specific improvements for their computers. A 64-bit Photoshop is no longer a pipe dream, with a 32GB RAM ceiling. The Finder-to-Photoshop workflow finally supports drag-and-drop, and the Cmd+H hot key will ask you whether you want to hide Photoshop or hide Extras the first time you use it. Trackpad gestures can be disabled, too.
There's no doubt that the major features changes create a strong framework for CS5, but its the addition of these detail-oriented fixes that sell the picture of CS5 as an upgrade worth getting.
Photoshop support is available on several levels. There are the free Adobe-sponsored forums, FAQs, and knowledge base articles. Given Photoshop's popularity, these should be sufficient for individual users. However, Adobe also offers per-incident support that can range in cost from $29 to $249. Technical phone support is available Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. To 7 p.m. PST, and customer service phone support is available seven days a week during the same hours.
Though this may seem stingy, Photoshop's complexity is best-suited for users who don't mind learning stuff on their own or from a forum. The Help menu also comes with a direct link to Adobe's Photoshop Support Center, which provides an Adobe AIR-based interface for accessing Adobe's collection of how-tos and community advice.
Performance
For users who didn't make the jump to CS4, the new version of Photoshop will feel like it's got jet boots on. It opens faster, opens complex raw, PSD, and TIFF images faster, and processes faster. There are still noticeable lags during resource-intensive tasks, but without a doubt it feels like a better-performing version.
As noted above, CS5 is fully compatible with Mac x64, although it won't run on legacy PowerPC computers or any version of OS X older than 10.5.7. Windows XP users should have Service Pack 3, whereas Vista users are recommended to use at least Service Pack 1. Of course, Photoshop is compatible with Windows 7 as well. The minimum requirements for basic Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended are fairly rigorous, so if you've got an older computer it's recommended that you make sure it's compatible before purchasing.
Benchmarks from CNET Labs will be added to the review when they become available.
Conclusion
Because of its position as the industry standard for professional image-editing and the use of its name as a colloquialism for all kinds of image manipulation, many users mistakenly believe that Photoshop is a must-have program. It's needed for professional work, but contains far too many tools, far too much power, and is far too complicated for casual use. Not convinced? Hopefully the $699 price tag ($199 for upgrades) will scare you off. There are effective alternatives to Photoshop, including Adobe's own Photoshop Elements (Windows|Mac), as well as a multitude of freeware.
That said, some photographers might not want to wait for the upcoming Lightroom 3. For them and others considering upgrading or buying new, there's simply no reason not to get it. The comprehensive range of improvements to Photoshop CS5 makes this version compelling and nearly impossible to ignore.