Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator CS4
Top of the line photo editing and image creation with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator Creative Suite 4 can take your work to the next level.
Ease of Use, Performance: 24/25
Look & Feel: 24/25
Features 23/25
How much I enjoy 24/25
Total: 95/100
Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 4 is a bitmap image editing program that is updated and tweaked for the best and easiest image editing software. Adobe Illustrator CS4 is the vector drawing program from Adobe that has been enhanced with a few additions but mostly recreated in the same likeness as other Creative Suite 4 products.
Both programs have been tweaked and enhanced since they first came out and many additions come from what users want and need to continue using the product. One major feature of both programs is the overall appearance but another is the being able to move things from program to program in the Creative Suite easily.
Several complaints about previous versions of Adobe software include the fact that to move a project piece from one software program to another meant opening that program, then exporting and importing the work piece. Now they often have open with or other commands inside or even a tool to edit the piece in one program and save the work in the other format without having to open the other program.
Photoshop CS4 includes a few enhancements and main features but one that was really an upgrade for many people is the availability of Photoshop CS4 in 64 bit Windows Vista. For those running Windows Vista 64 bit for better memory and other features that operating system offers you can now run Photoshop CS4 on your system for better handling of large images with the better memory management 64 bit Windows offers.
A new adjustments palette, Context scaling, New configuration palette creator and performance enhancements round out this new release. While many of these improvements, new tools and better working environment in themselves do not warrant an upgrade this is surely a better program overall and worth a look.
The adjustments palette is a handy feature that adds common adjustments like levels, colors and curves to a palette form that you can use on the side instead of a dropdown menu choice. While this does not add a lot of flexibility or added features it is a nice feature that adds a more flexible use to the overall workplace for Photoshop.
The Context Scaling tool is a nice feature that allows you to change the overall size of a picture and keep certain things in the picture. This is quite handy for things like scenic vistas with people and you want to keep the people in the picture but are not worried about the background getting a bit messed up.
This tool is nice for editing an image but does take some practice and extra work after the tool has been used to clean up the picture. You can do a nice job with reducing or changing the size of a picture and keeping certain parts of the image but again this is not really a tool worth upgrading to CS4 for in itself.
Some performance benefits that have been added are smooth zooming using OpenGL enabled systems which is just a better graphics system using a video or graphics card. The smooth zoom allows you to zoom in varying levels or amounts instead of using steps that the previous version used.
Other useful features of Photoshop CS4 include an adjustable brush size much like the Zoom tool so you can adjust the brush size in small increments instead of the predetermined sizes available previously. A new Panel Configurator allows you to take only the tools, commands and scripts you use and create your very own panel or palette.
This is probably one of the best new features of the Creative Suite I have used while reviewing it as it allows you to really customize a single panel for your commonly used tools and commands. While the new features of Photoshop CS4 do not really warrant an upgrade to this release with all of the new features of this and other programs in the Web Premium package they surely make for a much better suite of programs.
The upgrades to the suite of programs that allow for easier integration and working between the programs with various formats and parts of a project certainly make for a better suite and using them as a whole will be easier. The main project and workflow has definitely been looked at and improved and this seems to be the major area of attention by Adobe so that a single project is easier using all the programs of the suite.