Practical Photography

Yesterday there was a CS4 seminar yesterday in Manchester and a lot of my friends and collegues went a long to it. The morning was held for programmers and the afternoon was specificlly for designers.

The overall opionion of the seminar was that it was badly organised and a bit dissapointing but CS4 looks quite impressive with new tools and improvements of functionality.

The main part I’m interested in is Photoshop, apparantly photoshop has improved a lot since the last version, CS3. The biggest change is that it will now run off a graphics card rather than a processor, this will improve the way that PhotoShop works as when you save a file to disc or file you will still be able to work on another window. In CS3 you cannot do this as you have to wait for the image to be saved before you can carry on working. This is especially frustrating if you have a large image you need to save to file as you have to wait a long time before resuning work.

The graphics card will also help as it will improve the zoom function, this means when zooming in to work on intricate details this will not look so pixelated improving the overall quality of the work.

Another quirky little function is a new gesture control, you can now rotate the canvas and do lots over other movements with just a flick of a mouse,. This is similar to how an iPod works in that you can zoom in, rotate and open new windows using different gestures.

All of these and more will improve the way that photoshop works and help photographers and designers work quicker, more efficient and produce better quality images.