A few months back I was chosen to participate in the beta testing of Photoshop CS5 through the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), now I’m here today to share with you some of my findings and experiences from using this latest version. I’ve been using Photoshop CS5 for my daily workflow a little over a month now being that the beta builds have been consistently stable for quite sometime now. This is far from all the features, but here are some of my “oh, that’s nice!” moments & general impressions…

Speed & Stability.

First off — It’s 64 bit for Mac! Finally! Adobe did a fantastic  job converting this over from the 32 bit version — it feels so much faster in so many ways. Some filters and tasks that I did in CS4 are almost done instantaneously now, and it’s so nice to allocate more than 4 gb of ram to Photoshop! Finally! Stability is something else I noticed soon after using it for a while — it seriously has only crashed one time in about three months, and keep in mind I’m only using the beta. After using Photoshop CS5 for a while now, I can honestly say that it’s the fastest, most stable version that I’ve ever used — EVER. Now granted, I do have the latest and greatest Apple Mac Pro with dual 2.93 Xeon processors and 16gb of ram, but you should definitely see speed bumps up to 2x as fast with certain tasks — it’s a screamer for sure.

After using Photoshop CS5 for a while now, I can honestly say that it’s the fastest, most stable version that I’ve ever used — EVER.”

It’s the little things that make me happy.

Now this is far from all the interface tweaks & additions in this version, but these are some of the stand-out ones that I’ve discovered from using it on a daily basis.

Ok, so you have ten windows open and you want to close them all…but don’t want to save them all, or maybe you want to save them all and you don’t want to click save multiple times? It has this nice “Apply to All” checkbox now to eliminate that — niiice!

Pressing Command-H for the first time will call up this dialog box to eliminate the long time conflict on Mac machines with hiding edges or hiding the actual application.

“Don’t Show Again” checkbox added to the“Maximize Compatibility” dialog box. So if you forget to change it in the application’s preference box, it’ll do it for you now.

A rule-of-thirds grid for image cropping was added, as well as a grid view, but no other different options as in Lightroom.

A Neutral Density preset has been added to the gradient dialog box as well as the gradient overlay layer style. You don’t even need to change the blending mode at all, you just click and drag — and it does the rest.

If you’re like me and have been using the famous Command + Option + Spacebar to navigate your images, those days are now over. Simply check the Scrubby Zoom box in the toolbar then click and drag (or scrub if you will) right to zoom in and left to zoom out. Very nice.

What else? Let’s start with Puppet Warp.

I’ve only used this a few times, but during those times I’ve found it to work surprisingly well. I do think this is a feature I’ll use for my re-touching & composting work in the near future and also find that I prefer this more than using the Liquify Filter — you can even use it on Smart Objects!

Content Aware Fill ( and Healing Brush )

I must say that I was very skeptical of this feature when I saw it being demoed by Adobe, but this feature actually works — it’s scary! Hats off to the engineers or whomever worked on this at Adobe, it’s truly an amazing technology. Now, to be clear, I’ve found that this doesn’t work on every image, sometimes it’s shocking how well it works, sometimes it will just give you a better starting point for taking objects out, but overall — amazing.

Bristle Tips

• Define bristle parameters (i.e. length, thickness, density) to paint natural strokes
• Use tips with variety of PS brush tools (e.g. Mixer brush, Eraser, Clone Stamp)
• Use the Brush Preview (bottom of Brush panel) to toggle a preview of what Bristles look like

Mixer Brush

Artists and designers will love this feature — artists especially. It allows you to mix & blend together different colors as you would in real life with a paint brush on canvas. It’s one of those features that makes me wish I had a Cintiq, and I’m not even an artist. I can’t wait to experiment and play with this feature more.

• Blend colors together on canvas (start with a photograph or a blank canvas)
• Blend colors together on canvas (start with a photograph or a blank canvas)
• Load/Clean brushes after each stroke (or paint with a dirty brush)
• Alt/Opt click to define multiple colors on a tip use the Load Preview (in the options) to see what that looks like
• Sample All Layers to preserve original layer

HDR Pro

This feature is way better than the fairly useless HDR tools in CS4 but I still find Photomatix to do a better job, I don’t know how it does it, but I just think it does. It seems to lack some of the adjustments that Photomatix can do, like tempature for instance. Regardless I think many people will like this and find it very usefull and a welcome addition to their photography workflow.

HDR Toning

This pretty much takes a a still image and gives it that HDR look without have to take 3+ exposures, it’s cool, but I can’t see using it that much.

Refine Edge Enhancements

• Smart Radius (detect soft and hard edges and adjust radius)
• Smaller dialog box
• Color decontamination
• Automatic output to different layer types from dialog

While using the New Smart Radius Edge Detection feature I’ve found that it actually works really good, I think it will do a great job in most situations. I still feel that the stand-alone extraction programs do a better job but I also think this will be fine for most people, it’s not prefect, but it’s another nice feature. Another cool little surprise is the Decontaminate Colors Slider that’s also inside the Refine Edge Box, it seems to defringe the edges, even the transparency areas. Check the video for more.

Layer Management

• Deeper layer set nesting
• Drag/Drop to place file from desktop onto open image
• Paste in Place command (preserves object coordinates when pasting)
• Adjust opacity/fill of multiple layers at once

Mini Bridge

Seems like they’re bringing back another version of the file browser, remember that? Imagine a smaller version of the Bridge, but in a fly-out panel within Photoshop.

Camera Raw 6.0

• Add grain (Like in Lightroom 3.0 Beta)
• Better Noise Reduction
• Enhanced Post Crop Vingetting
• Improved Sharpening

Repousse

To be quite honest, even in CS4 I haven’t used any of the 3D features in any of my work, I’ve played with it a bit but just never got into it. This version introduces a feature called Repoussé, from what I understand it seems like you can take shape layers and extrude them, so even text now you can extrude after you convert them to shape layers. Corey Barker from NAPP seems to be the master of 3D so I would head over to the Adobe Photoshop CS5 Learning Center to get schooled on some of these new features.

The Million Dollar Question — Upgrade or wait?

Well first off, let me say that I’m the guy that always upgrades, always, everytime. I love technology and I love to see how new software can improve my workflow. WIth that being said I still think this is a “must have” upgrade to Photoshop and the rest of the CS5 suite has some very compelling features as well — the perspective drawing feature in Illustrator…..Wow! What I see happen all the time is that some people will be on the fence about upgrading and give these excuses or similar ones:

“I think I’ll wait, I just don’t see the value in this upgrade version”

“Adobe is coming out with another version already?! Screw that, you can never keep up!”

“I heard that version was really buggy”

…time passes and 2+ versions go by and then at some point they upgrade anyways. Then frustration sets in because Adobe has changed so many things and they just spent $600+ on software that they have no idea how to use, nor the desire. They give up and keep using Photoshop how they’ve been using it for years, it’s a vicious cycle, and I wouldn’t recommend it. My advice?  Make your life easier by staying current — just upgrade, you’re better off in the long run.

Learn from the Pros at NAPP

Head over to the Adobe Photoshop CS5 Learning Center brought to you by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals for even more in-depth coverage and videos on all the new features of Photoshop CS5.