Photoshop CS4 or Photoshop CS64?

You might be wondering what you can expect from the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4. If you are looking for increased speed, and not additional effects or interface improvements, the typical user will not notice much change.

You will notice that there are some minor performance enhancements based on Adobe's preliminary testing of about 10%. 10% is based on what the average user uses Photoshop CS4 for, such as opening a 10meg RAW picture and doing basic image manipulation. However, if you are opening a large 3.2 gigapixel image and then editing it, you will notice that Photoshop 64 will outperform its 32-bit counterpart 10 times over.

Unfortunately not too many of us do that! To be honest, I don't desire to lead you to believe that Photoshop CS4 isn't worth it. You can make the choice yourself, but really, is it worth it?

CS4 New Adjustments Palette

CS4 also has a new adjustments palette that holds many of the photo enhancement tools that we previously had to dig around for.

The role of the adjustments palette is far more important than just offering convenience: any effect created using this palette will now apply only as adjustment layers; therefore any edits that you make will no longer affect the original image.

For example, when you adjust the levels in your image you should see a new levels layer in your layers palette; instead of toggling for a preview of your work in the levels dialog box, you can turn the layer on and off. By using it as a layer, if you decide you don't like the effect you can simply trash it, and your original image is unaffected.

We now have a new depth-of-field tool which allows us to combine multiples of the same images but with different focus depths; Photoshop tries to compose everything in the shot in focus. This feature works okay however you do need to actually set up your photos this way through the use of a tripod and a timed release.

Take a look at this Video I found on You Tube

Photoshop CS4 - 64 bit or 32?

It may take a while for most users to migrate to the new 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4; in the interim, for those 32-bit users, the new CS4 offers a plethora of other significant changes to keep you happy.

CS4 comes with an assortment of new features including a restructured user-interface which in and of itself makes it a worthwhile upgrade for current users.

Undoubtedly the biggest difference in CS4 is that Photoshop is now available in both 32- and 64-bit Windows Vista versions. The 64-bit version allows users who have plenty of RAM to work on extremely large graphics with less hard-disk swapping, thus speeding up operations. This is a significant update given the dwindling amount of RAM currently available to modern PCs.

More Tricks for Beginners

Navigating In Magnified Images

If you have lost your bearings when zooming in on a large image you can jump quickly to specific views using the following shortcuts:
To set the view to the top left hand corner of your image press the Home Key. Press the End Key to set the view to the bottom right hand corner of your image. To move the view one full screen down press the Page Down Key.
Press CTRL+Page Down (Mac: Command +Page Down) to move the screen view one full screen to the right. Press CTRL+Page Up (Mac: Command +Page Up) to move the screen view one full screen to the left.


Selecting Just the Pixels in A Layer

One very easy way to select an object that is on a transparent layer is to press the Control Key (Mac: Command key) and click on the layer that contains the object in the Layers Palette. Doing this ensures that only the visible pixels will be highlighted.

Tile Images for Better Visibility

When you simultaneously open a bunch of files in Photoshop they automatically cascade, and it can be difficult to select individual windows within all the overlapping files. To eliminate this problem choose Window> Arrange> Tile and all of your open files will rearrange themselves to be visible all at once. When you're ready to close the windows you don’t have to spend time closing them individually, instead use the Close All shortcut Control+Option+W (Mac: Command+Alt+W).

Getting Rid Of the Welcome Screen - And Bringing It Back

When you first open Photoshop CS you will probably see a Welcome Screen that has links to Tutorials, Tips and Tricks, and a set of Color Management Help Files. At some point you might want to stop this screen from coming up. You should see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup.

Later on, if you change your mind and decide that you want to have it show up again, you can temporarily bring the screen back by clicking under the Help menu and choosing Welcome Screen.

Cycle through All of Your Open Documents

At some point you may want to find one of your open documents that are hidden, but navigating using the Window menu won't help because you can't recall the name of the file. Instead you can press Control-Tab repeatedly (MAC and PC) to cycle through all of your open documents and switch between them.

Beginner Photoshop Tricks

Selecting Colors from an Image Quickly
To turn any color into the foreground color Press I to activate the Eyedropper Tool and then click on any color in your image. To turn that color into the background color, press the ALT Key and click on any color in your image.

Change Brush Tip Sizes Quickly
With any brush selected you can press the Right Bracket Key "]" to increase the size of the brush tip, or Press the Left Bracket Key "[" to decrease the size of the brush tip.

The Move Tool & the Arrow Keys
You will want to get in the habit of activating the Move Tool with the keyboard shortcut, “V”. Once the Move Tool is active you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge a layer or selection in 1 pixel increments. If you want to speed things up, press Shift along with an arrow key to nudge in 10 pixel increments.

Hide Your Palettes
To hid all your palettes press the tab key once. You can press the Tab key again to bring them back. To hide all your palettes except the toolbar press Shift+Tab.

Zooming In & Zooming Out
To use the zoom tool press CTRL and the plus sign "+" (Mac: Command and the “+” sign). To zoom out press CTRL and the minus sign "-" (Mac: Command and the “-“sign).

Take a look at this video from You Tube about the Eyedropper Tool

Pre-CS Workaround for Reducing

If you are working with earlier versions of Photoshop you can simply zoom out so that your window and image are at either 50% or 25%, and then take a screenshot of the image window at this new reduced size.

You will be amazed to find that the image maintains its sharpness. Once you have done the screenshot open it in Photoshop, crop, and save. The trick to making this work is to use either a 50%, 25%, or 12.5% view size before taking the capture. If you view the image at 66.7%, 33.3%, or 16.7%, the image will not be as sharp due to the way Photoshop draws images at those sizes.

Reducing the Size

How many times have you looked at your photos and thought of how beautiful they are? It is a great feeling to look at your work and recognize how good your photos are.

However, when it comes time to print or send the photo you undoubtedly have been in the situation where you need it much, much smaller; after working on resizing you probably have found that the image has begun to take on a blurry look.

If you have ever been there you know how frustrating this problem is, fortunately in Photoshop
there's a very simple solution.

When you want to reduce the size of your image without compromising the clarity of your photograph click on the Image> Image Size menu. Next choose the Resample Image submenu and choose Bi-cubic Sharper from the drop-down menu.

If you want to make sure your photos don’t blur this is the best possible setting. You can play with your image by changing the numbers slowly and see what happens. If you are unsure of yourself please remember you can always save the original then save it again as a test image. To enlarge your images simply select Bi-cubic Smoother.

Take a look at this Video from You Tube:-

Crop Tool

You may notice that, after you rotated your image in order to straighten it, we now have some white canvas areas around the outside of the photo. We need to fix this problem by removing those areas; for this we use Photoshop's Crop Tool. You can find the Crop Tool from the Tools palette, or simply press the letter C on your keyboard to select it with the shortcut:

With the Crop Tool chosen click near the top left corner of your image and drag down towards the bottom right to create a border around the part of the image you want to keep. Fine-tune your selection by dragging any of corner handles or by dragging the top, bottom, left or right sides of the selection:

Use the Crop Tool to drag out a selection around the part of the image you want to keep. Once you've dragged out your cropping border, press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to have Photoshop crop the image.

Have a look at this Video from You Tube on how to use the Crop Tool