Adobe Photoshop is the world’s leader in digital imaging software. It has been the industry standard design application for years, and with each new version it pulls further ahead of its competitors
The new Adobe Photoshop CS5 keeps the same interface design introduced in CS4, with some slight changes. The application shows a minimalist design, with titles reduced to mere lines, nested tool windows and a tabbed working area that makes working with multiple files at the same time a lot easier.
If you’ve already worked with the previous Adobe Photoshop CS4 you won’t have problems in switching to the latest version; if you haven't, you may find this menu arrangement a bit confusing at first.
The major new feature in Adobe Photoshop CS5, however, is an extraordinary set of completely new tools developed to improve the way you work with your images and create more attractive, professional-looking pieces of art.
Among the new features in Adobe Photoshop CS5 we find the content-aware healing brushes, which let you remove any object or detail from an image while magically filling in the space left behind; the smart selection tool, thanks to which selecting difficult elements like hair or tree leaves will be much easier; the so called wet brushes, which behave like real life brushes in terms of paint mixes and and the fun puppet warp tool, with which you can move, stretch or warp selected elements in an image.
As usual, the interface in Adobe Photoshop CS5 is highly flexible, which means you can customize the menus, brushes, patterns, tools presents and almost everything you find on the program. We also recommend getting used to Adobe Photoshop's keyboard shortcuts, as they'll save you loads of time and mouse clicks.
Adobe Photoshop is definitely an application for professionals and as such, has quite a steep learning curve. But this long process of learning does have a reward: the more you practice with all the tools, filters and effects included in Adobe Photoshop, the better results you achieve. Also, there is a huge quantity of web resources, tutorials and manuals all over the internet.
Finally, don't forget that Adobe Photoshop CS5 is a powerful application that can get quite heavy on system resources, especially when you start opening more and more high-resolution documents with multiple layers.
Though probably overwhelming for beginners, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is simply a must-have for anyone with an interest in imaging, particularly professional photographers and designers.
