I’ve significantly upgraded my computer system moving from the Stone Age to the current version. I had been hoping/waiting to avoid ffice:smarttags" />Vista. That said I took the plunge anyway and do notice a significant speed improvement overall. More likely the improvement reflects moving from using 5 year-old technology to current technology.ffice:office" /> I have loaded on my computer: CS3 and installed Lightroom 2.0. CS4 is sitting in its original shipping package. I plan to install CS4 while leaving CS3 up. Right now I am working on learning the improvements/enhancements of Lightroom 2.0 and will then tackle CS4. Jerry, I printed the technical references that you noted and will read those before installing CS4. I really appreciate all of your perspectives and willingness to share your experience with CS4. Marc Schoenholz
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I'm interested in why you feel the curves adjustment has lost functionality.
The adjustment panel automates layering and masking which in my opinion speeds workflow. There is a tutorial included in the disk set that ships with Photoshop CS4 covering the new adjustment panel. It is well worth watching and gave me a new appreciation for the foreign looking adjustment panel.
Jerry
Well, for one thing the damned thing is too small to allow the selection of every single value (try to hit Input level 103 for example without using the keyboard). Somehow that just bothers me, since we're giving up the use of a perfectly good Curves dialog in which every value was accessible. OOPS! I ust found the "Expanded View" function. Chalk this complaint up to inexperience and scratch it from my list.
For another, it either takes up more screen space or requires more work to hide the ADJUSTMENTS palette after adjusting a layer (opposed to hitting OK on the real Curves dialog). I've chosen to put the ADJUSTMENTS palette on screen permanently on my second monitor, so this isn't really an issue for me, but it will be for some. Perhaps keeping it on-screen all the time will work out to be a plus, time will tell; for now I'm still suffering a bit from the "it's different than before" blues. This dog isn't getting any younger!
Another issue is that the way a person interacts with the Curves dialog is not *quite* the same as the way a person interacts with the ADJUSTMENTS palette. Recall recent discussions on this forum about what clicking on the image with certain modifier keys does to the Curves dialog. And so the user interface gets a bit more complex to work and some functionality people have learned to use is missing. Again, nothing Earth-shattering, but a small loss.
Now that you make me look at this more objectively, I suppose I haven't much grounds for complaint, do I? Thanks for that, Jerry.
I've been experimenting with the "Click and drag in image to modify the curve" function, and while it's a GREAT idea, the thing seems to want to snap to points too far away. So what *could* have been really great for me when flattening astroimages (where sometimes I need points very close together) is something I can't really use. Maybe there's a way to configure that, or maybe it will work better in Expanded View. Time will tell.
I'll try to address the points you raised from what I have learned so far:
1. The interface changes makes Photoshop consistent with the other applications in the Creative Suite and can be customized to your specific needs.
2. The panels can be set to auto-collapse in the preferences if space is a problem and the Curves dialog menu is still available from the menu bar under Image/Adjustment/Curves.
3. The points plotted on the curve adjustment correspond to the color value specific to the "finger" position on the image.
4. The keyboard shortcuts for Curves have not changed.
Curves
"We have made significant improvements to the way we handle curves as it now lives in a dynamic and non-modal adjustments panel. This means that if you are adjusting your image with curves, the currently selected tool does not automatically change to Eyedropper tool as it does with legacy behaviour (Image > Adjustments > Curves). To get legacy behavior, you must select the On-Image Adjustment button/tool located in the Curves Adjustment Panel. With this tool selected, all legacy shortcuts work with the exception of one new improvement where hovering the cursor over the image will allow you to preview that point on the curve (prior to CS4 this required a click and drag)."
4. So far I haven't been able to sense a speed difference between the 32 and 64 bit versions. Adobe installs both a 32 and 64 bit version side by side, so you can have access to your 32 bit plugins, and I've been using them both. Nothing's particularly slow anyway - I think perhaps they've improved efficiency even in the 32 bit version a bit - and I really haven't edited a huge image for a long time yet. Perhaps that's where the 32/64 bit difference will really be felt.
Aside from the ability to efficiently use more than 2-4GB of RAM, the advantages of a 64-bit program will only have minimal effects on overall performance. The additional registers do help a little, however there are a lot of other characteristics of a system that will be much more significant.
That is, switching to a 64-bit platform will not in and of itself provide much improvement. What it does do, however, is remove limits that can significantly hinder performance. If you don't hit those limits in your normal workflow, then their presence won't impede 32-bit performance much and you won't see a big difference when switching to 64-bit.
If, on the other hand, the nature of your work runs up against those limits on a regular basis (eg a landscape shooter working with stitched HDR panoramas) the difference can be dramatic. Memory tends to be a bit of a threshold problem - once you have enough for the task at hand, adding more doesn't really help. If, however, you don't have access to enough of it then the system has to rely on much slower pathways that, in turn, lead to a dramatic reduction in performance. As such, whether the 32-bit limits are a problem or not will depend critically on what you are doing with the software.
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4. The keyboard shortcuts for Curves have not changed.
...
They were.
CS3 - Ctrl+Shift and click
and than Ctrl+ tylda,1,2 or 3 (no need to release Ctrl)
It was esiest way to access color curves to make some corrections. I was using it for skintones quite extensively.
CS4 - Ctrl+Shift remain the same but... first you must activate sampler (eyedropper tool) and
Alt+2, 3, 4, 5 to access RGB or any other channel are not the best option.
To quote Noel ... for now I'm still suffering a bit from the "it's different than before" blues...
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Last edited by Wieslaw Potoczek; 10-31-2008 at 12:22 PM.
Thanks for that, Jerry.
Linear Mode
