I got the newest version of Photoshop (CS4) a few months ago, and I just wanted to do a few entries on some of the new features I’ve found the most useful.  They aren’t necessarily just the features on the New Features list, but mainly the ones I’ve used enough to enjoy and appreciate.  These won’t necessarily be in order of importance — just the order that I thought of them.  It should also be noted that  previous to getting CS4, I was using Photoshop CS, so there have been a few versions since then.  Some of the things I bring up may not even be completely new to CS4, but just new to me.

GPU usage

There are a few aspects to using the graphics card to render the image that are quite helpful. Here are some of them:

1. You can see a nicely-rendered version of the image at any zoom magnification! This has to be the biggest one.  Can you imagine being able to actually read text at 16.7% magnification?!  That’s what this image is at.

2. You can rotate the image canvas. I tend to forget this is available, and thus don’t use it as much as I maybe could.  But when I have remembered, it has served me well.  Good for those of us who draw/paint better from top to bottom, than top-left to bottom-right diagonally, for example.  Just hold down the “R” key and drag the image to rotate it.  And holding down the shift key will snap to angles in 15 degree increments.  This is one area where I think there’s improvement to be made on the rendering quality still,  although maybe it’s just a problem with my particular graphics card.  You can see “jaggy” stair-stepping in the hard straight diagonal edge of the image when the rotation angle is not at a 15 degree increment.  It’s mainly an issue around the edge of the canvas, though, for some reason.

3. There’s a “drop shadow” around the image canvas. Notice it on the bottom left edge of the rotated image.  Now some people say this is a bad thing, and to turn it off, because it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re seeing along the boundary edges.  I say, if it’s causing problems in particular cases, turn it off, but for most things, I kind of like the effect of pushing it off the background, especially if you have pixels that are anywhere close to the background color.

4. You can “toss” the image around. By that I mean that if you use the hand tool (by pressing the Spacebar and dragging) to move your view of the image around, try letting go of the mouse button before you stop moving the mouse.  It will keep moving and slowly come to a stop.  Fun, although not life changing.

5. Render time is faster? I don’t have proven evidence of this, but it definitely seems faster, which would make sense if it’s coming from the GPU, rather than all in software.

All in all it’s a pretty nice addition, and one that has an effect on all your work inside Photoshop.