Photoshop CS4 vs. CS3
December 2, 2009
The Best Thing about Photoshop CS4
I love reading up on people’s favorites. I find that the latest and greatest material is often the most beneficial. For anyone considering upgrading from CS3 to CS4 I want to share with you what I consider to be the best improvement in Photoshop from the latter versions. I purchased Photoshop CS4 about a year ago and it has a new feature that adds tremendously value to the upgrade, in my opinion; it is now one of my favorite features on Photoshop! It is the Vibrance tool and it can be located on the convenient adjustments panel on the right-hand-side.
What this tool does is increase the saturation of an image but, being a photo-editing program, it is especially sensitive to skin-tones, allowing you to improve the overall color of your photographs without having to single out certain sections of a photo with the Magic Wand/Magnetic Lasso tools to achieve the right hue. Selective color can also be very useful in bringing out certain colors since it applies the filter to certain colors in an entire photograph. This tool, however can be found in both CS3 and in CS4.
The Vibrance tool also gives the skin a more tanned look whereas the Saturation tool makes skin look very yellow and discolored. The Saturation tool can also be used but this often has a very harsh and extreme look and it is usually quite obvious that the finished product has been tampered with.
The following shows an example of some photographs in their original states, and then after Vibrance and Saturation have been applied with the same percentage in both Saturation and Vibrance.
Notice the excessive yellow tint throughout the Saturated photograph and how it destroys the ambiance in the picture. Now notice the next example of a landscape:
There is a definite improvement with both the Vibrance and with the Saturation but, again, the grass looks too yellow to be realistic. This would be a good example of a photo that would require the use of the Magic Wand/Magnetic Lasso tools I spoke about before in order to apply the effect selectively (in this case, the sky).
I have tried the Vibrance tool on many different types of photos and it has improved many photographs, especially older ones. The newer, more high-end cameras coming out now seem to require fewer touch-ups when editing but one will inevitably come into contact with many poorly taken photographs that are indispensable and could use a little more Vibrance. This tool has improved many of my photos, I encourage you to check it out and to try it undestructively (use adjustment layers) on some of your own. Compare before and after – I think you will be equally impressed.
