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Adobe CS5 Web Premium Part One: Illustrator and Photoshop
Our three-part review kicks off with two elder statesmen
Adobe CS5 is finally shipping, so over the next few weeks we'll looking at the major programs which comprise the Web Premium package, starting off with the old stalwarts of the group. Now, it's somewhat hard to believe that 2010 marks Photoshop's 20th anniversary, with Illustrator having been around for a few years even before that, but here we are. Both products have certainly seen a lot of design trends and operating systems come and go in their time, but lest I take a long, nostalgic detour down software memory lane, let's simply get to the latest and greatest.
A disclaimer before we begin
As the title of this piece may have oh-so-subtly suggested, the reviews of Photoshop and Illustrator presented forthwith are intended to be part of a larger collection of articles covering the CS5 Web Premium suite. With that as the stated case, please keep in mind that I'm going to be writing with an eye towards the professional Web and interactive designer, and as such, features geared towards other disciplines may get short (or no) shrift. Caveat lector.
Illustrator CS5: long-awaited and useful new features
Put simply, were it a person, we could say that Illustrator has been in existence almost long enough to rent a car. That's a long time. In fact, if Adobe still used version numbers in the product branding, we'd be talking about Illustrator 15.0. Now, I didn't join the party until version 5, but that still gives me a good decade-and-a-half of history with Illustrator as my go-to vector program of choice, and it's been a while since I've been able to say that a version of Illustrator isn't just along for the ride. Illustrator CS5 packs in some really nice features, which we'll start covering right now.
Four in the "awesome" category
As I alluded to already, it's been quite some time since any new feature in Illustrator made me say, "awesome," but this time around there are four such additions (which I'll get to in order of awesomeness, which is my soon-to-be-patented ranking system that will no doubt spawn countless imitators). First up is the addition of variable width strokes, the implementation of which couldn't be simpler. Just create a stroked path as usual, grab the new Width tool, and drag along an anchor (fig. 1, left). That's it. It takes just seconds, and the results are really nice (fig. 1, right).
Figure 1
But that's not where the stroke awesomeness ends. The Stroke panel has been revamped, overhauling how dashed lines work as well as adding arrowheads directly into the main Stroke panel (fig. 2).
Figure 2
As for the dashed lines, a simple box toggles you between the old style dashes (fig. 3, left), and the new and improved model, which aligns dashes to corners and path ends (fig. 3, right).
Figure 3
Awesome number two comes in the form of the Shape Builder tool, which is intended to supplement the oft-misunderstood Pathfinder panel. Instead of selecting two paths and then randomly clicking buttons in the Pathfinder panel, you can now simply grab the Shape Builder tool, and through a combination of dragging and/or modifier keys (fig. 4), do many of the same things the Pathfinder panel affords but with less confusion. It takes a bit of getting used to, but is a huge timesaver once you do.
Figure 4
The third entry in the awesome category is reserved for the new vanishing point tools. Again, we're in "you have to get used to it" territory, but it sure beats how this sort of thing was done until now. Just select a 1-, 2-, or 3-point perspective view from the View menu, and up pops a grid that you can manipulate using the the new Perspective Grid tool (fig. 5). You can then use the (also new) perspective selection tool to take flat objects, drag them to a plane inside the grid (fig. 6), and the perspective adjusts automatically. It's pretty simple when you get down to it, and once you conquer the fairly flat learning curve, amazing things are possible, as Figure 7 hopefully shows.
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
The last bit of awesome to discuss is the inclusion of Bristle Brushes, which mimic real-world brush effects in scalable vector form. Anyone who remembers Fractal Design Expression from back in the day will ask what took so long, but it's here now. When you create a new brush you can choose from a host of Bristle Brushes (fig. 8), each with various options. In this case, pictures tell a better story, so we'll let Figure 9 finish us off here.
Figure 8
Figure 9
And three in the "worth mentioning" category
While we're done with what I deem to be awesome, there are still several noteworthy features and enhancements to go over. Time for a few quick hits:
Artboard improvements. Illustrator CS5 sports a few tweaks in the artboard area, including a command to paste an object into all artboards, a new artboard panel (fig. 10), and, for the neat freaks amongst us, the ability to arrange artboards into grids.
Figure 10
Draw inside and behind objects. Two new drawing modes let you effectively use objects as masks to create artwork inside (fig. 11) or behind other objects. Very handy.
Figure 11
Pixel-perfect alignment. The new Align to Pixel Grid command in the Transform panel ensures that your supposedly crisp and clean vectors don't suffer from blurry strokes or edges (fig. 12).
Figure 12
The Bottom Line
For me, Illustrator has been kind of invisible the last few versions, but CS5 finally gets a handful of useful new features worth crowing about. I particularly love the variable width strokes and Shape Builder tool, and have already found both to be invaluable additions to my daily workflow. There's certainly enough new and noteworthy in Illustrator CS5 to warrant upgrading, especially so if you happen to be using CS3, a proclamation which will fast become a running theme around here. As a new purchase, Illustrator remains a solid, if pricey, choice in the world of vector design, and as a contributor to the Web Premium suite, it's a definite positive. Let's move on to the program with the big anniversary, shall we?
Photoshop CS5: quite mature, but far from senile
Had it not been for the march of technology, bringing with it things like Macs with Intel processors, 64-bit operating systems, and gobs and gobs of RAM as a given, it's entirely possible for someone in interactive design to be quite productive with a half-decade old (or older) version of Photoshop. Personally, if I absolutely had to, I probably could have gotten away with using Photoshop CS (8.0 for the version number sticklers out there) all this time, but I digress. The point here is that Photoshop, as one might expect to be the case in a 20-year-old piece of software, is a mature product at this point -- and that's putting it mildly. In any case, with each new version comes more bolt-on functionality, refining of existing features, and performance tweaks where possible, and the CS5 version of Photoshop (version 12.0, again for the sticklers) is no exception. However, in general there is a pretty nice smattering of new and improved all around in CS5, but whether you find any to be worth the cost of upgrading is, of course, up to you.
Interface
How does it look and how does it run are two obvious questions any long-time Photoshop user might have about a new version, and while there's not huge news to report on the first, there's plenty to say about the second. To the "how does it look" question, the answer is "exactly the same as CS4" (fig. 13). The big interface overhaul went through last time, so while there are no radical look and feel changes to argue about, there are still a few nips and tucks made to established canon here and there.
Figure 13: Other than the workspace strip and some tweaked toolbar icons, CS5 and CS4 could be twins.
I'm especially fond of the selection ring (fig. 14), which surrounds the color picker tool with a, shall we say, obvious visual cue to aid in color selection. Much better than shifting your eyes down to the chips in the main toolbar.
Figure 14
There's also the inclusion of Mini Bridge (fig. 15), a new panel that replicates the basic functionality of "Big Bridge." I suspect your use of this feature depends on how much you've historically used the full-blown version of Bridge, but it's nice to know it's available.
Figure 15
You may hear talk around the IntarWebs about Photoshop CS5's round of JDI ("just do it") changes, where the Photoshop team took a chunk of the development cycle to knock off as many user-requested interface changes as they could. Tweaks such as the ability to turn off Mac trackpad gestures as a preference, a new straighten command, group opacity settings on layers, the ability to set defaults on layer styles, the option to adopt standard Mac system shortcuts, and a rule of thirds grid in the crop tool (fig. 16) constitutes a pretty nice list of small things that could turn into big timesavers.
Figure 16
A word about performance
The "how does it run" question I alluded to earlier is mostly answered by the fact that Mac version of Photoshop CS5 finally joins its Windows counterpart in the land of 64-bit goodness. Back during the CS4 cycle, I commented on how 64-bit benefits only really applied to a certain user type, and the same is certainly true for this cycle. I'd be remiss if I didn't point you at one of John Nack's recent posts on this very subject, and I'd like to echo his caveats by saying that unless you are working on enormous images which require gobs and gobs of memory, you're not going to see huge performance increases (or any at all, for that matter). Seeing as I'm specifically reviewing the major packages which constitute the Web Premium product, the target user for which happens to be those of us working largely with screen res imagery, 64 bits isn't likely to be a huge factor in the upgrade decision. However, as Mr. Nack's benchmarks show, if your workflow requires it, you will see enormous performance improvements, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Standalone features and improvements
Photoshop CS5 boasts some pretty heavy hitting bolt-on features, any one of which could translate to huge time savings if what you do requires their unique services. I preface this section by reminding everyone that this is a review of Photoshop in the context of the overall Web Premium suite, and seeing as Web and interactive design has been my domain for many moons now, photographers and print designers may not find mentions of their favorite feature. Anyway, here's the rundown:
Better selections. Using the new options like Smart Radius and the Refine Radius Brush in the Refine Edge command, you can easily make complex selections like hair (fig. 17). Add in the Decontaminate Colors option to control color spill, and an already good feature becomes even better.
Figure 17
Content-aware Fill. Yeah, this is the real deal. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've seen demonstrations of this astounding new feature (fig. 18). There really isn't much to say about this other than it works way better than even the demos show. You'll find yourself going through your photo library and just removing whatever you can.
Figure 18
Painting improvements. Photoshop CS5 implements the dynamic duo of the new Mixer Brush with natural bristle tips, which Adobe touts as being able to turn photographs into paintings (fig. 19). I can't really argue with that assessment, as it will likely be a wide application of this tandem, but the fact that you can tweak things like the wetness of the brush, the amount of "paint" to load on the brush, and the rate at which said virtual paint leaves the brush, Photoshop CS5 is the most viable "paint from scratch" version yet.
Figure 19
3D. In the Extended version of Photoshop CS5, you'll find a few enhancements to the 3D capabilities introduced back in the CS3 release. Most notable is Repousée, which allows you to take flat layers and extrude them into 3D space with a variety of customizations (fig. 20). Photoshop CS5 also adds a wealth of materials options, bringing Photoshop ever closer to being a fairly fully-featured 3D modeling and rendering environment. I must caution here that the potential for images dripping with what could only be described as mid-90s style "cheese-D" is great in the wrong hands, so I urge this new power to be used for good and not evil.
Figure 20
Puppet warp. Veterans of After Effects CS4 should recognize its influence in Photoshop CS5's puppet warp feature, which analyzes image layers, creates a wireframe mesh of the image, then allows you to pin down areas of the image while realistically deforming other parts (fig. 21). For anyone who has ever wished a model's arm was pointing just a little higher, for example, this should be a very welcome feature indeed.
Figure 21
The Bottom Line
I warned earlier that the following would be said a lot: if you skipped CS4, definitely pull the trigger on CS5. In addition to the new interface introduced in the last version, you'll also get the benefit of some further refinements as well as some really great new features (I still can't get over the spectacular amalgamation of sorcery and usefulness that is content-aware fill). However, moving from CS4 may not be the slam dunk that a migration from CS3 is. I always advise that if you are apt to see significant time savings from any individual feature, then the upgrade cost can often pay for itself, and the breadth of new features and enhancements in Photoshop CS5 provides a decent enough array of potential timesavers to be a good bet for many users. So, as an upgrade, your mileage may vary. As a new purchase, well, Photoshop has been the standard for two decades now, and Adobe is still finding new things to put into it, so it's never a bad thing to have in your quiver. Finally, there's enough new and potentially timesaving in Photoshop CS5 to push it into positive territory when considering your CS5 Web Premium purchase or upgrade.
Stay tuned to this same Bat-channel, as we'll be back to continue our three-part review of CS5 Web Premium with a look at the three (yes, three) Flash-based products included this time around. Until then, kiddos!
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