Millions of Adobe fans tuned in anxiously to the CS5 Launch event, and I was no exception. Having watched the multitude of new features across the suite packages that promise to make our creative lives more fun, easy, and productive, I thought it best to focus this review on the “big three” apps for designers: Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator.
Part 1: Photoshop
I still can’t believe Photoshop turns 20 this year! Here are a few of the major Photoshop enhancement tools for CS5.
Content-Aware Tool
This tool will magically remove any details from an image and fill in the spaces left behind with surrounding pixels.
Select the Spot Healing brush, make sure the Content Aware radio button is selected on top of the menu bar, and paint away the unwanted areas of a photo. By making a selection, and choosing delete, a new Fill window now pops up, asking whether you’d like to use the Content Aware tool to fill in what gets left behind with pixels surrounding the deleted area. Works like a charm. Options include Blending Mode and Opacity.
[The bench in the foreground is magically erased!]
This feature also comes in handy for stitched-together panorama shots that need a fill to complete the uneven edges created when the images get stitched accordingly. The before and after is stunning.
[Waiting for the magic to happen]
[The rest of the photo appears out of nowhere]
Thanks to Adobe Photoshop’s YouTube channel for posting the video where I found the images.
Refine Edge
Great for making difficult selections easily. The software detects fine edges such as hair and foliage without leaving any surrounding colors from what it selects behind.
Refine Edge can be selected by using any selection tool.
The Refine Edge option is located on top of the menu bar. New to CS5, the View Mode box is now at the top of the Refine Mask dialog box rather than at the bottom, and various views can be cycled through via the pull-down menu. I also love the new zoom tool. Holding down the mouse while the zoom tool (Z) is selected zooms in, Option + dragging on mouse zooms out.
The Edge Detection option, found just below the View Mode window is also new to CS5. The Smart Radius amount can be adjusted to further aid in final edge detail detection.
When you select Mask view, you can really see the tiny details being affected. The completed selection can be outputted to several options: Layer Mask, New Layer, New Layer with Layer Mask, or New document, with or without Layer Mask.
You can also choose to Remember Settings for the next images to come through.
Puppet Warp
Brought over by Adobe After Effects, Puppet Warp is a fun way of changing up your images. You can reposition, reshape and transform any part of an image or a layer in a document. By choosing Edit>Puppet Warp, the cursor becomes a pin icon. You can drag the pins anywhere on the image you want, stretching pixels as you click and drag with the mouse.
[Puppet Warp dots]
Each pin set onto the image locks down that portion of the image when dragging to distort. Shift-clicking on more than one pin will allow those areas to move together when the mouse is dragged. Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac)-click on a pin to get the scissors icon, to delete a particular pin. By further holding down either of these keys, you can rotate the pixels around the particular pin that’s selected.
[The warped effect of the dots]
There’s a pin depth option at the top of the menu that will set the pin either forward or backward, to rearrange its stacking order. As well, the mesh option will show just how complex the pin arrangement is.
You can also choose to show the density of the pins (e.g. to show more or less points in the image) by selecting the Density option just a bit to the left of the mesh option. I haven’t owned After Effects until now, so there’s one tool that I’ll feel familiar with should I ever need to edit an image in AE.
[The duplicated image is now warped]
Enhanced 3D Using Repoussé
Within Photoshop, the Repoussé command makes it possible to convert 2D objects into 3D meshes, which you can be extruded, inflated, and repositioned in 3D. You can browse and download 3D content online via the 3D menu, taking you directly to Adobe’s 3D content download site.
Judging from the screen shot below that I achieved after about 10 minutes into the document, the 3D portion of Photoshop would take a tutorial on its own to master. Still, it’s good to have the feature onboard CS5.
It took awhile for me to play around and get comfortable with the settings here. For example, to change the bend or shear origin of an object, click a point on the icon below to set the originating point. You’ll have to convert the object to a smart object before working with its originating point.
Brushes
CS5 also introduces a wealth of new brush options, complete with animated preview.
With the brush icon selected, by holding down the option key you now get a really cool icon (couldn’t take a screen grab while the icon is active, so I’ve used one from a video) that shows current color and sampled color.

Painting with the Scatter brush tip
The iris photo below was worked on with a medium brush and a combination of clean brush and load brush, options now to be found in the CS5 menu bar.
In addition, Photoshop now runs as a native 64-bit application on both Mac and Windows. I won’t get into 64-bit processing, however Wikipedia offers a good description.
Next up I’ll be reviewing InDesign in Part two of my CS5 review.