Adobe CS5: to upgrade or not to upgrade?
By Marnie B (@marnieb) in Creative » Point of View
Since Adobe announced Creative Suite 5, I’ve had many conversations with other designers regarding whether or not an upgrade from CS4 to CS5 is worth the big bucks. If you’re anything like me, you upgraded to CS4 after years of using a very old version (no, I won’t tell you just how old), and aren’t keen to fork out anymore dosh so soon. Oh, you’ve already upgraded? Right, just me then.
Still, curious if the upgrade is worth it, I’ve finally downloaded the CS5 demo and had a play with some of the new stuff. Let’s take a look at three of the new features I think are most worthy of a mention.
Refine Edge
After years struggling with something as simple as hair in Photoshop, this tool blew me away. Imagine being able to overlay an image of a model with long, flowing, curly hair on an image of, say, a garden without sacrificing detail and not ending up with an image that looks like it’s been hacked with scissors then over-blurred. Now you can. See a demonstraton by Adobe’s Terry White below in his video Compositing and Selecting Hair in Photoshop CS5.
Content Aware Fill
Despite claims that this feature simply doesn’t work well enough, I think it’s pretty damn awesome and will save us all a hell of a lot of time (and hopefully money spent on stock, too).
The content aware fill feature allows you to edit an image to remove items that you’d be better off without. Instead of spending 30 minutes removing, say, a pothole from a photo of a smooth road, this feature allows you to remove the pothole within seconds, leaving you with an image that looks like the pothole was a figment of your imagination. By sampling data around the selection using a texture synthesis algorithm, the tool essentially “patches” the area seamlessly. Check out this really impressive demo by Photoshop Product Manager Bryan Hughes.
Puppet Warp
The third Photoshop feature that I think knocks it out of the park is Puppet Warp. Once you see how it works, you can see where this feature got its name. If you can visualise a paper cutout of your full body, with pins placed through the main parts of your body – torso, knees, arms, hands – and then imagine that moving those pins around allows you to place the cutout of your body in different positions – maybe a Superman pose? – you’ll understand in part how the Puppet Warp feature works. Still dont’ get it? Okay, just watch the damn video.
In a nutshell
These new features will do for designers what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did for women – allow us to do things that were previously either impossible or a huge pain in the ass.
Sidebar: I have to mention that I think these new features are going to take the airbrushing and photo manipulation by gossip magazines to a whole new level.
So, I’m curious – have you upgraded to CS5 or are you planning to? Let me know. After spending hours playing with this demo, I think it’s definitely worth the upgrade bucks!
By Marnie Bergan
Marnie B is a graphic designer based in Australia. She blogs about design when she's not designing or sleeping, and loves cupcakes, her iPhone and tweeting.
You can find out more about Marnie here or you can catch up with her online via Twitter or Facebook.
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I think I’ll upgrade once I get my new MacBook Pro. I’ll need to upgrade then anyway so I can get the Mac version of the software.
Nicely Written Marnie.
CS5 is set to push some new boundaries, especially the features within Photoshop. Content Aware Fill and Refine Edge are just going to push photo manipulation to a whole new level as you said.
I myself am still on CS3, so might be an opportunity to upgrade to CS5.
Personally since Dreamweaver and Fireworks would be my most used web design tools, I’m particularly looking forward to them. I can’t wait to start using the CMS Support, SVN Support and the new CSS Features (Box Model Detail, CSS3 Support, etc) within Dreamweaver.
Too bad the compiler for iPhone in Flash CS5 has been outlawed by Apple, It would’ve meant a proper solution for developing iPhone Applications on a Windows machine, It would mean I’d be able to build all these Ideas i have for apps. Though psst, Who uses that thing called Windows these days? Isn’t that what you look through?
(P.S: On Chrome/Safari, When resizing the comment text box the content below it doesn’t adjust accordingly. Thought you might want to know, I personally prefer expanding my text area when writing larger responses).
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As far as I’m concerned they can add all the fancy features they like, but if the CS is as poor quality as previous versions on the Mac platform then I won’t be supporting that. However if reviews come back reporting significant performance improvements I’ll give it some consideration.
Marinie are you on a Mac? If you are how was the performance?
This sounds good Marnie thanks for the post.
Those features all sound great and look good, and look like they would cut time down significantly- but still not convinced i would use those features enough to warrant the upgrade
dont know but its made me think 
thanks 
nice post,
though these features look amazing in photoshop, CS4 is still ok for most things. though a crash or two a day for me is typical
besides ‘Ps’, is there anything in ‘Ai’, ‘Fw’ or ‘Id” you’re keen on?.
with tools like Coda, we dont really use Dreamweaver anymore though & flash – well im with ol’ steve on that one
Dreamweaver’s SVN and CSS3 support sound pretty awesome but I don’t think anything would replace Coda. Its such a pleasure to work in!
As for Flash, couldn’t agree more with you there!
JB
Hey Marnie, I’ve been thinking about this one myself.
We upgraded to CS4 about 8 months ago (from CS2) so I’m not sure the expense could be justified just yet. Those new features do sound fantastic but I’ve yet to master everything that CS4 has to offer!
No doubt I’ll upgrade to CS5 in 18 months or so right before CS6 is released
JB: Which version are you using at the moment? Reckon I should wait till I make the switch as well?
Andrew: Thanks for the heads up on the comments boxes. We’ll take a look at it! The new Photoshop features are just huge which is probably why they’re getting the most attention, but really digging the Dreamweaver features too. Go get that upgrade!
Ryan: I use both a Mac and a PC, but only design on the PC at the moment. I’m looking at switching to Mac entirely in the next couple of months though, so I’m curious – what sort of problems are you having? Personally I’m just hoping CS5 doesn’t crash constantly like CS4.
Belinda: Yeah, it’s not cheap software and I suppose if you’re using a version you’re happy with then don’t bother! What version are you using? I know I’m keen to upgrade to hopefully solve the constant crashing problems as I mentioned above. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Kiryn: Thanks for dropping by!
I don’t really use Fireworks, but spend a lot of time in Dreamweaver and the site-specific code hints are pretty cool, as is the whole idea of CMS integration.
Sonja: I know just how you feel! It really does feel like I only just upgraded and, though it was long overdue, it was forced – my PC completely died and I couldn’t find the old install CD. I’ve been wondering today if the new features will cause some bugs to surface, in which case they’ll release CS6 fairly quicky… hmm… tough one!
@M,
You don’t have to upgrade to jump to OSX. You can keep using CS4 or you could upgrade although I hear the cost to upgrade is around $1,500 or so.
I’m still running CS3 and the reason I *have* to upgrade is that I purchased CS2. I then got a free copy of CS3 as part of the deal when I purchased the software. Because of this, Adobe wont just give me a copy of CS3 for OSX. They want me to upgrade so I own an official copy.
I know .. it doesn’t make sense. I own this copy. But hey .. its their policy and not mine
Anyone else had any difficulties going from Windows to OSX or visa-versa?
JB
@Marnie, after making my comment I realised I could just go and download CS5 myself. I downloaded Photoshop just to test that out and I have to say it’s a huge improvement over CS4 on Mac. CS4 was buggy, had a laggy interface and crashed more often than previous versions. So far CS4 has been fast fast fast
And the UI has been much improved.
I mean CS5 is fast with a better UI, not CS4. And for anyone wondering, I downloaded the trial.
Thanks, CS5 very useful resource!!
nice article
features of cs5 may be great, but you probably missed to mention, that there are some filters missing in os x 64-bit mode like e.g. blendings (hope this is the right name, as my english is not very good)
i am a bit of a techno phobe, as well as very old fashioned, especially for my age, (late 30’s). i really don’t care a lot for edited pix, as well as editing pix. i do however see the need for both in today’s day and age, when it comes to trying to acpomplish certain golas in the “art community”. be it proffesional or otherwise.
i have not updated to the Cs5 program yet, but after reading what you and others had to say about the program i beieve i don’t have any choice but to upgrade.
i would like to master every aspect of the art of photography. i therefore believe many of the techno advancements are an evil neccesity.