Adobe Photoshop CS5 review

Another dramatic timesaver is Photoshop’s improved ability to isolate objects from their backgrounds. Cutting out complex shapes is a chore, particularly when hair or other textured edges are concerned. The new Edge Detection and Decontaminate Colors options in the Refine Edge dialog box produced sharp lines and soft edges as necessary, and even picked out strands of hair with impressive accuracy.

The improved ability to cut out objects is perfect fodder for the new Puppet Warp tool. It imposes a wireframe mesh onto objects, which is stretched and skewed by adding and dragging pins. Unlike the existing Liquify tool, which shifts pixels around using brush strokes, Puppet Warp takes a more structured approach that resembles manipulating physical objects. As such, it’s ideal for subtly altering the pose of an arm or leg while maintaining photo-realism. It’s also extremely useful for more extreme manipulations of less recognisable objects, or for breaking up the regimented appearance of text.

Professional users shouldn’t hesitate to upgrade to Photoshop CS5, but home users will need some convincing to choose it over the much more affordable – and highly capable – Photoshop Elements. The new features mentioned above are certainly compelling, and we’d be surprised to find them filtering down to Elements any time soon. Another crucial difference is Photoshop CS5’s support for layer masks, a non-destructive tool for making layers partially visible. After using masks for design tasks, it’s hard to imagine living without them.

Overall, Elements feels like a place for fun creative projects, whereas Photoshop CS5 is more an elegant, highly efficient creative tool. For amateur photographers and designers who are motivated more by their own ideas than their software’s features, it’s money well spent.