In this shot I got the grip of the gun in focus.
And here I got the books in the background in focus.
One thing that Elements will not really do is Masks. There is a kinda sorta way to fool it, see the instructions HERE. Ignore the fact that it is Elements running in WindowsXP, it works in Elements 6 on the Mac (I know because I tried it). There are other ways to accomplish the same thing in Elements as well, and with any luck I'll get to them in one of our Workshops.
Photoshop CS 4 has a new Masks palette which lots of folks are very enthusiastic about, although I found it pretty confusing. I suppose old habits die hard, and I don't really use masks all that often anyway. But I did do some experimenting, and ended up using masking to create a full focused depth of field picture from a couple of shots that just would not line up for the automatic blending method.
In this shot I got the grip of the gun in focus. |
And here I got the books in the background in focus. |
 Here is the combination of the two, involving a copy and paste, plus a mask to get the moved gun to fit into place and have the edges blend in seamlessly. |
 Here's the original photo of a Camellia bloom against the sky. |
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 And here is a version using a layer mask, to preserve the flower color, and the new adjustment layer for black and white and applying a tint to same. While it is possible to achieve this effect in Elements, what was impressive about CS 4 was how easy it was. |
As well as the new Masks palette, there is also a new Adjustment Layers palette. As mentioned above there are some new functions with this, but it is basically something of a "so what" feature. We already had most of the functionality available from the menu. There is a new drag feature which is kinda cool, where you drag within the image to make the adjustment. For more than you probably want to know, take a look at this video. Oh, I almost forgot, the new palettes are no longer called palettes--they are now known as panels.
To stick with our Camellia, here's a version that I corrected using three separate adjustment layers: one for curves, another for levels, and the third for hue and saturation:
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The advantage of using correction layers is that if you save the file as a psd file, the original is left intact, and you can reopen and change the corrections whenever you want. Of course, Elements also has correction layers, they just don't have as many bells and whistles.
Finally, here's an example of using plain old regular layers to get a bit better result:
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The difference is subtle, but significant. There is a bit more dynamic range, things are just a little crisper and a little clearer. And a large part of the fix involved using the new improved dodge and burn tools. I never ever used those in Photoshop because I always found the results to be disappointing. In CS 4 they have added tonal correction to the tools, so that they are now actually worth while. The fixed ship uses a layer with a levels adjustment, plus a layer where the dodge and burn tools were applied, and then they were blended together with the original using the automatic blend layers function used in the depth of field process discussed in the previous section.
There are a number of nice little touches here and there too, such as being able to adjust your brush size in the image while you are working on it. And the clone stamp showing a preview inside of the working cursor is VERY nice indeed. I'm not that crazy about the tabbed windows thing, but some might like it. Does all of this add up to me buying the upgrade? Almost. Perhaps it would if it weren't for a couple of other considerations:
1. The upgrade costs 200 dollars...that's a rather significant sum when you consider how much I've given Adobe over the years, and the fact that you can buy Elements 6 for less than half of that
2. I can't do what I have always done--simply copy the program or re-install--on a new drive. If I buy a new spiffier drive and want to either move my system there, plus all my applications, or I get a new drive and install a new OS and want to install Photoshop in the new OS, with the option to just boot into the old system on the previous drive in case things don't work quite right, I can't do that. Why not? Well, its the new registration/anti-piracy system in action.
3. And as if that weren't enough, the police program they use to enforce that nonsense throws up an unending series of log errors. In short, it is buggy. It's even been known to de-rail some Macs completely, forcing a reboot.
4. Finally, I don't think Adobe loves us any more--the version for Vista is 64 bit, the Mac version isn't, and evidently won't be until the next release, for which we will have to pay another extortionate upgrade price. Thus, when Snow Leopard comes out later this year running a 64 bit system, if I wanted to have my major programs all 64 bit as well, I would first have to pay Adobe to upgrade my CS 1 to CS 4, and then wait until maybe next year (or even the year after that), and then pay them again to upgrade to CS 5. But if I were running the Windows version and had Vista 64 bit installed, I could install a 64 bit Photoshop today, for one upgrade price.
So I won't be doing this upgrade. This is the last time I'll be eligible to upgrade my full Photoshop, since the next iteration will require a full price as my version will be too old to qualify for the upgrade price. Looks like this is the end of the road for Photoshop and me. From now on I'll be using Elements, which can do almost everything I want and comes at a far less extortionate price and with a far less intrusive and distressing registration and validation system. And I will be actively checking for Photoshop alternatives--I really like Aperture for instance, but it doesn't have any layers functionality. The GIMP does layers, is free, but has a really steep learning curve. I will continue to check out new offerings as they appear. Someday my Prince will come....