Adobe CS4 Master Collection

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So I gave myself a late Christmas present this year, Adobe CS4 Master Collection. Although the install took me all morning, which included removing my current copy of CS3, it seems well worth it. While there are somethings I will have to get use to, for the most part it seems like a worthwhile upgrade.

After spending a few hours exploring, the most annoying feature update has to be the screen modes. In Photoshop CS3, Adobe finally added the single window standard screen mode, which essentially provided the uniformity of fullscreen mode while not taking up the entire screen. This feature, for some reason beyond me, was removed in CS4. After browsing the internet for about 30 minutes, I found a solution that has appeased me. It is referred to as Application Frame (Window > Application Frame). Application Frame packs the photoshop application into one singular compressed window. This essentially provides the same functionality as the CS3 feature, but not without it's annoyances. For example, when in Application Frame and with the window fully maximized, there is an annoying 2px gap all the way around the window (see above image).

For sure, one of the neatest additions to Photoshop CS4 has to be Content-Aware Scaling. This addition allows users to take a large image and resize it without losing the most interesting areas. Users can select an area of an image that they do not want to lose when resizing and Photoshop will protect it, making sure to remove other areas first. While it does not work on all images, especially images with pre-dominantly foreground heavy focus, it does a pretty exceptional job. Check out my test run above.