Adobe Photoshop Extended CS4 Student Edition (PC DVD)

Create powerful, professional quality 2D and 3D images with Adobe Photoshop Extended CS4--the essential digital imaging solution for photography and multimedia professionals. Adobe Photoshop Extended CS4 boasts all the features of Photoshop, plus groundbreaking tools for editing 3D and motion-based content. CS4 introduces a wide range of significant enhancements from earlier versions of Photoshop, delivering greater editing freedom, a more intuitive user experience and increased productivity for creative professionals.

Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended feature a newly refined, tab-based interface in a single, integrated window, with self-adjusting panels arranged in docked groups. Automatically keeping tools well organised and away from your work area means you get greater efficiency, less clutter, and better results, faster than before. Click to enlarge.

Key features include an improved range of image adjustment functions, more powerful compositing, improved colour correction, accelerated graphics handling and enhanced raw image processing, including improved integration with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. Ideal for professional photographers, graphic and web designers working in 3D, architects and a variety of imaging professionals, Adobe Photoshop Extended CS4 is your essential tool for creating images with instant impact.

Groundbreaking 3D editing and compositing--With Photoshop CS4 Extended, you can now work with 3D models as easily and powerfully as you can 2D images, without navigating dialogue boxes and special layer contents. Paint directly on 3D models. Wrap 2D images around 3D shape by merging the 2D layer directly onto your 3D layer. Easily convert 2D images or gradient maps into 3D objects. Merge two different 3D layers into a single scene. Use video layers as textures to turn any 3D object into a video display zone. You can also export 3D layers directly to commonly supported 3D formats such as OBJ, KMZ, Collada and U3D file formats, enabling you to use 3D assets in2D mock-ups and composites.

Enhanced motion graphics--Now you can animate a 3D object and camera position, render settings and cross-sections, bringing new depth to motion-graphics editing. When working with 3D objects you can even place video layers into your textures, turning any 3D object surface into a video display screen. New keyboard shortcuts for the Animation panel make fast work of editing between frames and keyframes. Easily preview and export the audio content of a video file as well as its frame comments, and enjoy enhanced previews of non-square-pixel images. Photoshop Extended CS4 also offers improved integration with Adobe After Effects CS4, allowing you to directly read and import 3D layers from Photoshop files into After Effects--ideal for film and television professionals.

Enhancements to 3D support in Photoshop CS4 Extended include the ability to merge 2D layers onto 3D layers--effectively turning a 2D image into part of the 3D object. Click to enlarge.

Spot colour and exposure adjustments are more natural with the improved Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools.

A range of shots, each with different exposure, colour, and focal points (left) automatically becomes a single, colour-corrected, expanded depth-of-field image with Auto-Blend Layers. Click to enlarge.

Enhanced Auto-Blend technology automatically masks and blends frame edges for better results on panoramas. Click to enlarge.

Volume Rendering--Easily convert text, shape or pixel layers into a volume. Artists can combine painted layers into entirely new and eye-catching 3D volumes. Motion graphics professionals can quickly turn text layers into animated 3D text. Medical professionals can volume render a DICOM image stack into a 3D anatomical image that can be viewed and explored from all angles and depths.

Live, non-destructive corrections with the Adjustments panel--Simplify image adjustment with easy access to non-destructive adjustment tools for Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation and more with the user-friendly dynamic Adjustments panel. Gain greater control over colour saturation while preserving delicate tones such as skin colours with the new Vibrance adjustment feature. For even greater convenience, you can access a wide variety of modifiable presets for each type of change, including more than 20 new preconfigured, customisable starting points.

Fast mask creation and editing with new Masks panel--The new Masks panel smoothes and speeds the creation and adjustment of pixel and vector masks, making it easier than ever to apply effects to precisely defined areas of an image. Adjust the density and feathering of a mask with simple sliders, easily select non-contiguous objects, and experience simple yet fine-grained control over the mask size and edges with the Refine Mask feature. Automatically create powerful and detailed masks based on single or multiple colours with the upgraded Colour Range feature, with easy to use controls for the spatial tolerance and "fuzziness" of the colour sampling.

Industry-leading colour correction--Make precise adjustments with Brightness/Contrast and Curves controls, the histogram, channel lines and a clipping preview.

Richer painting and drawing toolset--Create or modify images with a wide assortment of professional, fully customisable drawing tools, paint settings and artistic brushes. Simply drag to resize brushes and adjust for hardness as you paint and preview brush strokes.

Traditional darkroom tools recreated digitally--The newly refined Dodge, Burn and Sponge tools in Photoshop CS4 take the pain and practice out of preserving tonal quality while you spot-correct exposure and colour saturation. Simply paint the area you want to adjust for advanced results in a fraction of the time.

Improved raw image processing--The industry-leading Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 5 plug-in offers non-destructive localised corrections, post-crop vignetting and TIFF and JPEG processing, with support for more than 190 camera models.

Tighter integration with Photoshop Lightroom 2--Photoshop CS4 offers improved cross-application support for automated functions, such as opening multiple photographs from Lightroom 2 directly into a layered Photoshop document, high dynamic range (HDR) image, panorama or Smart Object. Lightroom 2 and Adobe Camera Raw also share the same underlying technology, which means the changes you make with Camera Raw 5 in Photoshop CS4 are recognised in Lightroom 2, and vice versa.

Enhanced Photomerge functions--The improved automatic alignment and blending technology in Photoshop CS4, combined with new vignetting and geometric distortion corrections, helps you create image panoramas with more natural colour blending, with the ability to create 360-degree panoramas too. Other improvements include automatic detection of fish eye lenses to compensate for their inherent distortion, and the new Collage option, which rotates and scales individual images as they are combined using Auto-Align and Photomerge.

Enhanced auto-blending of images for extended depth of field--Combine a range of images, each with a different exposure, colour and focal point--with options to preserve tones and colours--into a single colour-corrected image with the enhanced Auto-Blend Layers feature. Auto-Blend smoothly blends colour and shading and automatically corrects vignettes and lens distortion.

Ultra-smooth, extra-precise pan, zoom, preview and painting tools--Photoshop CS4 fully utilises the power of your computer’s graphics processor (GPU) with OpenGL technology. Zoom down to the level of individual pixels with perfect clarity, and easily edit images at the highest magnification with the new Pixel Grid. Smoothly navigate around the largest images with no stutter or preview lag.

With Volume Rendering, the 2D images from a DICOM stack (left) become rich, 3D volumes that can be examined from any orientation. Click to enlarge.

The new Pixel Grid appears at magnifications of 600% or higher, facilitating the finest detail editing. Click to enlarge.

The Adobe Kuler panel makes it simple to browse, create, and share colour themes online. Click to enlarge.

New Rotate View tool for fluid canvas rotation--New to Photoshop CS4, the revolutionary Rotate View tool enables you to non-destructively spin your canvas to any orientation, with automatic adjustment of your selections, grids, rulers and other tools and features to match. Now painting and drawing in Photoshop is as easy and natural as sitting down at an easel.

Quick Selection tool--Loosely draw on an image area and the Quick Selection tool automatically completes the selection for you; then use simple sliders to preview and refine your selection.

Smarter Smart Objects--Smart Object layers allow for non-destructive scaling and transformation of Photoshop layers. Apply perspective transformations to Smart Objects, work with linked layer masks, and use the new Eyedropper tool option to sample either the current layer or all of the layers in the Smart Object at once.

Broad file format support--Import and export hundreds of file formats, including PSD, AI, PDF, NEF, CRW, TIFF, BMP, Cineon, JPEG, JPEG2000, FXG, OpenEXR, PNG and Targa.

Next generation Adobe Bridge CS4--Find, preview and manage all of your image assets easily and conveniently with Adobe Bridge CS4. New path-bar navigation and workspace selection buttons let you instantly jump to the right display, including new Camera Import controls, visual folder navigation and a new Carousel View for larger image-group selections. In the Output workspace, Bridge now features PDF-based contact-sheet creation and web-gallery creation and uploading. Preview 3D images and panoramas created in Photoshop CS4. The new Search feature is integrated with both the Spotlight feature in Mac OS X and the Desktop Search feature in Windows Vista. You can also switch to the new, intuitive List View, with its familiar data display and sorting controls.

Creative Pro Online Services--Find fast answers to key questions with Adobe Community Help. Store and share files, create PDFs and brainstorm with up to two other users for no extra service charge at Acrobat.com. Stay up to date with what's new from Adobe with tips to make the most of Photoshop CS4 with Adobe Bridge Home. Explore, create and share colour themes with Adobe Kuler. (Internet connection required for all services.)

Other refinements in Photoshop CS4 include:

• Higher performance on very large images when using Windows Vista 64-bit
• Clone Stamp and Healing Brush live preview cursor for easier, more precise cloning and healing results
• Layer-based metadata enabling reading and writing strings to layer properties, such as recording time-stamp information for video
• Developers of specialised applications can create custom SWF-format panels that smoothly integrate with Photoshop CS4
• Extensible SWF-based File Info panel, enabling developers to add network-stored keywords and perform functions such as spell-checking
• Unique IDs per document for easier downstream tracking of assets
• CUDO technology, providing the ability to design with sensitivity for colour blind individuals via soft-proofing
• Spring-loaded keys to temporarily shift between tools by holding down a tool shortcut key
• FXG export
• Device Link colour profile support
• Notes panel to keep annotations from cluttering the canvas