I’ve had an opportunity to beta test Adobe’s Photoshop CS5. The big announcement is coming April 12, but they’ve given the testers the go-ahead to publicly say we are testing it and to show some images, but we aren’t allowed to actually describe the new features until the announcement.
Above is an image I took a few years ago in Rocky Mountain National Park, a terrific location for landscape photography. But, if you don’t venture very far from the roads and paths, you will encounter other visitors. You might want to show other folks in some photos, but often, the view would be nicer cleaned up, as it were.
Here’s a section from the original shot.
I wanted the focus to be the mountain and the lake, not the fishermen. And what’s that stuff in the trees to the left? There’s something rather distracting near the fence, too. Using PS CS5, it took me about four minutes to reduce the distractions and change the photo to be closer to my original vision – what I was seeing when I took the photo.
This is what Photoshop is all about. Spending as little time as possible to make your photos match your vision. It’s also why I use Lightroom since many photos can be quickly developed there. But sometimes you need the sophistication and capabilities that Photoshop provides. After 20 years, it’s good to see Adobe still pushing Photoshop forward.
