Take This Week’s Photoshop CS4 Tool Survey

Friday

Jan
2009

If you use Photoshop CS4, could I bother you to take a moment and let me (and us at NAPP) know a little more about how you use Photoshop CS4, by taking this 15-second survey? Many thanks—-Scott.

related: polls 10

Posted by Scott Kelby

Editor and Publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, training director and instructor for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour, President National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), CEO of Kelby Media Group, author of a string of bestselling technology books. Conference Technical Chair for the Photoshop World Conference & Expo, author of numerous Photoshop training DVDs and online courses, and co-host of PhotoshopTV, and "The Grid."

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http://AfterEffectsandPhotoshop.com Jeff Foster
Although this is an incredibly cool feature, I’ve just not had much use for it to date… but I’m always looking for stuff to test it out with! ;)
Tony Murphy
I know of this great feature and seen a few of Matt’s tutorials, but I have had no images that it could be used on since upgrading to CS4!
GT
Thanks for reminding me about this feature. I have a printing job to finish today and the lousy crop job that I had to do skew the ratios but now who cares with that new feature it will solve my problem.
Awesome timing!
Bob Walters
I checked “occasionally”; however, that doesn’t reflect the true value of this feature. It’s like the brain surgeon at the local hospital. I don’t use his talents very often, but when you need brain surgery, …… well you need it.
Content aware scaling is like this. Not very many photos need it, but when you need it, there is no substitute.
Jeremy
Scott- I think that your two polls have captured in a nutshell why Adobe is having a hard time getting people to upgrade to CS4. The people who say they use the two new features polled so far on a daily basis is a whopping 6% on Rotate View and only 2% on Content Aware Scaling. And these numbers are from people who are “true-believers” and have already up-graded CS4. I’ll be the first to admit that Content Aware Scaling is one of those cool features that you have to see to believe, but (like Tony says above) I haven’t had to use it on any actual real-life projects yet, just played around with it to show my friends.
The clear majority of CS4 up-graders use these features rarely or never and large percentages were not aware of the features at all, despite NAPP’s CS4 learning centers and Adobe’s own marketing. Numbers like these are not going to convince fence sitters of the value of up-grading. In fact just the opposite, people are going to point to your poll numbers as justification to stick with CS3, especially if they have Lightroom 2 to do their RAW processing.
Dan DeRyckere
I am a retired advertising creative director and I’m sure Content Aware Scaling would have been a huge hit with my team. Since most photographers crop “in camera” it often took some work — and time — in Photoshop to eek-out the necessary 1/8″ extra image (bleed) that will be trimmed off all four sides of a full page ad. Today, as a photographer myself, Content Aware Scaling is a very specialized tool I only occasionally need, but is there to save the day and save valuable time. Not all tools are meant to be used every day, but they are no less valuable. I have a $700 custom made wedge in my golf bag that I may only use once every ten rounds. But when I finally get into trouble and need to pull that wedge out of the bag it always saves me at least two strokes I would have made without it.
Photoshop CS4 has a lot of new tools I only need once in a while. They are still great improvements to a great program. In addition to a much faster running program, I also notice that the changes to the CS4 interface allow me to save time as well as think less about the interface and focus my creative attention in the image. After all, isn’t the pursuit of the “perfect” image the reason we all use Photoshop?
william sheck
It may not be a tool I use regularly or occasionally — but when I need it (and I could have desperately used it last summer) it will pull your tail out of a jam. I’m very glad it’s there. It owns its share of the upgrade price.
http://alexpust.blogspot.com/ Alexey Pustoshilov
Occassionally. I need it for my job. It’s great that it is included in new Photoshop.
Chris Beasley
I had to come back to this post, because I thought of it when today I actually DID have to use CAS on a project. I agree that the frequency of which I’d use this tool doesn’t diminish the value of this wonderful tool. It worked fabulously! I admit to even yelling, “Awesome!” when I finished with it. (Ok, “yelling” is too strong a word, but if someone had been here, they would have wondered about me, I’m sure. ;) )
http://www.propeller.com/member/louisbweaver80/ Isabelle
Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon. Thanks!

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