Hi, may name is Rich Harrington and welcome to this edition of Photoshop CS4 Sneak Peek.

Today, we are going to take a look at some of the new features inside the Photoshop CS4. Now, we are going to start with the user interface. When you launch CS4, it is kind of look significantly different.

Now, these differences are going to take a while for you to get used to, but I found after using them for a bit, it is much faster. Let us take a look at some of the cool new things inside of the latest version of Photoshop.

Now, when you launch Photoshop, you are going to notice that there are no longer pallets. Everything has switched to what they called tab-based, and these are now actually panels. So things save doc quite cleanly together. And, as you change workspaces, window workspace, you will see that different tools will come up for the particular task that you are working on. Now, you can access these workspaces from a handy menu here, up in the upper right corner and this allows you to switch.

The first three here are really going to change how Photoshop presents its information. essentials, is the workspace that you will use most of the time, and this shows you everything in Photoshop and gives you the most commonly used panels by default. The basic workspace is very limited, it actually heights several items from the menus. For example, when you choose the basic workspace, CMYK actually goes missing from the image modes.

Now, you can always choose to see these items again, but basics, is really just that for a basic user who is looking to simply the Photoshop interface.

The last option you see there is what is new in CS4. And, when you choose this option, it will actually change several items in the menu. You will notice that things are actually color-coded and everything that you see in blue is indicating that the feature is new or updated. So, this is a great way to actually discover what is new in CS4.

Now, I am going to go ahead and switch back to the essentials workspace so we are using the default workspace. The other workspaces that are listed down below are for particular tasks. These do not actually modify the menus but do change which panels you see. So for example if I wanted to do color correction, I would just choose color and tone. And you will see that certain panels become available. This new workspaces are really task-based, so if you are working in video, choose the video workspace. If you are going to be doing some proofing, choose proofing, and painting, etcetera. These are there to make it easier to call up choose the tools you are going to need for particular job.

Now, as you are working with it, you will discover some new things that have happened. Photoshop CS4 really takes advantage of OpenGL, so if you have got a powerful graphics card, you are going to see some cool things happening. One of those things is canvas rotation. Now, long-time users are used to when they press the R key that the bluer tool selected, not anymore. You will now get the rotation tool, which allows you to actually rotate your view.

As I click here, you will see that we can turn the canvas, a little compass is indicating which way we are looking. Now, you might be saying, “Why would I turn the canvas?” Well, this makes it a lot easier if you are using a tablet and you want to paint or you try to really get in a particular area and you find yourself turning your wrist uncomfortably. The rotate canvas option is really just that, so you could turn the canvas and then hold your mouse in a normal way while working, and it is quite useful. But if you want to go back to a normal view, just go ahead and click the reset view and it will actually go ahead and square it back up, so fairly straightforward.

Zooming is also a change. So, we can go ahead and select the zoom tool. Press Z for zoom, and if we click, it continues to zoom in on the image. Now, one of the things you will notice as you use the hand tool is that, you could still drag around, but if we grab and drag, the pixel is actually freely float like we are tossing the ima