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Nov 9th

Photoshop CS4: an overview

By ezra vancil
Are you a Photoshop CS4 user thinking about upgrading to Dreamweaver CS4 for web design? If so, you will find that the new Photoshop CS4 features for the web will make your web developing task faster and easier. The most important thing to consider is time when you are developing, editing or updating a website. Time is of the essence. Inserting or changing CSS code can take a lot of time; if you have done any web design you know this is especially true if the style sheet is very large.

Photoshop Dreamweaver CS4 has a new and improved interface. Most of the previous features are still there, but they have added a wide selection of predefined workspace options. The new interface gives you more flexibility and control. You can personalize your workspace. 

The new Related Files and Code Navigation feature allows easy access to both the CCS source code and the parent page. This is done by using the Related Files bar. When you click a file in the Related Files bar you will see the CSS code in the Code View and the parent page in the Design View. This feature makes editing or adding code extremely easy. In the Design View you highlight the desired item that you want to edit or change, and Dreamweaver CS4 will search and locate the associated CSS source code and highlight it. You will see the results in the Code View. This is a powerful feature because you can make changes and examine them in the Design View. Manually searching for CSS source code can be timely, but this new feature eliminates that process. 


The Code Hinting feature for Javascript frameworks and AJAX will give code hints to help web developers. This makes the process much quicker, and errors are dramatically decreased.

The new Live View feature is a web developers dream come true. Previously, after editing code developers needed to click a shortcut key to view their changes in a web browser. The design view in Dreamweaver looked different than it would when displayed in a web browser. Developers needed to toggle back and forth while editing code. Now, with Live View web developers can see the changes within the Dreamweaver CS4 application as they will appear in a web browser while they are working. The changes made to any code is simultaneously updated in the design and displayed.

The In Context Editing feature is useful for web developers who would like to allow end users edit ability on particular parts of a web page. It is a web based service that enables the end user to access the service and update or change web page content.

Three of the best new features in Photoshop CS4

Content-Aware Scaling allows you to resize or change the image format from horizontal to vertical without bending pixels and distorting your image. It only scales low detail information, and this is done by removing pixel “seams” of unimportant areas. 

New 3D feature adds three-dimensional capabilities. Users can create 3D objects from scratch, change a 2D image to 3D object, and paint on 3D objects using an advanced 3D work area that has a full set of 3D tools. 

Vibrance Feature is used for adding saturation to weak colors, but it does not over saturate colors that are strong. The new “protect skin tones” feature is fantastic, although the Vibrance is changed there is very little, if any, changes made to skin tones.

The Photoshop CS4 new features and the new Dreamweaver CS4 features gives users a powerful suite of tools that will increase productivity, and save time.