CS5 v. CS5 Extended

[Ed Richards]

Anything in CS5 extended that would benefit a still photographer?

[Donald Miller]

If you're not into 3D or motion based content there probably is little benefit to buying the extended version.

[jeffm2009]

I second that, it's not really worth it for photographers. I am pretty excited about CS5, there are some really cool new features that I've seen demonstrated.

[Jack Dahlgren]

I've been using CS5 and like it, but even after all these versions, it could be a bit more user friendly. The content aware fill works better in the demo than in real life, but is useful for small fixes in inconspicuous places. I played around with the HDR feature and nearly made myself vomit :-)

But there are a few subtle fixes that make it work better and the noise reduction is a lot better - for those who shoot smaller film or digital.

[Steve Sample]

I have been using Photoshop 7.0 since day one and just purchased CS5. I am overwhelmed with all the Photoshop information out there. Can anyone recommend a comprehensive on-line or cd training course to bring me up to to date with all that I have missed. I am particularly interested in learning a good digital work flow from scan (or digital image) to final print. Thanks, Steve

[Brian Ellis]

I've been using CS5 and like it, but even after all these versions, it could be a bit more user friendly. The content aware fill works better in the demo than in real life, but is useful for small fixes in inconspicuous places. I played around with the HDR feature and nearly made myself vomit :-)

But there are a few subtle fixes that make it work better and the noise reduction is a lot better - for those who shoot smaller film or digital.

I've made every upgrade since PS5 but I may sit this one out. FWIW a friend who's very knowledgeable about PS says the same thing you do - content aware not as useful as the demo suggested it would be and HDR still not very good. I thought CS4 was a major improvement in several areas for still photographers, contrary to what some reviewers said, but so far CS5 isn't doing much for me.

[D. Bryant]

Anything in CS5 extended that would benefit a still photographer?

Yes if you are interested in HDRI or focus stacking.

Don Bryant

[Jim Noel]

I have been using Photoshop 7.0 since day one and just purchased CS5. I am overwhelmed with all the Photoshop information out there. Can anyone recommend a comprehensive on-line or cd training course to bring me up to to date with all that I have missed. I am particularly interested in learning a good digital work flow from scan (or digital image) to final print. Thanks, Steve
Lynda.com is excellent.

[Brian Ellis]

Yes if you are interested in HDRI or focus stacking.

Don Bryant

Don - Could you explain the benefits of CS5 vs CS4 for focus stacking (I'm assuming that by "focus stacking" you mean what some people call "extended depth of field," i.e. making several exposures by focusing at different points from near to far in the scene and then merging them). I've been doing that quite a lot in CS4 and it seems to work very well and very easily with auto align layers and auto blend layers.

[Kirk Gittings]

Yes if you are interested in HDRI or focus stacking.

Don Bryant

I have CS4 on different systems, one Mac CS4 Extended, the other PC CS4 regular. CS4 regular on my PC does HDR and focus stacking. What am I missing?

[D. Bryant]

I have CS4 on different systems, one Mac CS4 Extended, the other PC CS4 regular. CS4 regular on my PC does HDR and focus stacking. What am I missing?

I have CS4 Extended and the extended version has more features related to HDRI. Unfortunately focus stacking doesn't work in CS4. And as far as I know HDRI in regular CS4 has limited controls.

And Kirk you are right about focus stacking being available for CS4 .

Don Bryant

[D. Bryant]

I have CS4 Extended and the extended version has more features related to HDRI. Unfortunately focus stacking doesn't work in CS4. And as far as I know HDRI in regular CS4 has limited controls.

And Kirk you are right about focus stacking being available for CS4 .

Don Bryant

You might want to read this thread. Perhaps you (Kirk) can clarify the issue. Just another example about how screwed up CS4 is.

Don Bryant

[sanking]

Is there any reason why the regular version of CS5 would be more desirable than CS5 Extended? I ask the question because I can purchase CS5 Extended for academicians and teachers for slightly less than $200, but the regular version is not offered at all.

Sandy King

[Bob McCarthy]

No disadvantages, just some features you'll unlikely use.

bob

[Brian Ellis]

You might want to read this thread. Perhaps you (Kirk) can clarify the issue. Just another example about how screwed up CS4 is.

Don Bryant

What thread? What issue?

I'm not following your messages about focus stacking. You seem to say both that it works in CS4 and that it doesn't. The first step to clarify things is probably to explain just what you mean by "focus stacking." If it means what I'm guessing it means (see my previous message) it does work in CS4. I use it all the time. So if you're saying it doesn't work then either you're wrong or my understanding of what you mean by "focus stacking" is wrong.

[Kirk Gittings]

Yes I'm not clear either. I have used focus stacking in CS4 a few times and it seemed to work fine. HDR in CS4 pretty well sucks though.

[Brian Ellis]

Yes I'm not clear either. I have used focus stacking in CS4 a few times and it seemed to work fine. HDR in CS4 pretty well sucks though.

If "focus stacking" means making multiple exposures of the same scene but focusing at different points in each exposure and then blending them to create a single image that's in focus from near to far or bottom to top, then I agree, it does work in CS4. I've been using it more and more lately. It still would be nice if Don would explain how CS5 focus stacking improves on CS4. If there's some major improvement it might tempt me to upgrade because right now I don't plan to.

I've never tried HDR in CS4, I use Photomatix Pro. But everyone I know agrees with you. A friend of mine who's upgraded to CS5 first said he thought HDR had been greatly improved but then as he used it more he decided it hadn't been, that it still sucked. Who knows.

[D. Bryant]

It still would be nice if Don would explain how CS5 focus stacking improves on CS4. If there's some major improvement it might tempt me to upgrade because right now I don't plan to.


The short answer is Brian is that combined stack had "smears" in the frame usually near the edges. This is a widely known flaw and is why products such as Helicon Focus continue to be highly regarded for this kind of operation.

As for HDRI the extended version of PS CS4 allows an extended set of operations for 32 bit imaging that CS4 standard didn't provide for. The Tone Mapping options for HDRI in PS are not comparable to what is available in Photomatix, FDRTools Pro, HDR Soft and other software packages but I don't think it's intended to. I would recommend reading the book, "The HDRI Handbook" by Christian Bloch, for some examples about how to utilize the CS4 Extended HDRI feature set to it's best use without the extreme look of heavy tone mapping. One can of course do that with other plugins and stand alones but why bother if the functionality is already offered in PS.

But to reiterate one more time, PS CS4 has to be one of the buggiest and suckiest versions of PS. What bothers me most though is that Adobe never offered a release that fixed the most aggregious flaws of features that just didn't work. They spent so much development capital fixing hardware compatibility issues for Open GL failures that the seemed to forget the other problems not the least of which is the piss poor NR in ACR prior to version 6.x.

Need I go on?

Don

[Brian Ellis]

The short answer is Brian is that combined stack had "smears" in the frame usually near the edges. This is a widely known flaw and is why products such as Helicon Focus continue to be highly regarded for this kind of operation.

As for HDRI the extended version of PS CS4 allows an extended set of operations for 32 bit imaging that CS4 standard didn't provide for. The Tone Mapping options for HDRI in PS are not comparable to what is available in Photomatix, FDRTools Pro, HDR Soft and other software packages but I don't think it's intended to. I would recommend reading the book, "The HDRI Handbook" by Christian Bloch, for some examples about how to utilize the CS4 Extended HDRI feature set to it's best use without the extreme look of heavy tone mapping. One can of course do that with other plugins and stand alones but why bother if the functionality is already offered in PS.

But to reiterate one more time, PS CS4 has to be one of the buggiest and suckiest versions of PS. What bothers me most though is that Adobe never offered a release that fixed the most aggregious flaws of features that just didn't work. They spent so much development capital fixing hardware compatibility issues for Open GL failures that the seemed to forget the other problems not the least of which is the piss poor NR in ACR prior to version 6.x.

Need I go on?

Don

Thanks, so you're saying this flaw has been eliminated or minimized in CS5? I'll have to go back and look at some of my focus stacked images. I didn't notice any smearing but they weren't prints I was going to show or even print larger than about 6x9 so maybe I missed something.

[D. Bryant]

Thanks, so you're saying this flaw has been eliminated or minimized in CS5? I'll have to go back and look at some of my focus stacked images. I didn't notice any smearing but they weren't prints I was going to show or even print larger than about 6x9 so maybe I missed something.

I don't know Brian if this has been addressed in CS5. I hope so.

Initially I thought the smearing problem was something I was causing until a fellow local photographer reported the same issues to me with his focus stacks and later reading messages on the internet.

I was really hoping to utilize CS4 to do some deep focus landscape work with DSLRs. I don't like licensing method used by the makers of Helicon Focus which requires it to be renewed annually. Of course there is also Z-Combine and Photoacute which I'm going to review if CS5 can't cut the mustard..

But CS4 was definitely the first version of PS to offer focus stacking as a feature of Auto-Blend.

Read what Martin Evening wrote at the time of CS4s release:

Depth of field blending
Photoshop CS3 users will have appreciated the advances made to the Photomerge blending. These allowed you to obtain perfect results when stitching panoramic images together. Well, Depth of field blending has taken this concept further. Basically, if you take a series of photographs where the point of focus is different in each shot, you can use a combination of the Auto-Align command followed by an Auto-Blend command, where the ‘Stack Images’ blend mode is used (rather than a Panorama blend). Photoshop then cleverly analyzes each image in the assembled layer stack to detect which portions are the sharpest on each layer and auto-masks them to create an extended depth of field blended image.

So I'll wait and see what CS5 does. It's got some potential, lets hope for the best.

Don

[John NYC]

I've been using CS5 and like it, but even after all these versions, it could be a bit more user friendly. The content aware fill works better in the demo than in real life, but is useful for small fixes in inconspicuous places. I played around with the HDR feature and nearly made myself vomit :-)

But there are a few subtle fixes that make it work better and the noise reduction is a lot better - for those who shoot smaller film or digital.

I've played with content aware fill quite a bit now. I removed some shadows from poles from behind a chain link fence in a way that was astonishing. I also completely removed a building from a landscape with one click and there was basically no way to tell it was ever there. It seems to work well when there are regular patterns on either side. In complex, surroundings, it does some very odd, but sometimes beautifully odd things. I'm betting we are going to start seeing some artists (good and bad ones) start using this feature in that way. It will be like HDR in its use and abuse.

[Greg Blank]

If a picture is worth a thousand words does selective use of those words or changing the arrangemnt equal double speak? Maybe Yes, You know that Orwellian term used to describe the abuse the government was capable of doing- in a book somewhere in time. It really is a question of one's honesty and what the end result intention is and how its applied to "art" or reality. If these things exist now, they existed ten years ago, fairly certain virtual reality exists in labs in ways that would blow your fricking cranium apart or at least your socks off.



I've played with content aware fill quite a bit now. I removed some shadows from poles from behind a chain link fence in a way that was astonishing. I also completely removed a building from a landscape with one click and there was basically no way to tell it was ever there. It seems to work well when there are regular patterns on either side. In complex, surroundings, it does some very odd, but sometimes beautifully odd things. I'm betting we are going to start seeing some artists (good and bad ones) start using this feature in that way. It will be like HDR in its use and abuse.

[Mike Anderson]

I've played with content aware fill quite a bit now. I removed some shadows from poles from behind a chain link fence in a way that was astonishing. I also completely removed a building from a landscape with one click and there was basically no way to tell it was ever there. It seems to work well when there are regular patterns on either side. In complex, surroundings, it does some very odd, but sometimes beautifully odd things. I'm betting we are going to start seeing some artists (good and bad ones) start using this feature in that way. It will be like HDR in its use and abuse.

I bet that content aware fill will come in real handy removing those pesky copyright/watermarks from other peoples images.:)

...Mike

[Greg Miller]

I don't know Brian if this has been addressed in CS5. I hope so.

Initially I thought the smearing problem was something I was causing until a fellow local photographer reported the same issues to me with his focus stacks and later reading messages on the internet.

I was really hoping to utilize CS4 to do some deep focus landscape work with DSLRs. I don't like licensing method used by the makers of Helicon Focus which requires it to be renewed annually. Of course there is also Z-Combine and Photoacute which I'm going to review if CS5 can't cut the mustard..

But CS4 was definitely the first version of PS to offer focus stacking as a feature of Auto-Blend.

Read what Martin Evening wrote at the time of CS4s release:

Depth of field blending
Photoshop CS3 users will have appreciated the advances made to the Photomerge blending. These allowed you to obtain perfect results when stitching panoramic images together. Well, Depth of field blending has taken this concept further. Basically, if you take a series of photographs where the point of focus is different in each shot, you can use a combination of the Auto-Align command followed by an Auto-Blend command, where the ‘Stack Images’ blend mode is used (rather than a Panorama blend). Photoshop then cleverly analyzes each image in the assembled layer stack to detect which portions are the sharpest on each layer and auto-masks them to create an extended depth of field blended image.

So I'll wait and see what CS5 does. It's got some potential, lets hope for the best.

Don

If smearing occurs around the edges in "focus stacking", then it should be easy enough in most images to find the layer with sharp corners and modify the layer masks to make the corners sharp. I wouldn't think that this would nullify the benefits of "focus stacking" if that is the only issue.

PhotoMerge isn't perfect either, and adjusting of layer masks is sometimes needed. But it is still a highly effective tool.

HDR is abysmal in all PhotoShop versions that I have seen. But I also think there are better ways to skin that cat than HDR because all HDR tools totally obliterate normal tonal transitions in their attempt to squeeze the extended dynamic range into a smaller range. The human eye sees local contrast as much more important than global contrast. So HDR would be a last ditch choice in my book when trying to deal with a large dynamic range scene.

None of this addresses the OP's original question. But the OP wasn't really clear he he is comparing CS5 Extended to CS5 "regular; or CS5 Extended with some older version of PS.

[Steve Sample]

Lynda.com is excellent.

Thanks, I even received a free one month trial to Lynda.com from Adobe with my purchase of CS5. Steve

[D. Bryant]

If smearing occurs around the edges in "focus stacking", then it should be easy enough in most images to find the layer with sharp corners and modify the layer masks to make the corners sharp. I wouldn't think that this would nullify the benefits of "focus stacking" if that is the only issue.

PhotoMerge isn't perfect either, and adjusting of layer masks is sometimes needed. But it is still a highly effective tool.

HDR is abysmal in all PhotoShop versions that I have seen. But I also think there are better ways to skin that cat than HDR because all HDR tools totally obliterate normal tonal transitions in their attempt to squeeze the extended dynamic range into a smaller range. The human eye sees local contrast as much more important than global contrast. So HDR would be a last ditch choice in my book when trying to deal with a large dynamic range scene.

None of this addresses the OP's original question. But the OP wasn't really clear he he is comparing CS5 Extended to CS5 "regular; or CS5 Extended with some older version of PS.
Greg,

The smearing issue is more complicated than you relate. Check out some of the macro photo forums for discussions related to this problem. The feature as described and advertised by Adobe doesn't work.

HDRI tools in PS can work quite effectively, again take a look at Christian Bloch's book, he has spent years doing R&D for HDRI, he isn't some Pop Photography or View Camera magazine writer authoring anecdotal articles about software packages related to HDRI. His graduate thesis is available online if you would like to download it.

Don

[Greg Miller]

Greg,

The smearing issue is more complicated than you relate. Check out some of the macro photo forums for discussions related to this problem. The feature as described and advertised by Adobe doesn't work.

HDRI tools in PS can work quite effectively, again take a look at Christian Bloch's book, he has spent years doing R&D for HDRI, he isn't some Pop Photography or View Camera magazine writer authoring anecdotal articles about software packages related to HDRI. His graduate thesis is available online if you would like to download it.

Don

re: the smearing issue, I made an assumption that since it happens around the edges, then one of the layers probably has focus in that area. If true, then it is pretty pedestrian to mask out the other layers and eliminate the smearing.

Re: PS's HDR capabilites, the cost differential between the Extended version and regular version far exceeds a copy of Photomatix. Since Extended version doesn't offer much for photographers, if I wanted to do HDR, I would invest in Photomatix before I invested in PS Extended. But with a little understanding of human vision, it isn't too hard to combine images in a far simpler way, that maintains tonal gradations as originally captured, and looks very natural to the eye.

[John NYC]

I bet that content aware fill will come in real handy removing those pesky copyright/watermarks from other peoples images.:)

...Mike

I really doubt that content-aware fill is going to have any real impact on property theft.

That said, there are plenty of algorithms out there that can detect which images are copies of another. A watermark is a very flimsy way to try to protect one's work.