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New features in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015

Posted on by Pia Lopez

Not so long ago, major updates made to software produced by Adobe were mainly one per year (or even per two years) with the upgrades between versions in the old, but still beloved Creative Suite system. Since 2012, Adobe has implemented the subscription system as the main way of acquiring new licenses for most of their software; therefore, the Creative Cloud system (also known as CC) was born.

For most users, it became a hard to tell task, when it came time to guess if Photoshop (or other software available in the suite) was actually doing major upgrades, or if they were simple patches for fixing user reported bugs – but, Adobe decided to take a step further with the upgrade to version CC 2014.

In a Throwback Thursday fashion, Adobe guys decided to stick to what is widely accepted as tradition, which translated into another upgrade, a year later, to version CC 2015.

So then you may ask yourself: Is it worth the update? Certainly yes, although it could be a problem if you happen to work with a PC that doesn’t have enough resources, such as a decent amount of RAM – Adobe CC 2015 versions are now more RAM consuming since they feature a lot of “live tools”.

Let’s analyze some of the new features that Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 has to offer us!

Dehaze

Just as we were discussing at an earlier post, Dehaze adjustment is one of the amazing wonders that came with the new CC 2015 upgrade. Add or remove haze from your images while saving tons of time in editing.

02_dehaze_mini

This new adjustment can be found in Camera RAW properties, under the Effects tab; but remember, if you don’t upgrade Adobe Camera RAW to its new version (9.1 or above) the slider won’t show up.

Layer Blending options

Remember those days when you had to copy your effects layer several times in order to accomplish a desired effect? Well, not anymore.

Adobe guys thought of everything we need, and how to avoid messing things up when doing advanced adjustments. If you take a look at the Layer Blending mode options you will notice that now several options such as Stroke, Inner Shadow, Color Overlay, Gradient Overlay and Drop Shadow now feature the possibility of duplicating the adjustment made, without needing to duplicate the effects layer; and this can be applied as many times as needed.

02_ps_2015_new_mini

Photoshop now becomes a versatile tool for creating advanced adjustments without needing to create thousands of layers in the process.

Adobe Stock

With the partnership made by Adobe with Fotolia, you can get access to Adobe Stock and get your hands on a content library with over 40 million images. Pretty amazing right?

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This kind of feature is included in the Creative Cloud Photography plan by Adobe, meaning that you don’t have to pay an extra fee for accessing this service. For $9.99/month, I can say that is a great deal.

Artboards

If you know your way around Adobe Illustrator, you are going to love this – Photoshop CC 2015 now has a brand new tool named Artboards, which essentially helps users to create Layouts in a quick, effective way.

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Activated via the Move tool, you can design multiple artboards from a template at once. Copying and sharing content between artboards becomes an easy task, where you can export each artboard independently or all of your artboards at once.

Content-aware updates

And if everything else we mentioned wasn’t enough, you are going to be amazed by the next update.

A well-known feature in Photoshop is named Content-Aware, and it is mostly used when erasing elements from pictures, as well as for sampling in some areas for corrections. Well, Photoshop decided to take it a step further with such a fantastic feature by improving its performance, in regards to affecting elements available on scene.

05_ps_2015_new_mini

This fantastic tool is known as “Transform-On-Drop”, and works with the new “Content Aware Move” tool; where the handles will now appear after you select and move an object in the scene. These handles allow you to rotate, scale, flip or skew the item.

Then, once you’ve applied your transformation, Photoshop will update the location of the new object, remove the old object and fill in the result with content-aware blending.

As you can see, there are way too many aspects in which Photoshop has improved and there is still a great deal for us to see. Are you going to miss this chance of updating the performance of your editing software?

How to Dehaze a Photo in Photoshop CC: Photoshop Dehaze Adjustment

Posted on by Pia Lopez

One of the new features behind the upgrade of Photoshop CC to its 2015 version is this brand new “Dehaze” tool, but why is it really important for our postproduction workflow in Photoshop?

Let’s imagine that we have an image like this one

01_dehaze_mini

We can notice the huge amount of fog/haze visible in the scene, but we can’t think of shooting the picture again either because it isn’t convenient or because we did it while travelling. Instead of discarding the picture, we can recover the detail hidden behind the haze by using Photoshop to achieve a result like this one on the picture below.

You may say that Photoshop was able to make such adjustments since long ago, and that is completely true, except for the part that it was time-consuming for each image, which won’t serve efficiency purposes if we have to process a large bulk of images.

The Dehaze tool in Photoshop actually becomes a huge advancement in professional photography workflow, not only for becoming part of Adobe Camera RAW adjustments, but also for allowing users to either add or remove haze in only a few seconds.

How to use Dehaze in Photoshop CC 2015

Select the picture you want to apply the adjustment and duplicate it with the command CTRL+J. A new copy of the background layer will now become the active layer.

Access the Adobe Camera RAW menu by going to Filter>Camera RAW Filter. In there you need to locate the Effects tab for accessing the Dehaze options.

In a very familiar way for Lightroom users, Dehaze works with a slider which, if you happen to move it towards the right side you are going to remove Haze; whereas if you move it to the left you are going to add more Haze to your image.

This adjustment sets a whole new dimension into photography post-work in Photoshop and can be regarded as a fancy tool to use, if you are not yet ready to switch to Lightroom for managing your postproduction work.

Notice how the dehaze effect darkens the image while bringing detail if you move the slider towards the left. That is something you ought to take into consideration if you are working with underexposed images or with scenarios like forests, as the increase made in Contrast will end up making areas look completely dark.

On the other hand, when you increase the amount of haze, despite becoming more blurry, the image will also lose a considerable amount of pigment in the process.

This tool merges under the same several effect parameters that Lightroom handles independently such as Clarity, Contrast, Vibrance and much more. If we want to picture this kind of adjustment in Lightroom, we could label it as an All-In-One preset with the possibility of adjusting its intensity.

Keep in mind that Adobe Camera RAW adjustments are meant for advanced users with plenty experience in postproduction work, so I would advise you to first gain some knowledge on how to make these settings work prior to dealing with them, if you want to accomplish a quality end product.

Good luck and keep editing!

PS: In case you can’t find the Dehaze adjustment at Adobe Camera RAW menu, please make sure you have the latest up-to-date version of it – Current version is 9.2, and the update is packed with Camera RAW 9.1

Here is another cool Photoshop tutorial about glass effect photoshop.

Sleeklens