Adobe Photoshop CS4
On the eve of its 20th anniversary, the world's most powerful digital imaging program gets a radical new interface that's easier and faster to use. Adjustment tools that were menu-bound in previous versions are now centralized on an Adjustments panel. With these tools-Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, and others-you now actually create or change non-destructive adjustment layers that never affect original pixels. Shown in the Layers panel, they can be stacked, turned on and off, or modified using layer masks. Designers borrowed that idea from the workflow-oriented Lightroom, as they did with CS4's on-image "click-and-drag" color and tone control and its brush-based local correction of RAW files. There is also a Vibrance adjustment that intensifies hues without distortion. The Dodge and Burn tools are smarter too, altering brightness without affecting color. CS4's auto-blending even lets you increase apparent depth of field by combining pictures taken with different focus settings, while Content-Based Scaling lets you alter a photo's aspect ratio while preserving the dimensions of important elements-including human figures! About $700.
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