New Photoshop CC 2014As we all know by now Adobe released their latest update to Photoshop CC.  I attended the very well done keynote that was thankfully streamed online.  That was a very cool touch, kudos Adobe!

I have since downloaded Photoshop from the creative Cloud.  It took me a while, and a phone a friend on Facebook, to realize that it was a whole new App.  Which brings the heartache of having to transfer plugins and all that great stuff.  Thankfully I was able to sync all of my gradients and Actions making at least one step toward transition painless!

I will not go into all of the stuff that was updated, there is just too much.  However, if you want the entire rap sheet of new stuff check out this link.

What I Like:

  1. Camera Raw got an upgrade as well that everyone seems to be overlooking with Photoshop in the limelight.  You can now click a preview button for each panel.  This was in ACR at one point, then removed, and now it is back!  Thank goodness!  The “p” button used to crash my CC when I was working with the Graduated Filter.
  2. On the Graduated Filter.  It seams it has graduated from High School to the big campus with the ability to now mask out certain areas that you do not want to be effected by the adjustment!  AWESOME!
  3. The new Blurs in the Blur Gallery are pretty sweet.  Blurring along a path will help with the Composite work I do, but I don’t see too much of a need for it beyond that.  Cool addition, but I used to do the same with a simple blur and the Warp Tool.
  4. The Focus Area selection is another awesome addition for composite work  I played around with this and was able to pull a figure from a background in much less time than using the Quick Selection Tool.
  5. The new Smart Guides are awesome!  I do a lot of graphic work with my own business among other things and this feature is something I have been waiting for for a long time.
  6. Syncing settings is now a bit easier than it was before.  I can now sync up or sync down, now I know what I am doing from my PC to my laptop and vise versa.
  7. It is now more affordable than ever.  To whoever has their undies in a bunch because it costs $9.99 a month needs to get over themselves.  The most powerful photo editing tools on the planet are almost as cheap as Netflix.  When was the last time you heard someone bitch about “renting” Netflix.  Pardon my language on this topic, I am just very much over hearing about it!

There is no more Oil Painting Filter.  My first thought was… ” There was an oil paint filter”  I never used it in the last one and therefore I can say I am not hurt that it is gone!  If anything, we will see much less fractal style paintings on the web.  This may be a good thing!

 

What do you like, what don’t you like?  Have you found any hidden gems that you can share with us?

 

Blake Rudis
f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
Blake Rudis on EmailBlake Rudis on FacebookBlake Rudis on InstagramBlake Rudis on PinterestBlake Rudis on TwitterBlake Rudis on Youtube