Photoshop CS5 Extended is a powerful tool for photography and video. Some of the new features are huge time savers for retouchers. Other features greatly expand the creative capabilities for the working pro. I am thrilled to have another way to create photographic images properly formatted for a video or a DVD menu, and to create 3D graphics with animation to be exported to Final Cut Pro.
The Content -Aware feature allows us to delete an object from a photo and recreate the background in one move. This used to take much longer to re-draw the background manually.
Puppet Warp is a powerful tool and lots of fun to use as you can see in the basketball photo of my son, Justin (below). I can now bend an object with or without distortion, (i.e. I can reposition arms and legs).
Adobe Raw has improved controls to eliminate color and luminance noise in photos shot at high ISOs like indoor basketball and dusk architectural shots.
3D and Animation: I am most excited about creating 3D effects from text or objects. I can then animate the different layers in a PSD and even add camera moves. The files can be exported to Final Cut Pro. The cloud photo (above) is a still image pulled from the animation.
HDR Pro I have not used yet in CS 5 but I will try it soon. My 3 architectural shoots were done with Photomatix Pro for merging the bracketed exposures and tonemapping. I would then bring the flat image into Photoshop for curves adjustments and overall enhancing.
