With every new release of Adobe Photoshop, there’s a period where people sit on the fence pondering whether or not they should upgrade.

“Is it worth the money?” “Are the new features really that good?” Sound familiar?

The past few releases have brought revolutionary features that have changed the landscape of how people do digital photography and imaging. In CS2, we saw the File Browser become Bridge, the emergence of Vanishing Point, Image Warping, Smart Objects and Lens Correction.

CS3 brought us non-destructive Smart Filters, the Quick Selection tool and Refine Edge, Photomerge with Auto-Align and Auto-Blend Layers, and a non-destructive Brightness/Contrast adjustment, making it possible to take that tool off the “do-not-use” list.

CS4 is a little different. It has its share of features, but its main strength lies in its ability to save you time and increase the productivity of your workflow.

The first thing I noticed about Photoshop CS4 was that the interface has been streamlined so that it takes fewer clicks to get things done, and your cursor doesn’t have to travel as far between points.

In addition, Adobe now has a new open source Configurator utility that makes it easier to customize the panels to suit the individual user.

The next thing I noticed was I wasn’t hearing the CPU fan in my computer kick in as much. That’s because this release actually uses my graphics card to render the images, freeing up my CPU to do the work it was designed to do.

This use of OpenGL and the GPU is probably the biggest improvement to come with the new release.

Previous versions often drove computer upgrades to deal with the load generated by the newer features, but this one uses something that many computers already have.

Another new feature is the Adjustments Panel, where the most commonly used adjustments now live, along with some convenient presets.

In previous versions, when you clicked on the Adjustment Layers icon or navigated to Image > Adjustments, it would bring up a dialog right in front of your image that you had to move out of the way, then while you were making your adjustments, Photoshop would be completely locked up and you couldn’t do anything else with the product until you were done.

The new Adjustments Panel puts them in one place and automatically creates Adjustment Layers with masks, so your edits are non-destructive and you can go back and change them whenever you need to. Best of all, the product remains available while you’re making adjustments, so you can pan, zoom or do anything else you need to.

Some of the adjustments now have on-image controls, such as Curves and Hue/Saturation, so instead of trying to figure out where a particular shade falls on a curve or whether a color is a shade of yellow or green, you can click and drag your cursor over it and watch it change.

Where this new release of Photoshop excels is in saving the user time, and that is a big reason to upgrade. A few seconds here, a few minutes there, fewer clicks to do this or that, quicker rendering of an image after a major adjustment, less burden on the CPU… it’s all about streamlining, and it all adds up.

Whether you’re an amateur trying to get last week’s vacation shots posted to Flickr, or a professional under deadline to deliver a shoot, those extra seconds matter a great deal.

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