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Adobe Photoshop CC

 & Michael Muchmore Contributor

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Adobe continues to improve the world's leading photo editing software. The 2018 edition adds a new auto-select tool, raw camera profiles, loads of font and drawing capabilities, and support for the Microsoft Surface Dial.

New Document

When you start a new Photoshop project, you can choose templates and presets as well as simply opening image files or previous projects.

Photoshop Interface and Help

Photoshop comes with a lot of built-in help features that walk you through editing procedures and show you what the program is capable of.

Subject Select in Photoshop

Photoshop can use AI to determine the subject of your photo and automatically select it. The feature works better when the background is uniform.

Photoshop Camera Raw Profiles

Photoshop's new Camera Raw Profiles let you render raw files in a choice of ways: Landscape, Portrait, Adobe Color (the default), and more. You also get Profiles for artistic effects that work on non-raw image files.

Photoshop Surface Dial Support

You can use the Microsoft Surface Dial to adjust Photoshop's Brushes as well as for panning and zooming.

Content-Aware Crop

This Photoshop tool lets you add in convincing textures to basically uncrop a photo; that is, add to the edges rather than trimming them. You might want to do this to change an image's aspect ratio. Note in the image below all the extra clouds generated in the sky on the right to create a more spacious composition.

Face-Aware Liquefy

This tool can identify facial features and lets you adjust them. You can make a nose smaller or bigger, a forehead taller or shorter, and turn a frown into a smile. The amazing thing is that the result still looks like a possible human, unlike when you simply use the standard Liquefy tool.

Face Aware Liquefy Eyes

You can adjust the shape and size of eyes separately.

Select and Mask

This workspace brings together tools relevant to creating detailed selections.

Match Font

Photoshop can identify fonts from an image and proposes the closest matches in your font library or from its Typekit foundry.

Interface

The interface consistently uses flat, 2D icons.

Artboards

Artboards let you work with multiple images in one document.

Edit Toolbar

You can now monkey with the placement of Photoshop's toolbar icons.

Design Space

Here's how Design Space looks. Note it defaults to using Artboards. It's especially useful for Web and mobile designers, who want to see multiple screen sizes.

New Library

Creative Cloud Libraries let you save assets, including brushes and colors.

Export Options

The Export experience lets you output multiple sizes at once and creates slimmer image files at higher quality levels.

Font Search Filter

You can search within classes of fonts, find similar fonts, and designate favorites.

Path Blur

The Blur Gallery in Photoshop CC offers blurring along a path you draw.

TypeKit Fonts

Photoshop CC users can take advantage of hundreds of high-quality fonts from Adobe TypeKit.

Guides

When you move layer contents, Photoshop shows you the offset measurements.

Interface

Photoshop CC's interface is very close to that of its predecessor, Photoshop CS6, with all the expected toolbar buttons and panels.

Shake Reduction

One of the hottest features in Photoshop CC is Shake Reduction. As you can see here, it works quite impressively for some photos, like this handheld 400mm telephoto shot.

Sync Settings

Photoshop CC makes settings and customizations available from any computer where you sign in to the application.

Shake Reduction

One of the hottest features in Photoshop CC is Shake Reduction. As you can see here, it works quite impressively for some photos, like this handheld 400mm telephoto shot.

Video

You can do basic video editing in Photoshop CC, with the ability to apply the same effects to video that you could to photos. Note that it even has multitrack support.

Brushes

Photoshop gives you a wealth of realistic drawing tools, including paintbrushes that splatter and pencils that run out of lead.

3D Shapes

Photoshop CC gives you prefab shapes for building 3D images.

Brushes

Photoshop gives you a wealth of realistic drawing tools, including paintbrushes that splatter and pencils that run out of lead.

3D Shapes

Photoshop CC gives you prefab shapes for building 3D images.

About Our Expert

Michael Muchmore

Michael Muchmore

Contributor

My Experience

I've been testing PC and mobile software for more than 20 years, focusing on photo and video editing, operating systems, and web browsers. Prior to my current role, I covered software and apps for ExtremeTech and headed up PCMag’s enterprise software team. I’ve attended trade shows for Microsoft, Google, and Apple and written about all of them and their products.

I still get a kick out of seeing what's new in video and photo editing software, and how operating systems change over time. I was privileged to byline the cover story of the last print issue of PC Magazine, the Windows 7 review, and I’ve witnessed every Microsoft misstep and win, up to the latest Windows 11.

I’m an avid bird photographer and traveler—I’ve been to 40 countries, many with great birds! Because I’m also a classical music fan and former performer, I’ve reviewed streaming services that emphasize classical music.

Technology I Use

For everyday work, I use a good-old Dell tower with 16GB of RAM, a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 processor, and an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti GPU that runs on Windows 11. I pair it with a 4K Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-10 monitor and a Logitech MX Vertical mouse. For offsite work, I use a 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Camera-wise, I moved to mirrorless from a Canon EOS 80D with a Canon 70-300mm IS USM lens. I now have a Canon EOS R7 with a 100-400mm lens, but I miss my DSLR for several reasons.

In order of usage, the software I turn to most frequently is the Edge web browser, Slack, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365, Firefox, Brave, and WhatsApp. I use the Windows Phone link app to see everything on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, which has excellent telephoto capability.

For fitness monitoring, I have a Fitbit Charge 6 and use an Anker Smart Scale P1. I’m also a streaming fan, so I subscribe to both Amazon Music Unlimited (especially for its Dolby Atmos content) and Qobuz (for its high-res sound quality and classical catalog). I recently added a Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE, which sounds surprisingly good given its low price. To holler commands instead of using a remote control, I have the Amazon Fire TV Cube in the living room, which lets me verbally tell the TV what I want to watch. It hooks up to an LG B4 OLED TV. I have a Sonos One speaker in my kitchen that also ties in with Alexa, as does the Echo Dot 2 With Clock in my bedroom. For serious listening, I have B&W 601 speakers plugged into a Conrad-Johnson Sonographe amp and preamp, with a Cambridge Audio AXN10 streamer as source. For reading, I also have a Nook GlowLight 3.

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