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Today, Adobe officially announced Creative Suite 4, better known as CS4. Part of that is the almighty Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended, both complete with a laundry list of new features and updates.

CS4 has been highly anticipated by many, myself included. I’ve been waiting for the next update to finally lay down the cash and own a piece of the monster that is Photoshop. Let’s see if my wait was worth it.

The upgrade brings with it features such as:

• Content-Aware Scaling - Size and rescale images intelligently with the drag of a mouse.
• Auto-align and Auto-blend - Make composites of images, including 360 degree panoramas with seamless color.
• Adobe Bridge CS4 - Finding, managing and previewing images has never been easier or more powerful. It starts up faster, transfers faster, has new Camera Import controls, better navigation, and a new Carousel View.
• GPU - Accelerate your performance with the help of the GPU in your machine. Probably one of the most anticipated features of Photoshop CS4.
• Other Features - This version is also said to have multitouch gesture support for those of you who have MacBook Airs or Pros (or, who knows—by October, maybe even a Macbook Touch or a Brick).
• Photoshop CS4 Extended - All of the features of the standard Photoshop CS4, plus the ability to manipulate in 3D. You can take models and surfaces, merge them with 2D files, and animate them in full 3D. The 3D engine has been rebuilt with performance in mind. Now, you can define a video zone within a 3D scene to play content.  Users can also paint directly onto 3D models.

It seems that my waiting has not been in vain.  CS4 really looks like it’s going to be amazing.

The Photoshop product family has experienced an unprecedented year, in which new products have been introduced and every existing product has been updated.

Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended will be available individually (for $699 and $999 respectively), or as part of a collection in the many flavors of CS4 (prices vary), and will ship in October. It pays to be a student, so check with your school’s software program; huge discounts can be had.

Product [Photoshop]