The 10 best and worst things about Photoshop CC

Photoshop’s one of those essential tools that most photographers can’t live without. It’s been the industry leading application for years, and it may still be for some time to come (maybe), but it’s not perfect.

In this rather extensive video from Nathaniel Dodson at Tutvid, he talks us through his 10 favourite and least favourite things about Photoshop CC.

I can completely agree with the list of “The Good”, and most of those are features I use and love on a daily basis. When Adobe first added Smart Objects to Photoshop, for example, they immediately worked themselves into my workflow, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

The Good

1. Curves (00:59)
2. Smart Objects (02:05)
3. Adjustment Layers (06:11)
4. The Pen Tool (08:39)
5. Save Selections (09:35)
6. Masking (10:59)
7. Quick Mask Mode (14:29)
8. Rotate View Tool (16:36)
9. Overscroll (18:22)
10. Smart Guides & The Pixel Grid (20:22)

And there’s a bonus goody, too.

• Close All (Apply don’t save) (22:48)

That last one is amazing.  I regularly have multiple images open in Photoshop that have changes in them that I don’t want to save, especially if I’m working with composites.  Not having to deal with a popup for each of those images is a nice time saver.

The Bad

1. Default EVERYTHING (24:03)
2. Non-Scaling Layer Styles (26:29)
3. Magnetic Lasso Tool (29:10)
4. Content-Aware Move Tool (30:01)
5. Reshuffling Open Files in Tab Bar (31:27)
6. Browse in Bridge Button (32:44)
7. No Good Way to Measure (33:34)
8. Copy CSS (35:34)
9. New Save for Web Location (36:49)
10. Terrible for UI Designers (38:15)

I can totally get behind #4. 99% of the time, Content-Aware anything has proven itself to be completely useless for me. These days, I mostly forget that they exist at all.

Again, Nathaniel gives us some a couple of bonus extras in his list of “The Bad”.

• Actions Panel is Archaic (40:23)
• New “Start” Menu in Photoshop (41:41)

So, what do you think? Is Nathaniel pretty close to the mark on these? Has he missed any big ones? What are your favourite and worst features of Photoshop? Let us know in the comments.