Taking a look at my top five features in the latest

Photoshop update: Photoshop CC 2015.

Everything from artboards to layering style adjustments,

real time content to wear healing and a lot more.

Let's go ahead and take a look.

All right, here we are in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015

with the first feature on my list, artboards.

If you're currently an Illustrator user,

very little explanation should be needed as artboards

have been around forever.

But to Photoshop only users, this may take a little bit

of time to get used to.

What you're looking at now is a Photoshop document

as you've known it.

A single canvas that houses all the elements

of your document which has worked great

but if you needed to work on different variations

of your project, there really wasn't a simple solution.

There were layer comps but it was pretty limited.

Let's look at how artboards can help.

When you're creating a new document

in Photoshop CC 2015, in addition to traditional canvases

you can now choose to create an artboard.

Adobe has include presets for various situations

from mobile design, web design and even specific icon sizes.

Let's choose one of the web presets.

At first glance, other than the label above the artboard,

it may not look much different.

Just like with a standard document, elements can be placed

on the artboard and are confined to its boundaries.

So, what's the big deal?

The difference is that documents are not limited

to a single artboard.

Instead of shuffling between multiple files,

additional artboards can be created

using the new artboard tool.

Clicking on "Add new artboard" on the options bar,

I can either select one of the presets

or enter a custom size.

I'll keep the height the same, but enter a width

of 480 pixels to help me design and plan out

my mobile CSS style sheet.

I can now either copy elements from the larger artboard

or to the new one, or design a few from scratch.

Just like before, they're all contained

within the boundaries of the artboard.

Working with smart objects also has its benefits.

With all of your designs in one document,

you'll now be able to see your changes

without bouncing back and forth between your files.

Simply double click on the smart object you wish

to modify and make the change.

Once you save, all the duplicates will be updated across

all of your artboards no matter how many you have.

Finally, artboards aren't just for new documents.

If you have a project you've been working on

that you think could benefit from artboards,

select the layers you wish to confine, right click

and choose artboards from layers.

Name it, choose a preset if you wish and press okay.

Now, some of the original layers extended outside

of the previous canvas.

The artboard tool can easily resize it to perfection.

Those are arboards.

Again, if you haven't been an Illustrator user,

it may take a little bit of time to get used to,

but if you're a designer who uses Photoshop,

you'll definitely wanna give it a try.

The second highlight on my list are the changes

to layer styles.

When you first open the new layer styles dialogue box,

you may have a moment of confusion.

Plus buttons, arrows, what is going on?

In Photoshop CC 2015, you can now add multiple strokes,

inner shadows, overlays and drop shadows.

This will let you get further creative with your layers

without having to duplicate or place them within a group

just to add more styles.

Finally, the additional styles that you add

can be rearranged using the new arrows

at the bottom of the window.

The changes to layer styles aren't a huge in depth feature

but definitely a welcomed one.

My next two highlights are improvements

to content aware and healing.

First off, content aware move isn't just

for moving any more.

Now in Photoshop CC 2015, when you go

to relocate an object using content aware move,

the heal won't take place right away.

Instead Photoshop will give you the chance

to transform it as well.

This is perfect if you're looking to not only move an object

but also change its size to give it a new perspective.

Next on the healing front, Adobe has made some major

improvements to a few of the healing tools

that you use in your day to day work.

The patch tool and the spot healing brush will now

heal your images almost instantaneously.

The healing brush heals in real time.

Let's take a quick look.

Switching over to Photoshop CC 2014 for a moment,

you'll notice that once I finish brushing

with the spot healing brush, Photoshop starts the thinking

process which can take a few minutes if you're dealing

with very large images.

Now, switching back to CC 2015, brushing on the same area,

no longer makes you wait while Photoshop does its thing.

It just does it.

The healing brush has also received

quite the update as well.

In CC 2014, when you brush over top of an area

you wish to heal, Photoshop doesn't start the blending

process until you finish your brush stroke.

But now in CC 2015, all healing is done in real time.

Notice when I'm brushing, the healing is already

taking place which allows me to see a more accurate

representation of what the final product is

going to look like.

The final feature on my list is one you may have

seen a sneak peak of in light room done by Terry White

and that is dehaze.

As you can imagine, this feature helps you remove

any haze that may be present in your photo.

When I first heard about this feature,

I figured it would just reproduce what a few

of the basic sliders will be able to accomplish.

But, I've actually been quite impressed with the results.

Here's a photo I took while in the Eiffel Tower.

As you can tell, it's quite hazy in the distance.

As it's a raw file, when I drag it into Photoshop,

camera raw fires up.

Now, traditionally, I would start fiddling

with the basic adjustments to try and reduce the haze.

Drop the highlights, the shadows, the whites,

increase the contrast and the clarity

and maybe drop the exposure a touch.

Well, it helped, but barely.

Let's reset these adjustments and see what dehaze can do.

Popping over to the effects tab, you're going to see the new

dehaze slider which is set in the middle at zero.

If you had a need to, you could actually introduce haze

to a photo by dragging it to the left,

but we're not looking to do that.

Pulling the slider to the right will start

to reduce the haze and does a pretty decent job.

Of course, if there's an insane amount of haze,

there's only so much it'll be able to remove.

You may also notice that it's not just reducing

the heavy haze, but it's also equalizing

out the rest of the scene.

With most of the haze dealt with, I can hop back

into the basic adjustments to make some final tweaks.

And, those are my top five features

in Photoshop CC 2015.

I hope you guys enjoyed this video

and if you're a Creative Cloud member,

the update is available to you right now.

If you're looking to learn Photoshop from start to finish,

beginner to advanced, head on over to lynda.com/howard.

I'm hooking you guys up with a 10 day completely free trial.

You can watch thousands of videos from some

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I guarantee you, you will learn a ton.

Not just in Photoshop but pretty much any application

you can think of.

So, thanks for watching, guys.

Head on over to iceflowstudios.com

to check out what else is new in Photoshop CC 2015.

I'll see you guys in my next video, take care.