Great stuff from Julieanne Kost, showing off path creation improvements, isolation mode, drag-selecting paths, path operation shortcuts, and more.
If you skipped CS6 (in which case, boy, you missed a ton of enhancements for designers), you might want to take a look at the re-engineered shape tools in “What’s New in Adobe Photoshop CS6” (vector layers begin at @ 44:45). And, you can learn about rounded rectangles and Live Shape Properties in this video: “Adobe Photoshop: Favorite Features for Photographers.”
Oh, and keep your eyes open later this week for more vector goodness from Adobe. I think you’ll be happy.
While the added functionality looks useful, generally – I can’t help but finding implementations clumsy and needlessly complex.Most of this could be dealt with without introducing additional GUI – CAD software show how do this, e.g. by injecting some cleverness to dragging a selection rectangle. With “windows/crossing” selection one can easily target specific items from tons of overlapping shapes, no mode change by pulldown menu required. Also the requirement of a Num-Pad for boolean operation hotkey assignment seems hillarious – a simple “cycle”,functionality which gives access to all states and was bound to just a single key would do.
No need to be disappointed on my side though, I’m on CS6 anyway.