Welcome back to the ‘lounge, dekeItarians. Hope you’re feeling relaxed and happy. To help you with that, we’ve brought back some familiar voices this week, those of Adobe’s Bryan O’Neil Hughes and John Nack. The last time we had the guys over, we discussed some of the flashy new features in Photoshop CS5 (like Puppet Warp and the infamous Content-Aware Phil). But deciding to upgrade isn’t just about wanting the state-of-the-art features. Sometimes, it’s those improvements to everyday tools that make your day-to-day work go more smoothly. Oh sure, it’s fun to play digital Stretch Armstrong with pictures of your friends with the Puppet Warp. But it’s also a downright relief to finally be able to simply drag-and-drop an image into a Photoshop composition.

Here are some of those little polishes to the efficiency or usability of an often-used tool that make you wonder how you ever worked happily before this particular upgrade came along.

Some of the less flashy, but just as groovy, changes to CS5 include:

• Refine Edge: New algorithms and controls allow you to really get hard-to-create masks done with ease. But don’t worry, there are still enough intricacies to keep Deke in business. (Here is Deke’s Top 5 demo on Refine Edge if you missed it.)
• Drag-and-Drop file placement: Whether you’re using the new Mini-Bridge (a panel that basically duplicates your Bridge-view of a given folder) or just dragging from the desktop, the point is, you can.
• Bristle Brushes: Armed with a Wacom tablet, you are about to have a virtual reality like painting experience in Photoshop.
• Sharpen tool: Wait, what did you say? Isn’t that one of those features that Deke told us never to use? (That was tip number 78 in the infamous 101 tips! Are we going to have to rename that video?) And yet, at the very last minute before release, Team Photoshop actually managed to redeem this tool, thus putting it in the running with HDR for “features that used to suck but now don’t.”

Want to explore the deeper improvements to Photoshop CS5? Why wouldn’t you? Here’s the regular-quality (128kbps) audio file. You can stream, or for best results, right-click and choose Download or Save. For you audiophiles out there, here’s the link to the high-quality (320kbps) version. Be sure to download, don’t stream. And don’t forget the usual suggestion to subscribe via iTunes.

Thanks to John and Bryan, I mean Bryan and John, for stopping by for another lively visit. And a special toast this week to the cranberry-juice swilling Bryan, who right after this visit finished his first marathon. With a smile on his face that doesn’t appear to be Photoshopped in any way. Well done, Bryan!