A new month means new Skill Tests here at Elance HQ, and if you’ve been patiently waiting to show off your knowledge on a series of newly available skills, now is your chance. Don’t forget, Skill Tests are always free here at Elance, so if you’ve got a little spare time, give it a shot. Believe me, it can make your profile page really stand out from the rest. And without further ado:

Adobe Photoshop CS4
Corporate Strategy
English Word Usage (U.S. Version)
Grant Writing
Resume Writing
Windows Server 2008
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Adobe Photoshop CS4, one of the new tests added this month, isn’t just any run-of-the-mill year-over-year upgrade. Adobe has made some major changes on the exterior paint job as well as under the hood. Some of the new features include (warning: technical jargon ahead) a new “Adjustments Panel”, a “Masks Panel”, extended depth of field, fluid canvas rotation, significant upgrades in 3D object handling, content-aware scaling (very neat), smoother panning and zooming, and more. One more thing: Photoshop CS4 is the first ever version to fully support 64-bit processors (Windows only — Apple fans will have to wait until CS5).

Content-aware scaling is by far my favorite feature of Photoshop CS4. For the uninitiated, it works like this. If you normally scale an image horizontally or vertically, you've come to expect that there will be some form of distortion involved. Content-aware scaling uses some sort of space-age complex algorithm to reshape an image by detecting and deleting the unimportant sections of an image, allowing for distortion-free scaling. Okay, it doesn't sound that neat on paper, but just watch this example video — truly amazing stuff.

You can find this new batch of Skill Tests along with every other test available at our All Skill Tests landing page. It’s always online, always up-to-date, and always totally free. Happy testing!