Stephen Johnson

Photoshop CC 2014.2 update: unwelcomed welcome screen

If you are a Photoshop CC user you may have updated to the latest 2014.2 version released yesterday that has some minor updates added to it.

No major changes noticed so far but here is however an annoyance with the new version – a “welcome” dialogue that appears after a delayed start and stops you from using the program as usual before clicking the thing away.

It is possible to turn this off but Adobe has decided to hide this option and not put it on the opening screen (where it belongs). To turn off the welcome dialogue select the “New Features” tab and click the relevant box – you may need to scroll down to the bottom of the dialogue depending on the content of the page you see.

50 Years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The Natural History Museum will be releasing a book this month looking back at the last 50 years of “Wildlife Photographer of the year”

It is a compelling  book that charts developments and trends in the photography of wildlife over the last half century.

The book is edited by Rosamund Kidman Cox and I was delighted when she asked my to help prepare the image files for publication.

I worked very carefully and slowly on the more problematic historic images to bring out their authentic nature and present a consistent high standard across the sections of the book.

You can read more details of the book here:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/business-centre/publishing/books/art-and-history/wpy-50/index.html

 

Creative Cloud Lightroom Advisory

 

Adobe updated a number of their programs on the Creative Cloud yesterday.

The new Photoshop CC 2014 installs alongside Photoshop CC and offers to transfer settings from Photoshop CC. Only some setting are transferred across (actions for instance)  and others such as interface colour etc are not so be ready to tweak a little. If the worse comes to the worse you still have the older Photoshop CC to go back to so not too bad (and means you can play with the new features without compromising your stable working version).

Adobe have taken the opportunity in Lightroom 5.5 to now allow the updating of lightroom from the Creative Cloud Control Panel. Previously Lightroom could only be updated by using the Lightroom program to check for updates and them manually downloading the new version.

Unfortunately there appears to be problems with the new form of updating via the CC panel and Lightroom may fail to start when updated in this way.

Until Adobe fix this problem I suggest you download and install the new version of Lightroom directly via these links:

Windows: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5792
Mac: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5791

Adobe write some great imaging software but they are really rubbish at building cloud infrastructure. My assertion that Adobe Creative Cloud is not a robust method of delivering critical imaging software still stands.

Stephen

Workshop at the Wildscreen Photography Festival

Very pleased to announce that I have been asked by Rosamund Kidman Cox to run an  imaging workflow workshop at this years Wildscreen Photography Festival on Friday 24th October in London.

I will be condensing all the important ingredients of a good imaging workflow into a 3 hour workshop, details here:

http://www.wildphotos.org.uk/workshops/processing-pictures

I was considering calling it “Zen and the art of image processing” but didn’t want to give the impression that the workshop started off with 10 minutes of silence! The minimalist way of working through images and finding out what is important about your images, reducing effort and making things flow are however important aspects of what I will be covering.

If you have booked a ticket why not send me a quick introductory email letting me know a little bit about you and what you would like to get out of the workshop.

Stephen

New developements

As a retoucher I’m very sensitive to the different needs my clients have when commissioning work, all the way from the strict standards of Wildlife Photographer of the Year to the “anything goes” fantasy composite.

As a result of many years retouching I have developed a very keen sense of when images have been manipulated.

With the advent of Ultra High Definition video it looks like we are in for an interesting time where the tools and techniques of still and moving images start to merge.

I don’t mind the girls spots myself, but the techniques used are scarily good (be sure to play this in HD full screen for the best effect):


4K movie / Beauty retouch from foton inc. on Vimeo.


Age Reduction FX from foton inc. on Vimeo.

Adobe forget to patch a server, your credit card and Adobe login may be in the hands of a criminal

I wont criticize Adobe here, I have done it for too long and need 5 minutes rest.

If you received a security email from Adobe (and can confirm it is from Adobe) or noticed your Adobe CC login doesn’t work and your an existing customer of mine then please feel free to get in touch if you need help sorting things.

Forget Adobe’s version of events you can find the real story here:

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/10/adobe-to-announce-source-code-customer-data-breach/ 

Stephen