Stephen Johnson

Vista, the good and the bad

Whilst I’m enjoying running the Photoshop CS3 Beta on Windows Vista there are a couple of things to watch out for with this new operating system:

1. Although my main screen is calibrated and colour managed my secondary screen is not due to the fact that Vista is not loading ( or allowing other programs to load) the secondary profile for that screen. I have only discovered this since rebooting my machine (the profile worked fine on the second screen after the calibration). This is not a show stopper in itself, just a bit annoying really. Will keep you informed when the fix appears.

2. Microsoft are reporting that using Vista to add metadata to images may make them unreadable in the cameras own software, more here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927527/en-us
I wouldn’t recommend using any operating system utility for such an important task as adding metadata, you should be using at least Bridge to do this so its not really a problem. (It will annoy the general photographic audience though so hopefully Microsoft will sort it out.)

Monitor profiling under Vista

Gretag Mackbeth i1 Match 3.6.1 – Screen calibration works fine under Vista. Drag the program to the screen you wish to profile (if you have more than 1 screen). Vista manages the separate profiles for you.

Eizo Colornavigator, I use this for my main screen (an Eizo CG211). The software will fail to run under Vista straight off. You need to locate the Colornavigator program (usually in: c:program fileseizocolornavigator) right click on it and select properties. Then click on compatability and select Windows XP service pack 2 or Windows 2000 to emulate. The program will then work fine (phew!)

Installing Photoshop on Vista

I have been playing with the retail version of Windows Vista for a few days now and am pleased to report it has all gone quite smoothly, more on this later.
There is one slight annoying glitch – although Photoshop installs fine there is a registration dialog shown on each time the program is run. Even if you fill out the registration details it still appears the next time you start Photoshop.
To solve this problem do this: right click on the Photoshop icon and select “Run as administrator”, then either fill out the details once (or select “never register” if you already have). The registration screen will not be seen again.

Photoshop CS3 beta update

I’m a bit underwhelmed at the moment, can’t see anything “must have” appearing here. The new palettes and layout methods do look promising (though require getting used to).
I’m assuming Adobe have left out a few features they intend putting into the release candidate because as they stand CS3 running native on Intel Macs looks like the only compelling reason to buy.

Quicker start up times on Windows PCs is nice but not exactly compelling. The new Bridge crashes too often for me to use it much.

I would advise clients on Powerpc macs or windows XP that they are not missing much at the moment though you can download and install the beta and run it in parallel with CS2 to see for yourself.

Photoshop CS3 Beta

A little bit exciting this one, for the first time Adobe are releasing a public beta (ie unfinished) version of CS3 Bridge2 and Camera Raw 4 for everyone with an existing Photoshop licence to try.

The link as of 10am wasn’t yet live but this will work sometime today:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs%5Fphotoshop

My guess is that there are lots of people (including potentially me) who are holding off from buying an Intel Mac until Photoshop CS3 is out and Apple would like a smoother buying curve (hinted to Adobe?). For whatever reason it will be interesting to see the Intel benchmarks for new windows/macs….

I will be playing extensively on it to see if any of my client actions need tweaking or if there are better ways to increase production, I will report on this page over the next few weeks.

You may want to try it yourself, read the licence carefully and be aware of what your doing – I wouldn’t do any serious client production on the beta just in case there are a few funnies.

Stephen

High quality noise reduction in HDTV footage

Im looking at developing a workflow for rescuing unique footage filmed in HDTV that has a significant noise problem.

The reason I say unique is because the noise reduction process will be off line and so wont be in plug in form for a long time (and hence not very convinient!).

Im looking for an uncompressed frame sequence export in tiff format (perhaps enough frames to fill a DVD in the first instance).
If anyone has such problematic footage and they fancy having a bit of fun trying the thing out then please get in touch, if it works you can keep the smoothed but still sharp footage, if it doesnt work then at least we tried!

Stephen

Velvia Action

By popular request Im posting a direct link to Michael Soo’s software page.
Michael has done a good job to make a Photoshop action to replicate the look of a Velvia image (a particular kind of saturation).
For photographers used to Velvia the colour of digital capture can seem a little pale (if more accurate!). This action can also be used on film scans to perk them up a little.
For my clients I edit the action a little to set the opacity of the Velvia layer and leave the opacity control open ready to fine tune. For myself I find the blue’s go a little too cyan so I correct this by cycling the blue hue towards magenta a little.

$10 well spent:

www.soocool.com/software/