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.
News
Update
My feet havent touched the ground recently with quite a few retouching jobs and onsite client visits to do. Things are looking a little less hectic over the next few months so book now if you have a project you would like help with.
This year Im investing in some new equipment for the workshops, I have already purchased a superb Eizo CG211 monitor , the PC systems here will be upgrades to Vista and a new Mac will be ready in time for Photoshop CS3. New profiling equipment and viewing booth will help the profiling along also.
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
Bundle Adobe Photoshop CS2 & Wacom Intuos3 A4 Tablet
I noticed the Apple store is doing a fair deal on Full Photoshop and A4 Wacom tablets here:
If your serious about retouching images to a high level or just want to speed up your dust busting then a Wacom tablet can really help.
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:
Site update
Being on the road for so long has deleayed the site update a little. I hope to update my services page soon with some workshop details, please check back soon.
Stephen