Ethical / Natural grading and retouching services – Photoshop and Lightroom training – Imaging workflow design and advice
Its not usual for Adobe to tell people about new things they are considering for future Photoshop releases so its interesting to see this (and also its pretty amazing):
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/10/video_new_from_adobe_labs_content-aware_fill.html
Its a natural progression for the healing and patch tools and will certainly help reduce retouching costs…
Stephen
As many of you may know, I was not a fan of lightroom 1.0
My main concerns were of complexity and preformance/reliability it just seemed seemed a little too flakey.
I still beleive that for handling the workflow for production retouching Lightroom still lacks the simplicity of Bridge/Photoshop that is central to my workflow recommendations.
However, for keeping track of the “Master Collection” once created I now beleive Lightroom 2.0 has a place.
I am currently looking into how Lightroom may find a place within a small photolibrary/photographer situation and how it would impact the needs of different users.
Lightroom 2 holds promise, Im keeping an open mind.
Stephen
I have been beta testing Photoshop/Bridge CS4 over the last few months and I’m pleased to say there are some real improvements to the stability, speed and usability of the programs.
Most of the improvements benefit high end rather than production retouching (rotating canvas, content aware scale etc), I have used these tools for real retouching jobs and been suitably impressed.
On the downside metadata handling has not been improved (The same “Multiple values” bug when appending keywords and captions as per CS3) and there is still no central configuration system for all the varied settings.
As far as I can see all my client CS3 actions run without modification on CS4 – will check this when I recieve the retail code.
I will contine to support CS3 for the forseable future so dont feel you will be left behind if you don’t upgrade. Workflow and retouching workshops can be held with either CS3 or CS4.
Stephen
This colour settings file will help you manage your colour workflow. It sets Adobe 1998 as your working space and if you ever need to supply a CMYK file for a generic European press using coated paper this will also set your default CMYK to a Fogra standard.
Download the zip file here (save it to your desktop then extract the settings file from the zip)
The colour policies are set to respect the colour tags of files not in Adobe 1998 (thus ensuring they display correctly though don’t forget to convert to Adobe 1998 if your agency requires it).
To load into Photo shop:
Start Photoshop and select EDIT:COLOUR SETTINGS. Click on the load button and navigate and select the downloaded file.
To synchronise colour settings throughout Adobe Creative Suit (If you have it!):
Do the same as for Photoshop above then:
Start Bridge and select EDIT:CREATIVE SUIT COLOUR SETTINGS.
And select European Stock Photography from the list.
Stephen
Yesterday I was finishing off a large poster job in Photoshop, I had just started Photoshop when I was met by an onscreen dialogue I hadn’t seen before.
I didn’t write it down but it was something along the lines of “cannot verify license, Photoshop is quitting” It then quit. I was in a bit of a flap because I needed to get the job finished to a deadline and I know my license for Photoshop is rock solid. Fortunately restarting Photoshop a few times made the warning go away and I was able to complete the retouch.
Perhaps next time it wont let me restart? there is now doubt and uncertainty that my Photoshop will now start up as expected. Its clear from this that the inbuilt digital rights management is a bit flakey. Of course if I had purchased a copy for £5 at a computer fair this wouldn’t have happened, it seems its only legitimate users that suffer from the Adobe DRM. Its not as if its effective anyway (otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to buy copies for £5).
First they milk their market then they provide flakey DRM. The sooner Adobe get some real competition the better for everybody.
OK rant over! I guess this could be useful to clients just in case they get the same problem, looks like a busy machine can stop Photoshop checking its license properly and a few restarts will solve it. You wont hear this message from other Photoshop consultants who are in Adobe’s pockets! Im happy to be independant.
Having already described the hard headed business types at Adobe and their desire to be as popular as the convicted monopolist Microsoft with their lousy pricing policy, it would appear that the good guys at Adobe have come to their rescue and put something in Photoshop CS3 that makes the upgrade worthwhile.
Camera raw 4.1 includes some very useful new tools:
Hue/Saturation/luminance tab which allows these adjustments with full access to the raw data. This results in much smoother tones and colours than if you perform the same operations on the image in Photoshop. For people who like to get their colour ‘just so’ this is a real improvement.
Defringe control (in the lens corrections tab) This is a great way to get rid of the colour fringing caused by affordable lenses (cheap ones). Its a one step control that doesn’t need picture-picture tweaking like the chromatic aberration sliders (though I still recommend their use – especially on wide angle shots that show it the most.)
Clarity control, this improves the contrast in the mid tones and can work very well.
All in all I’m finding the images I’m getting from recent raw conversions to be quite a bit better than the conversions in the past. It means less work in Photoshop and that’s got to be a good thing for your sanity and workflow.
The other lesson is that new technology and software algorithms improve over time and that’s a compelling argument never to delete RAW files, even the marginal ones.
If you upgrade to CS3 you will need to download ACR 4. from here:
Im available for telephone/remote desktop and email support for training in the transition to CS3 for existing clients. New clients can email me in the first instance to arrange a workshop or onsite visit.
Stephen
If you have at least 1GB or ram on your machine you may want to consider enabling the Bigger Tiles plugin.
I have found that by enabling this moving the image around the screen is much smoother and easier on the eyes. To enable the plugin go to where you have installed Photoshop on your system then navigate to:
Plug-InsAdobe Photoshop OnlyExtensionsBigger Tiles
In the Bigger Tiles folder remove the ~ character from Bigger Tiles.8BX and restart Photoshop.
(Just put the ~ back if you want to revert back)
Stephen
The prices Adobe are charging for the new suits to customers outside the USA and Canada is really quite something. Looks like they are confident that they command the market and with CS3 are prepared to milk it.
Some healthy competition for Adobe would be a good thing all round and perhaps with these new higher prices it will encourage someone to have a go.
Adobe takes UK price hikes to new level with CS3
I will be upgrading myself because I have to, others must look at the (small) new features list and decide if they want to. There is a sting with this though as Adobe are tightening up on how old products count in upgrades and you may find yourself missing out on the upgrade price on CS4 or CS5 if they do contain useful additions.
Stephen