Category: Adobe

Adobe Creative Suite 4?

Jason6 Comments

There have been a couple of references in the past few weeks to the next iteration of the Creative Suite for Adobe. Now in its third edition, recent web searches have seen a few alleged leaks of a beta called Stonehenge on various torrent sites. Since no public beta has been released by Adobe thus far – the recommendation is to stay clear of these “leaked” versions. With the extensive proliferation of spyware, malicious viruses, rootkits and all other sorts of destructive code commonly referred to as “malware”, this practice does make sense.

However, rest assured, a CS4 is going to happen eventually. Some are obviously in the know already as they work hand-in-hand with Adobe in beta testing software even before it gets to public release beta versions. (Case in point, a coy reference from Dave Cross on a video blog entry a week or two ago.) It’s no secret that the industry leaders like Dave and others are definitely insiders as well, and get to sneak a peak at upcoming software before it ever gets to anyone else. How else could these guys get up to speed on it so quickly? Sure, they’re quite adept at their craft, and are obviously not mental slouches by any means, but knowing everything they know as soon as betas hit the web simply means they are privileged individuals, whether they care to publicize it or not.

There is other evidence though as some of the screenshots posted in various web forums and blogs seem to indicate that the next version of CS4 should be forthcoming (at least in beta) before the end of the year. While the veracity of these resources is unknown to me, there does seem to be some credence to the legitimacy of a beta already in the works, both by the historical time line Adobe takes with new product releases, as well as similarities in the names to boot! (Adobe has a product out that uses a Stonehenge theme already, called Atmosphere and you can download an EPS version of the graphic here: Stonehenge EPS File) While it’s not really all that similar to the graphic found for the “beta screen shot” seen on CybernetNews, the mere fact that the naming scheme is repeating itself suggests that something is definitely in the works.

So, does anyone else have any thoughts on the CS4 time frame, and when it might be released. Thus far, the only news I’ve seen is what you see posted above. Feel free to share your thoughts and predictions in the comments section! Tomorrow is likely a “no blog Thursday” for me as I am having my first even root canal done. Not looking forward to that! Until Friday then, happy shooting, watch those apertures!

Thursday’s Thought – HDR photography

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After Scott Sherman and Michael Stein’s most recent show from DPS, where they bring in Jeff Revell and talk about HDR photography, I am reminded of the attention that HDR got when CS2 first came out. I had tried some HDR back then and it really didn’t come out too well, likely because of the tone mapping that Jeff referred to.

So…now armed with CS3, and the recovery slider, I decided to re-visit some shots that were good candidates for HDR. As it turned out, with the recovery slider and a little bit of attention in Photoshop with normal layering, I turned out a few pretty good ones without having to go the HDR route. Here’s two:

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So… anyone else into HDR photography out there?  Share your thoughts, shots, and links to your own work in the comments.

Adding Blur – and some more Photo Walk News

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Sometimes, no matter how careful you are with your setup, the in-camera limitations simply cannot compensate for a vision you have, whether it be the color range of an image, its tonal range, or even the depth of field you want to achieve. A perfect example of this was posted in our regional clubs photo site www.scphotogs.com last week. I shared a technique for adding blur to an image. While normally you wouldn’t think blur is something you want to add, as intuitively we are trained to think of images as sharp and crisp subject matter that is in focus. blur is something that can really enhance an image. I shared a technique I learned with the photog-friend, and in light of the tip, decided it would make a good tutorial as well. Check out the link for it at the end of this post. Here’s the web-version of the finished product, and a link to Jon’s photo site if you’d like to see more of his work.

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Don’t forget to vote on the poll to the right, asking how many cameras are in your house? We’re still a long way from the 100 mark, so it’ll be staying up for a while…unless we start “rocking the [proverbial] boat”. Another thing I always like to remind people about is that I am offering up some of my own imagery for sale on the artist site, Redbubble. Click the link to visit my profile and see the images I have for sale (at a steal too – just wanted to share a few with the community!) Lest we not forget, B&H is also the place where pretty much everyone gets everything photography-related, so if you visit their site, use one of the banners here. It’s the same price to you on all gear but B&H does help off-set the hosting expenses with each purchase made through these links, so help a fellow photog out! 🙂 Continue reading “Adding Blur – and some more Photo Walk News” →

Monday Morning Travel Recap

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Well, the weekend was a cornucopa of Denver tourism. We left SC at the not-so-bright hour of 5am and arrived in Denver by 10. That gave us time to make the last tour of Invesco Field. As a dyed-in-the-wool Bronco fan since pretty much as long as I can remember, this was the epitome of the entire 7 day trip. Needless to say, my camera pretty much clicked non-stop for the entire visit. I’ll share some shots later this week when I can get some time to work a few up.

Yesterday we visited the Celestial Seasonings tea factory. After Invesco I owed my wife that, but I have to say it turned out to be much more interesting than I would have thought. No cameras allowed in there, and just as well – the powder from the herbs and roots and spices in the air sometimes made my eyes water. If you’re ever near the Boulder area, I would highly recommend a tour – it was free and well worth the time.

Back to the real world of photography Continue reading “Monday Morning Travel Recap” →

BRRRRR!!!!

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Here’s what’s going on as I enjoy MLK day off…first, the Sunday football yielded Super Bowl berths for New England and the Giants. The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field (as Chris Berman says), was quite cold at 0 and the wind chill at -20! Makes the teens of SC seem timid. Nevertheless, it’s cold here in South Carolina too. At times like this, it makes me wonder whether or not Global Warming really is a problem.

The South Carolina Photography Guild had their monthly shoot yesterday at Middleton Plantation, and while it wasn’t in the teens, it was still very chilly, as we bundled up against the wind and elements. I came away from the trip with several decent shots – enough to put into my galleries as a dedicated album! I’ll share a few shots at the end of this post.

Today I am going to purchase Photoshop CS3 Extended edition. I have been toying around with the trial version for long enough, so figured it’s time to bite the bullet. Lightroom may also become a purchase option too, depending on funds. That will likely take place this afternoon. I am also going to try and get the tutorial through production today for publication tomorrow morning, so that may be out early too (doncha love Monday’s off?) 🙂

Scott Kelby’s blog, Photoshop Insider, got a fair amount of traffic last week as he produced a “wish list” of sorts for Lightroom where people could sound of in the comments. This was one of those rare opportunities to let developers know what you think, because my guess is he’s got their ear as one of the leading trainers for the Adobe platforms in the country! I added my two cents for multiple paper profile support (on or around #120 I think). See if you can find me! 🙂

Last but not least, I saw a few posts around the web for the SoPoBoMo – if you ever wanted to put a book of your imagery together, now’s your chance!  Check them out and sign up today (I couldn’t commit to the time frame because of some other pending things during that same period.  Neat stuff though…

Not much else going on for Monday yet (it’s only 9am), so I’ll leave with a few photos from our outing yesterday:

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Weekly Web Gems

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Usually I will put some stuff together while at work for posting when I get home, but today was rather busy, so this is going to be off the cuff. I just sat down and hit my blog list (see the “Top 7 of ’07”) and busted a gut at Scott Kelby’s blog. He posted a clip of Dan Margulis doing his kelby Training tutorial, where Dan really gets his dander up acting out a Shakespearean scene. The final segue into the LAB color space is where I just lost it. This guy is wicked smart and making me realize I still have years to go before I know even half as much as he does in LAB. Anyway, check out Photoshop Insider for a very “heady” intro to the LAB color space – if you’re into color, you’ll get a kick out of this.

The other web gem for today is the iTunes listing. Canon Blogger is now on iTunes! I know I mentioned this yesterday, but a link has been set up in the sidebar with a very “Web 2.0” style graphic that links there. Stop in and download/review some episodes today. (You might be one of the first ever to review Cannon Blogger! 🙂 )

The poll for software preferences was closed yesterday. The winner was LR, followed by CS3, and CS2, taking 35%, 30%, and 17% respectively of the total of 215 votes. Here’s the vote totals:

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Having looked at the software, the new poll now looks at the hardware (or gear) selections. Clearly there are other options out there besides Canon, and we often will choose multiple vendors for our choices. We’ll go with this one for a month too, so make sure you vote on the sidebar.
Last but not least, I need some help! I’ve been perusing some Flash tutorials and unfortunately, Flash animation is just not something I can dedicate the amount of time needed to get a good handle on things and create a dynamite intro for the vidcasts. So…any Flash gurus out there? Throw a link up to your flash movie proposals into the comments section, and the winning flash suggestion…well, wins! (I’ll think of something cool to throw to the winner…)

That’s it for Wednesday – off to watch the Apple Expo! Until tomorrow – happy shooting and watch your apertures!

Web 2.0 Style Graphics

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In keeping with the theme of last weeks tutorial, I’d like to round out the discussion of Web 2.0 styles. Last week we took a look at using Photoshop to create Web 2.0 style text and type, while this week we turn the focus to Web 2.0 style graphics. With the emphasis on Web 2.0 style effects lately, one may ask what this has to do with photography. Well, in creating our photographs, we often like to use the web as a means of displaying them. With the myriad of cookie cutter templates out there, creating a customized and personalized web site is becoming more and more crucial if you want your images to stand out.

If it helps, think of the web as your framing process. Sure, you could hire it out. There are web designers out there that would be fully capable of creating a custom web site for you. But, if you are limited in your budget, and are like many of us, you can create a nicely polished website that will enhance your images nicely. The website in this sense represents the mat and the frame through which your clients and customers view your products.

This is not to say that a photographer should dedicate serious amounts of time to web and graphic design. Au contraire! Rather, take a default template from the likes of the Photoshop and Lightroom options you already have, and customize them with your own graphics. It’s not that difficult and can serve to take you to the next level of quality image presentations. Now, having said all that, it should also be noted that next week, I will be returning to more photography-specific tips and tricks for the weekly tutorials, so we’re not going to be stuck in web graphic design forever.

I also wanted to offer a brief explanation for the late posting of the tutorial… someone had emailed saying that the intro was producing a white line on the left side of the video. As it turns out the intro was recorded at a different resolution so I took some time tonight to correct that. The timings were a little off afterward so I had to adjust for that as well. But, it is now fixed. The reason I am saying this? The animated text has gotten a little boring. I would like to move toward a flash-based intro (the original was recorded in Powerpoint *shudder*). But, I really don’t know much about Flash. I am on day 7 of the trial version and have miles and miles to go before even grasping some of the basics. So…if any Flash gurus out there would like to do a charity case, feel free to email me – you’ll see your name up in lights, (I’ll set up a contributor tag in all future videos) and I’ll be more than happy to provide a link to your website. (Hey, it’s all about helping one another out, right?) 🙂

One final note is that Canon Blogger is now in iTunes! After some initial testing of graphics, audio, and determining what feeds best for iTunes from the blog, there’s a good working feed where you can subscribe to the shows from there. Stop in and check it out. Feel free to share your ideas on the value (or lack thereof) by offering a review. It looks like a few have found it already, but no reviews as of yet. Be the first and review the show on iTunes today! I’ll likely be adding an iTunes feed button to the sidebar tomorrow too, but in the meantime, just search for “Canon”, and I’ll be the second podcast under the “Software: How To” section, right beneath Rick Sammon’s show… it’s getting late, but I’ll try to get a link feed generated for the sidebar tomorrow. In the meantime, you can view the show directly in iTunes from here: iTunes Feed

Okay…enough of me blathering – on to the tutorial!

Web 2.o styled Graphics

Monday Minutia – Top 5 B/W Conversion Techniques

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Given the activity and response I received from the “Top 7 of 2007”, it seems the blogging world really enjoys lists. It makes sense if you think about it too. Lists are nice, simple, bullet points that don’t require more than a few seconds to take in. There’s not a lot of prose or bloated paragraphs of meaningless text to scan through. In fact, creating lists does seem to be a common practice bloggers use to attract attention to their sites.

The internet is inundated with lists, whether they provide value or not and on as many topics as you can shake a stick at. The gamut is pretty well covered from A to Z, including The Best Academic Institutions to The Best Zoos of the U.S. Naturally, photography and it’s many sub-fields also pepper the list. So the question becomes one of “How do you filter out the good lists from the bad lists?” My answer to that is to try and raise the bar in terms of the value behind the lists. To that end, the Monday Minutia proposes 5 of the best ways to convert images from color to black-and-white. So…without further ado, here are my Top Five Black and White Conversion Techniques

  1. In Camera – most cameras these days have a B/W mode in their list of menu options and settings. Selecting this as your starting point gives you a true black and white baseline to start with. This approach will probably strike a chord with the “purists” in the crowd.
  2. Camera Raw Conversion – If you aren’t working in camera raw, here is a big reason to think about it – converting images to black and white in camera raw allows you to make a conversion while retaining access and malleability to all image data. The camera raw dialogs that you should use to make conversions here include the saturation slider, then exposure and shadow sliders, followed by the Brightness slider. Don’t forget to play with the contrast slider a little to enhance the effect as desired. Last but not least, for advanced adjustments, the calibration tab can have effects similar to the Channel Mixer.
  3. Channel Mixer – with your image open in Photoshop (7.0 or higher), you can select a specific color set you want to remove from or add emphasis to in an image. The traditional color sets or red, green and blue are available, as well as a constant (think brightness), and a check box for monochrome.
  4. Hue/Saturation Adjustment – whether as a dedicated layer, or directly to an image, the Hue/Saturation allows you to account for different intensity levels of a wide range of colors, from Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta. You can also adjust the range of color within one of the default ranges for each set by adjusting the left and right limiters of the color wheel at the bottom of the dialog window.
  5. Grayscale Conversions – most black-and-white images aren’t true black and whites, because a little color from a specific range is added back in for emphasis. To make an image truly a b/w, it would only have a range of black and white. This can be done using the grayscale option in Photoshop. Often, this is used as the last step in a digital approach to black and white photography so that saturation and brightness level loss is minimized.

So, that’s it for today – my Top Five B/W Conversion techniques. What techniques do you use? Feel free to use the comments or my email to share your methods. Naturally, being the multimedia-oriented blog, I will have a PDF version of this post available for download later this evening. Until then, happy shooting and watch your apertures! 🙂

As promised, here’s the PDF version…although I noticed some of the characters (dashes and quotes) didn’t convert as nicely as I’d hoped…

Thursday Thoughts – Part 1

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I was catching up on the video recording today and realized that I had downloaded the last two Photoshop User TV shows from the end of December and this week but had not listened to either. So, I remedied the situation and watched both. Man! That last show had just tons of info in it. I couldn’t keep up they went so fast through stuff (especially at the end). Then, I thought – how can ANYONE keep up with that? I bet it’d be neat to have a condensed text version of all those shortcuts! Well, guess what, I am a little tired, but here’s a condensed version (PDF). Thanks and major shout outs to the guys at Photoshop User TV – always ahead of the curve and the rest of us (me anyway) are just watching in amazement at the prodigious amount of material y’all put out. For those of us with less time though, here’s a lite version. if you’re handy with PS – it helps. if you still are learning the ropes, better watch the video over at Photoshop User TV .

Friday’s Follies (but not really…)

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Fun stuff for the first Friday follies from Canon Blogger…but it requires a little prep, so bear with me. (I need to get in a program to help me with my alliterative tendencies, don’t I?)

First off, I had a thread started in an online community that was getting a lot of dialog on the latest Scott Kelby book and what people’s thoughts were on it. Specifically, I was interested in the reaction to the nature and trend of his teachings – in recent publications, I’ve noticed that his tutorials and work flow seem geared to be recipes for how to process certain types of images. Before investing in the book, I thought it might be good to hear from others who are software cautious in their purchases like myself.

It seems my suspicions were well-founded on a number of fronts. First off, the book is very proprietary in it’s dictum. Now granted, the title does clearly indicate for CS3, but given that there are commonalities between CS, CS2, and CS3, one would think that some things are portable from one application to the other. Apparently not, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. How do you get people to buy a book? By making it specific to a particular product. That way, you have something called built-in obsolescence. The knowledge learned will eventually go out of style, as newer applications are built that have new features or different ways of doing things.

What’s so funny about this? Well, the funny part was that I made the mistake of referring to Scott as a “re-known photographer” on my initial post.

That was quite funny because some people took great exception to the two words being used in conjunction with one another. Very odd how people can often take a subject matter, and disregard it completely to argue over the minutiae of semantics. Eventually, I acquiesced and changed the phrase “re-known photographer” to “re-known author”. After appeasing the hypercritical crowd, some very good dialog continued afterward. Jeff Schewe’s name has been added to the mix for discussion on the forum, so if anyone knows how to cross-connect these two, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments too!

As for the rest of my “review” of his book, I will have to defer until reading it myself. Given the initial response though, I think I will wait for it to come to our local library.