The 35th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released (duration 38:09 min.)
This episode of EXIF and Beyond features an interview with Tom Hogarty product manager for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, the Adobe Raw Converter plugin and the DNG file format. Discussed is Lightroom 3 vs. Lightroom 2 improvements, new features in the recently released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.2 and Adobe Raw Converter 6.2 and great conversation surrounding performance, scalability and hints of future Lightroom functionality.
Tom provides an insiders perspective on video support, the return of Sticky Filters, custom lens profiles above and beyond Lightroom 3.2’s 120 new lens profiles that automatically correct for undesirable distortion and aberration effects, how and why Lightroom 3.2 and Adobe Raw Converter are tied at the hip in their releases, the benefits of new publishing capabilities to SmugMug and Facebook, and an overview to many of the major bug releases included in Lightroom 3.2.
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Adobe today is releasing the full creative suite of CS5 products including Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended ($699 and $999 respectively with CSx upgrades costing $199). The newest features added to PS CS5 include:
64-bit native code for Mac and PC (Mac had been 32-bit previously)
Content-Aware Fill … “magically removes any image detail or object, examines the surroundings and seamlessly fills in the space left behind”
HDR… “next-generation high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities”
Mixer Brush… “blends an infinite combination of colors onto a single paintbrush tip”
Bristle Tips… “offers lifelike brush strokes”
“Puppet Warp gives users the power to precisely reposition or warp any image element, such as straightening a bent arm in a photo or manipulating the landscape to generate a new perspective.”
Photoshop CS5 Extended includes…
“Adobe Repoussé technology, users can easily create 3D logos and artwork from any text layer, shape or mask, as well as twist, rotate and extrude designs for different looks.”
SAN JOSE, Calif., — April 12, 2010 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended software, must-have releases of the professional industry standard for digital imaging. With millions of users celebrating the product’s 20th anniversary this year, Photoshop CS5 builds upon a rich history of innovation and leadership with groundbreaking features and performance gains that boost creativity and workflow efficiency. Packing in more technological advancements from Adobe Labs than any other release and incorporating enhancements to everyday tasks requested by the Photoshop community, the software has greater intelligence and awareness of the content within images, allowing for complex and magical manipulation in just a few clicks. Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended delivers everything in Photoshop CS5, as well as advanced tools for 3-D which address the unique needs of the video, Web, medical, manufacturing and engineering industries.
Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended will be available as stand-alone applications or key components of the Adobe Creative Suite® 5 family. (see press release)
The 34th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released (duration 16:54 min.)
This episode of EXIF and Beyond features interviews of Russell Brown, John Knoll and Kevin Connor (Adobe Senior Director of Product Management) from the Adobe Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration held in San Francisco on February 18th, 2010. Discussed are topics ranging from recollections of Photoshops earliest beginnings, the impact of its release to creative professionals and hints of what’s to come in Photoshop CS5.
I consider myself lucky to have been include in a select group of folks randomly selected at the Adobe Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration to receive a copy of Photoshop 1.0.7 for the iPhone. Thanks to Adobe’s Russell Brown for the creation of this retro application for the iPhone (or at least announcing the news of it… seeing as it was actually made by development firm named Corona). So what’s the fuss about this app?
First let me burst most people’s bubble…
This app is not a full version of Adobe Photoshop 1.0.7 and only provides basic levels adjustments. (No cropping, no image rotation, no resizing, no curves, etc.)
Touch screen controls on the iPhone are quite clumsy to use
It’s not being distributed beyond the select pool of people who were given the opportunity to receive it at the 20th anniversary celebration
The app is not being further supported
The app is tied to specific iPhones ID’s.
Now that I’ve laid the ground work as to why you shouldn’t be upset Photoshop 1.0.7 is not widely available let me tell you why it’s cool.
For those who used the first or early versions of Photoshop the user interface is a real flashback
The startup sound is another great flashback and reminds Apple/Adobe fan of Pavlov’s theory of conditioning.
Adjusting levels by color channel (red, green and blue), in addition to a master adjustment is nice be able to do.
Really? That’s it?
Yup that’s it. This app highlights one function of the original Photoshop app. Nothing more and nothing less. Other photo apps that are currently available do tons more. This app hardly will become a part of my standard iPhone photo editing workflow. But if you’re a tech geek… meaning you grew up using Photoshop & old macs and still hoard old equipement and software (please don’t tell my wife) then you’d love this app. How long I’ll be inclined to show my buddies this app at bar-b-q’s and various tech events I don’t know. The shelf life might be quite short, but the inner geek in me loves it.
In February 1990 Adobe released Photoshop 1.0. 20 years later the landscape of photography has forever been changed. “Changed” is too light of a term… Photoshop revolutionized how people manipulate pixels resulting in an edited image file. The cultural impact over the past several years has been quite pronounced as “photoshopped” or “’shopped” is commonly used in every day language. In fact it’s fair to say that most people now are on some level subconsciously aware of Photoshop even if they have never used it as they determine if what they’re viewing is authentic.
Going back in the way way back time machine I was in college when Photoshop came out. It was the coolest thing I ever saw. I used to go to computer software stores (they actually had such stores back then) and I’d pine over the application. Of course this was also in the day when to have color on my Apple Macintosh II (the first color Mac) I had to upgrade from 1MB of RAM to 2MB. That extra 1MB of RAM cost me $500. Once I made that upgrade and got a hold of Adobe Photoshop my life forever changed. I could never foresee that digital photo editing could be done as easily as it is today. What amazing features were in Adobe Photoshop 1.0? See the demo below that was shown at last nights NAPP Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration:
Having used every version of Adobe Photoshop since its launch in 1990 I’ve been aware of every feature change. Even still over time its been easy to forget how it all pieced together. At the NAPP Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration last night Scott Kelby MC’d a series of demonstrations by Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski, Julieanne Kost, Rafael “RC” Concepcion and Terry White highlighting the major enhancements of each version of Photoshop. It was a great reminder of how the application has evolved over time.
Still even with all the enhancements since the release of Photoshop 1.0 the core of Photoshop functionality is the same. Scott Kelby in 2-3 minutes summed it up at the opening of the Photoshop Celebration by quickly editing one of his photos… adjusting levels, converting it to B&W, cropping, expanding the canvas to create a border around the image, moving the image within the canvas, and adding text. Everyone of these types of edits can be done today. 20 years ago it was monumental to be able to do these things. The persistence of this functionality speaks to its core usefulness of Photoshop to photographers and designers alike. Everyday we make such edits and never think twice about it.
A quick side note, once I started working with Photoshop in college I knew I wanted to do something with it. I knew I’d be working with Photoshop before I knew I’d be pursuing photography. I never thought about that until now. Shortly after I learned the ropes with Photoshop I was shooting film and scanning photo prints to edit and share. Later I was scanning slides and later still editing digital files straight from my camera. The convergence of digital photography and digital editing solidified Photoshop’s place as the essential tool to have, but it also became an important thread in the fabric of our culture. Is there a day you don’t think about Photoshop these days?
2 Key Highlights
Beyond the walk down memory lane in demonstrating the evolution of Photoshop there were two key highlights to note from the NAPP Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration:
1. Kevin Connor, Senior Director of Product Management for Adobe conducted a live demonstration of “Content Aware Fill” also (called PatchMatch) functionality in the “White Rabbit” version of Photoshop (AKA Photoshop CS5). This functionality was demonstrated in removing a person who was standing against a wall. Rather than the background color showing through it auto filled with the texture of the wall. Another demo was conducted with an imprecise panoramic photo that had been stitched together. Empty areas were automatically filled in between and around the completed stitched photo. To give you an idea of what this functionality is like here is an earlier video of a demonstration:
2. Russell Brown put on one of the most creative and funny demonstrations I’ve ever seen. I really hope Adobe puts a video of it up on YouTube. As part of that demo he showed Adobe Photoshop 1.0 (the original application) running on an iPhone. 40 or so lucky individuals in the audience received commemorative USB thumbdrives that doubled as a ticket to receive a copy of the “Adobe Photoshop 1.0″ iPhone application. The full application, in its classic UI, runs on the iPhone. It was incredibly cool to see in action. Russell was kind enough to give me a thumbdrive and a means to get this application during a pre-event interview. As soon as I have the application on my iPhone I’ll find a way to share a video of it in action. Unfortunately I didn’t get the vibe that this app would be released to the general public through the Apple App Store given the increasing tension between Apple and Adobe (see What Steve Jobs Said During His Wall Street Journal iPad Demo). With a little luck it’ll find its way out for others to use.
I was able to squeeze in a few short interviews at the event so stay tuned for those conversations as part of future episode of EXIF and Beyond.
John Knoll, Russell Brown and Tom Knoll at the 20th Anniversary Celebration of Adobe Photoshop
Almost 5 years ago I wrote an article on the pros and cons of using RAW versus JPEG and why I was shooting in RAW (see RAW vs JPEG: Is Shooting RAW Format For Me?). These days the argument of using RAW versus JPEG is well… not an argument at all. Most photographers realize that shooting in RAW provides a great number of benefits and many if not all the reasons to avoid using RAW have been nullified thanks to a variety of technical innovations including larger capacity compact flash drives & hard drives, maturation of RAW converters, development of photo specific editing/management software and faster more powerful computers. Now the question that faces photographers is should I convert my RAW files to DNG? Read more…
The PhotoNetCast crew had an opportunity to interview Tom Hogarty, the product manager for Adobe Lightroom 2. Questions posed to Tom were a mix from listeners and the hosts of the show (Brian Auer, Antonio Marques and I). As a bonus Adobe has made available a copy of Lightroom 2 to be given away.
Some very exciting services and applications launched today including a new search engine Cuil.com and Adobe Lightroom 2. Having used Adobe Lightroom 2 Beta I’ve been very impressed and opted to buy Lightroom 2 at the first notice of its availability. Unfortunately after purchasing the Lightroom 2 Upgrade per the install PDF I was unable to get the program started. I was not given the option to reference my existing install and my Lightroom 1.0 serial number was not considered valid. Later I received an email that provided the upgrade serial number. Once entered then my old serial number was entered and then the application loaded. If only the install notes set my expectations correctly. Adobe gets the Good and the Bad reference in my post.
The Ugly is reserved for the new search engine Cuil. Cuil was getting tons of press today and was being blindly praised as the new kid on the block to challenge Google. As most found out today who tried Cuil it was far from impressive and probably could be considered to have one of the worst Web 2.0 lauches of all time. Why the hate on Cuil?
As noted in my first observation of the search engine via my post on FriendFeed:
“Not very impressed with Cuil.com and the seemingly random association of photos to results. Very confusingâ€
I wasn’t alone in thinking so. Later as I delved into the search engine even more I became even more troubled. When searching for my name in Cuil I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. There are two other Jim Goldstein’s that come up often when searching my name. Lucky for me! One is Jim Goldstein and his Band of Angels. Doh! The other is an eccentric Jim Goldstein with a house often featured in architecture magazines and in sports magazines due to his fanatical attendance to various pro basketball games. Flip a coin as to which is most inappropriate to my photography oriented web site. Sure enough the architecture/basketball Jim Goldstein has his image associated with my web site in Cuil search results. Even worse someone else’s photo of the Golden Gate Bridge is associated with a commercial site of mine.
My two biggest complaints…
First I don’t want another persons photo associated with my web site. The last thing I need is someone confusing my site with that of some eccentric.
Second I don’t want my commercial efforts being negatively impacted because inferior photography is being displayed and randomly associated with my commercial site.
I wrote Cuil about my concerns and due to the frenetic nature of their launch today they never wrote back. If and when they do I’ll follow up on this post. I later found out through another post that they were blaming much of what was being perceived as inaccurate results on technical problems due to a larger than expected spike in traffic. See Cuil shows us how not to launch a search engine via CNET
Today definitely wasn’t dull. Upgrade problems aside Lightroom 2 is worth a look and if you’re a glutton for punishment check out Cuil.com to see what kind of whacky results are being tied together for your site or photography.
