This is the final post on The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog. It's also a new beginning for Photoshop Online, which I'll be hosting as an independent video podcast at http://photoshoponline.tv . Join me there in a couple of days (once the little elves get the domain names resolved) for a feast of Photoshop tips and techniques. In the meantime, you can watch as I get the site up and running at its temporary URL http://kabili.libsyn.com. The RSS feed for Photoshop Online will be http://kabili.libsyn.com/rss .

And don't forget to catch David and my posts on all things Apple over at our sister site The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

The New York Times has an interesting article on HDR - High Dynamic Range photography. HDR allows photographers to combine multiple exposures to bring out the full range of tonal values in a scene, retaining detail in dark shadows as well as bright highlight areas. The results, like these mouthwatering images by photog Kris Kros, are sometimes hyper-realistic, making a photograph look like a hybrid photo-cum-painting. There are several programs for rendering HDR images, including Photoshop CS2. If you're interested in trying out the HDR features in Photoshop CS2, here are the basics:

The trick is to take several shots of the same scene at slightly different exposures and merge the images into one 32-bit HDR file in Photoshop (CS2 only). Shoot in RAW format. Be sure to use a tripod so your camera doesn't move between shots. Bracket exposures by changing shutter speed one stop for each shot, without changing your aperture. In Photoshop, choose File>Automate>Merge to HDR, and browse to your bracketed shots. Choose 32 bits as the bit depth if you want to retain all of the tonal information. Photoshop will merge the multiple exposures into one 32-bit file.

The merged image may look washed out at first because an HDR image contains a larger dynamic range than your monitor can display. You can adjust Photoshop's preview of the merged image by choosing View>32-bit Preview Options and adjusting Exposure, Gamma, and Highlight Compression settings there. These settings do not affect the image -- only the way it appears on your monitor. To adjust the image itself, choose Image>Adjustments>Exposure. In the Exposure dialog box, use the Exposure slider to adjust the highlights, the Offset slider to adjust shadows and midtones, and the Gamma slider to adjust , well, the gamma. Save the 32-bit file in Radiance (.hdr) format. If you want to manipulate the image further in Photoshop, convert it to 16 bits so you have access to more tools and features. You can print the 16-bit file, or convert it to 8-bit for printing.

Now that you Windows users have heard that there's a beta of Adobe Lightroom for you (a free download from Adobe), you're probably hungry for some Windows specific training. As usual, NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) is right on it. They've updated their Lightroom training page with some new videos that show the Windows version of Lightroom, including Matt Kloskowski's Intro to the Develop Module, Secrets of the Tone Curve, and Magic of Split-Toning. Mac users will benefit from these videos too, because Lightroom's settings are similar across the platforms.

And if you want to see what other users are saying about the Windows beta or post your own impressions, join in on Adobe's Lightroom Beta Windows discussion board.

Lunacore offers a unique, detailed tutorial that shows how to create an animated airplane flying through clouds. The tutorial uses layer masks in a sophisticated way to create the illusion that of depth--a technique can be used with still images, as well as animations. To top it off, there's even a contrail that follows the plane on its journey.

Are you looking for free or almost free stock photography? Your first stop should be Blue Vertigo, a nicely designed site that offers long lists of sites where you can find free or cheap stock photos. But that's not all. Use the horizontal scroll bar to discover resources for lots of other things, from Photoshop Brushes to free fonts to Poser downloads. It's a little bit of heaven.

I'm a fan of creating web page mockups in Photoshop before creating the actual pages in a site-building program. Photoshop Lab offers some useful tips for mocking up a web page in Photoshop. The post includes instructions for creating design elements in Photoshop like dotted and dashed underlines. It shows how to clip Color Fill layers to content layers to color individual elements on a page mockup. And it offers a technique for creating an image placeholder using clipping groups.

My buddy Eddie Tapp is working on a new book, Photoshop Workflow Setups: Eddie Tapp on Digital Photography. You can download a chapter of the book from creativepro.com, in which Tapp shows you how to set up efficient workspaces in Photoshop and Bridge.

There's lots of good stuff here, including Tapp's suggestions for setting up different palette combinations for different types of work, like color correction, masking, or retouching. The chapter includes instructions for using the Match Zoom feature (Window>Arrange>Match Zoom) to view multiple images at the same magnification, using Full Screen Mode to show your client an image against a clean black background (F, F, Tab, and then Command/Control+zero to center), and using the New Window command (Window>Arrange>New Window) for detail work.

There are so many Photoshop books that rehash the same old lessons, that it's refreshing to see a book on a unique topic like workflow setups.

If you're a digital photographer who wants to learn Photoshop from the master, check out a new online training course, Photoshop for Digital Photographers with Scott Kelby of Photoshop TV fame. This 21-day course offers a different 5 minute training video each day. Scott will take you through a digital photographer's workflow from beginning to end. He provides the lesson, a downloadable file you can use to follow along with the instruction, a PDF that outlines each lesson, and access to an online forum on which you can converse with other students in the course. You can replay any of the videos at no extra charge for 60 days. The course covers Photoshop's most powerful features for digital photographers, including Camera Raw adjustments, color to black and white conversions , color correction using curves, sharpening, and more.

I haven't listened to these tutorials, but I have seen Scott teach. I can tell you that he is a straight shooting instructor who understands what his audience needs to know and gets right to the heart of the matter. At the $69.99 price point ($39.99 for members of National Association of Photoshop Professionals) this sounds like a good buy for digital photographers who want to spend a minimum amount of time learning to improve their photographs in Photoshop.

There are now so many choices for managing your images -- Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge, Aperture, iPhoto -- it's hard to know where to start. This brief interview with photographer Scott Bourne about which of these apps he recommends for whom sheds some light on the matter.

[via the photoshop blog]

Adobe is asking for your help to improve the way Photoshop handles HDR (high dynamic range) imaging. If you're a photographer, you can help out by sending Adobe sample images (JPEG and raw) on which you've found that other 32bit to 16 or 8 bit converters do a better job than Photoshop. Adobe engineer John Peterson explains what he needs at Adobe blogs:

I'm looking for cases where the "other leading brand" is doing a better job than Photoshop. I'd like to get three or four really good cases of this from customers that are (potential) heavy users of Merge to HDR. I'd be interested in JPEG or raw source files, plus the HDR result file from the other application. JPEGs should be generated by the camera, not via Camera Raw. f-stop should be held constant, exposure should differ by two stops or so, and resolutions in the 2-6 MP range would be sufficient.

The Creative Suite conference is coming up at the Chicago City Center May 18-20. The conference offers sessions on all the Adobe Creative Suite apps. All the usual suspects will be there, including Michael Ninness of lynda.com, Ben Willmore, and David Blatner on Photoshop-related topics. Mordy Golding, who is speaking at the conference, has posted a coupon code on his  Real World Illustrator blog that will get you a deal on the registration fee.

Adobe's Jeff Tranberry caught up with Photoshop guru Ben Willmore on the big bus that's now Ben's home.  In this short interview with Jeff, Ben reveals:

• his favorite Photoshop feature -- Smart Objects, which are new to Photoshop CS2;
• his vote for the least understood Photoshop feature -- what else but color management; and
• a list of the most under-utilized Photoshop features -- hiding menu commands to simplify the interface, variables, the Color Replacement tool, and the Background Eraser (one of my own favorites for selecting and deleting in one step).
  

Mordy Golding, at Real World Illustrator, has posted an interesting response to a question from a reader about whether Adobe will ever combine Illustrator and Photoshop into one vector raster application. Mordy, who used to be an Illustrator bigwig at Adobe (sorry Mordy--I don't remember your title) says the answer is no. If you're interested in why "Photostrator" doesn't make sense from a business,  technical, or user perspective, check out Mordy's thoughtful reasoning.

You may be surprised at the lengths paparazzi will go to get one of the first "photos" of Brad and Angela's expected baby. According to New York Magazine, an early photo of the Brangelina baby could fetch as much as $50,000, so there's lots of incentive for paparazzi to be first on the scene.

But things may not be as they appear. This image, published in the New York Magazine article, isn't the real thing. "Angelina" is a computer composite, and her hubby is an actor playing the real Brad. Hmm, don't you wonder how much a Photoshopped image like this one might go for?

[via Blogging Baby]

Adobe released a free Software Developer's Kit (SDK) for the Digital Negative Specification (DNG) this week in an effort to encourage further adoption of the DNG raw image format. The SDK gives camera manufacturers and software developers tools and information they need to incorporate DNG support into their products. You can download the SDK for Mac or Windows from the Adobe site.

DNG is an open standard raw format that Adobe introduced to avoid the uncertainty associated with camera and software manufacturers' proprietary raw formats. What does that mean? Let's say your camera produces raw files in a format that only the camera manufacturer's raw converter software can open. If the manufacturer stops making that software in the future, you could find yourself with lots of unusable files.

Adobe moved toward a solution to this problem by introducing the DNG format in 2004, and making it freely available to camera and software manufacturers. DNG files can be opened by the Adobe Camera Raw converter in Photoshop and by third-party software that incorporates DNG format. As the DNG format becomes more universally adopted by camera and software manufacturers, your raw photographs get a longer expected life. Adobe's new DNG SDK is one more step in that direction.