The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog

Photoshop Automator Action Pack for Mac OS X

David Chartier — 2006-06-20T15:18:00+00:00

Filed under: Automation, Color management, File management, Creative Suite, Mac OS X, Actions

Automator World has posted a Photoshop Action Pack for Mac OS X 10.4's Automator, an app that allows you to automate many OS and application functions. The actions you can add to Automator workflows is fairly extensive:

Add IPTC Captions to Photoshop Documents
Apply Unsharp Mask to Photoshop Documents
Apply Watermark to Photoshop Documents
Assign Color Profile to Photoshop Documents
Close Photoshop Documents
Extract IPTC Captions from Photoshop Documents
Flip Photoshop Documents
New Photoshop Document
Open Images in Photoshop
Resize Photoshop Documents
Rotate Photoshop Documents
Save Photoshop Documents
Trigger Photoshop Action
Trim Photoshop Documents

The action pack is provided free and looks like a handy addition to any Mac + Photoshop user's workflow.

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More before/after pics of Photoshop's power

David Chartier — 2006-05-17T13:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Blogs, Compositing, Digital photography, Photo editing, Creative Suite

I came across another portfolio site that offers some before and after images exhibiting the power of Photoshop (mouse over the images to see the magic). What I like about this page is its author, Greg Apodaca, has presented a nice range of imagery, from model photography to product re-touching and image compositing. A few of his images include a clever re-creation of Photoshop's layers palette, and mousing over each layer will deconstruct the image to that particular element. Nice.

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Photoshop CS2 update (9.0.1) available

David Chartier — 2006-05-16T02:20:00+00:00

Filed under: Blogs, Creative Suite, Upgrades, Adobe

Adobe has released an update for Photoshop CS2 that John Nack humorously equates to "detention in high school"; or rather, "a kind of penalty box that keeps you away from what you really want to be doing".

Specifically, this update fixes a wide array of odd bugs and quirks, so here's the rundown from Mr. Nack's post:

After editing an image in Photoshop CS2 via Acrobat Touchup, the image no longer gets re-positioned.
Photoshop no longer hangs for several seconds when using painting tools with quick strokes.
A program error that could appear when mousing over high res doc with Brush Tool has been fixed.
Documents containing a large number of text layers now open more quickly.
An error that could cause a crash on Mac when launching, or when opening or saving a file, has been addressed.
Problems related to palettes on Windows (slow redraw, palettes go white, possible crash) have been addressed.
TIFF files from certain scanners can now be opened correctly.
XMP metadata from AI & PDF files is now retained in Photoshop.
Slow performance when toggling layer visibility has been fixed.
Info palette numbers now display and update when moving a curve point in Curves via the cursor keys.
Problems opening certain TIFF and PSB files greater than 2GB in size have been resolved.
The Merge to HDR command now functions properly when using high-ASCII characters in user login.

John also provides Mac and Win download links, though I would wager the software updater app that gets installed with CS2 would catch this as well. If you're on a Mac it's in your Applications/Utilities folder, though I'm not sure where it's at on Windows.

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Creative Suite Conference in Chicago in May

Jan Kabili — 2006-04-28T18:31:00+00:00

Filed under: Training, Creative Suite, Conferences

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.

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Adobe creates a Nonprofit team and blog, hints at new pricing program

David Chartier — 2006-04-22T19:37:00+00:00

Filed under: Blogs, Fundamentals, Creative Suite, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Conferences, Adobe

Boy, these Adobe guys sure know how to bait: check out the inaugural post at Nonprofit @ Adobe. It sounds like the company has put together a Nonprofit Team that will be offering eSeminars, a nonprofit pricing program and the obligatory software tips and tricks.

That one post is all we get for now though. If you have anything to do with the worlds of nonprofit and design, I think Adobe just gave you something else to bookmark.

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Adobe repeats Spring 2007 ETA for Mactel-compliant Photoshop

Jan Kabili — 2006-04-21T20:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Creative Suite, Mac OS X, Windows XP

Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, speaking at a Tokyo news conference Friday, repeated Adobe's position that it won't be shipping a Mactel-compliant version of Photoshop until Spring 2007. Chizen said:

"We are working very hard on making our products Mactel (Mac Intel) compliant. When we ship the new product Acrobat 8 this fall it will be Mactel compliant. When we ship Photoshop and the Creative Suite products next spring they will also be Mactel compliant."

Chizen also indicated that Boot Camp won't have much of an effect on Adobe's plans to make software for the Mac:

"For the majority of our products, writing directly for Mac OS is an advantage and you will see us continue to do so and not work through Boot Camp or the Windows emulator because we think that will not be good for the majority of our customers. However there are some products that we have today that we have not been able to afford to continue to develop to make available on the Mac. A great example being FrameMaker. The majority of FrameMaker users use Windows as an OS but there is a small percentage that want to use FrameMaker on the Mac so they can use Boot Camp."

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Adobe posts Disable VM Buffering plug-in for Photoshop CS2 on Macs

David Chartier — 2006-04-18T19:20:00+00:00

Filed under: Creative Suite, Mac OS X, Plug-ins

It's rare, at least personally, to hear about software quirks on machines that have too much RAM, but apparently Photoshop CS2 can exhibit a pause while painting on Macs with more than 4 GB of RAM.

Adobe has posted this Disable VM Buffering plug-in to help remedy the problem, but check out the plug-in's details page for more information on whether you should install it.

[via John Nack]

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Use adjustment layers for that perfect selection

David Chartier — 2006-04-11T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Color management, Digital photography, Fundamentals, Photo editing, Web graphics, Creative Suite

Jennifer Apple over at The Photoshop Blog posted a great tip for getting that perfect selection when you're having a tough time with other methods, possibly due to backgrounds or surrounding elements that are stumping Photoshop and its various selection tools.

Jennifer's idea is to give your selection tool of choice a helping hand by using a Levels or Curves adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer) to increase the image's contrast. Using an adjustment layer (instead of applying the changes directly) will allow you to preserve the image the way you want it, make the selection you need and then throw out or turn off (for later use) the layer in order to go on about your business.

This method is both a great technique and a prime example of the power of adjustment layers that should be incorporated into nearly every Photoshop user's toolbelt as soon as possible.

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Run Windows on your Intel Mac with Boot Camp, and don't worry about CS3

David Chartier — 2006-04-05T16:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Creative Suite, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Adobe

Earlier today, Apple released Boot Camp, a utility that allows the painless install of Windows XP on the new Intel Macs. TUAW has been covering this announcement quite a bit today, but one of the interesting questions that has been posed is: what's going to happen to third party software? Or, the more specific question pertaining to TUPW here is: does Adobe still have motivation to release CS3 for Mac OS X?

While we wait for an official statement from Adobe or a post on the less formal Adobe Blogs (how about it Mr. Nack?), I think C.K. has pretty much hit the nail on the head at TUAW: While Boot Camp might be great for those who want or have a need to run both Mac OS X and Windows XP on their Mac, those who are going to are most certainly not in the majority of the Mac-using base. In other words: there's still a huge Mac OS X market out there (which doubled in the U.S. last year), and in all likelihood, 3rd party apps that ride the fence like Creative Suite and Office aren't going anywhere.

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Amazing technical illustration with Photoshop and Illustrator

Jan Kabili — 2006-03-25T19:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Tutorials, Creative Suite

I am blown away by these ultra-realistic, technical illustrations by Kevin Hulsey made with Photoshop and Illustrator.

Hulsey shares Photoshop and Illustrator techniques for creating his technical illustrations, including this cutaway of a cruise ship, and this transparent illustratiion of a car. This surely raises the bar of what's possible to accomplish with these applications.

[Thanks John Nack]

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Adobe says CS3 in Q2 2007, explains why CS2 won't be ported for Intel Macs

David Chartier — 2006-03-25T16:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Creative Suite

Adobe has placed an ETA on CS3, and it is Q2 of 2007. In an interview/announcement, Adobe's CEO Bruce Chizen boasted that there would be "a lot of integration between Macromedia's and Adobe's products and that the value of the two companies will be clear following the launch of CS3."

Also, for those seeking a lengthier explanation as to why CS2 isn't going to be ported for Intel Macs, an Adobe engineer blogged about the complications and coding woes that prevent porting CS2 while the company is building CS3.

All I know is that I can't wait for the day when I can create a comp in Photoshop and then, through a workflow, automatically vectorize it in Illustrator, add motion to it in Flash, seamlessly throw it all up on the web with GoLive while Fireworks is tying my shoes and Acrobat is cooking my dinner. How 'bout it Adobe?

[via MacNN]

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Reminder: Photoshop SDK is free

David Chartier — 2006-03-23T14:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Blogs, Forums, Creative Suite, Adobe

A year ago or so, Adobe removed the charge for the Photoshop SDK (Software Development Kit), offering it for free per request at a web form. John Nack blogged this the other day, also mentioning that they haven't gotten the word out very well so I thought I'd lend a hand.

In addition to offering Photoshop's SDK for free, they also offer Basic and ~~Super Size~~ Advanced versions now. The basic comes with everything but the File Format and File Import/Export information, for which I guess there is extra (but still free) paperwork.

So now you've just lost a very large excuse for procrastinating on that killer plugin you've been scribbling notes about on bar napkins. In addition to the web form you can fill out, you can also obtain some user-to-user help in a forum covering all things Photoshop SDK.

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Free Seminar on automating CS2 with Applescript

David Chartier — 2006-03-16T17:05:00+00:00

Filed under: Automation, Creative Suite, Conferences

Ray Robertson, of Scripting Matters fame, will be leading "Automating Adobe Creative Suite 2 with AppleScript," a three-hour, free seminar covering - you guessed it - how to use applescript to automate Creative Suite.

From Scripting Matters' site, it sounds like Ray is a one-man applescripting machine with clients ranging from small business to large corporate. While the seminar - including a CD with example scripts - is free, registration for the March 23rd event is required by email. Check out Scripting Matters' press release for more information.

[via MacScripter]

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Photoshop CS/CS2 Automator Actions v2.0 released

David Chartier — 2006-03-11T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Automation, Creative Suite, Mac OS X, Actions

A second version of the fantastic and free Photoshop CS2 Automator Actions has been released - and I am once again smitten. If you aren't familiar with Automator, it's an application Apple includes with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger that allows you to, well, automate the Mac OS X operating system. Think: "like actions in Photoshop, but for my entire OS." Automator allows you to easily drag and drop actions to create workflows that move information and files in and out of multiple programs, manipulating it along the way. As icing on the cake, Automator actions that you create can be shared with anyone else using Tiger, opening the doors for über-automation with your colleagues in the workplace. Check out Apple's Automator details page for more information if you need help wrapping your head around the concept.

This suite of Photoshop actions from Complete Digital Photography brings Photoshop into the automation party, offering a list of actions, options and features far too long to list here. The total list of Automator-enabled actions is now up to 68 with version 2.0, and new actions include, but are not limited to: Change Resolution, Color Balance, Dust and Scratches, Maximum/Minimum, Open Raw Data, Polar Coordinates, Posterize, Radial Blur, Resize Canvas, Smart Blur, Threshold, and much more. A series of bug fixes has been implemented as well, but check out the post at Complete Digital Photography for the full details of how these actions can fit into you Tiger Photoshop Automator workflow, and make sure you download the right set for either CS or CS2.

Photoshop Automator Actions 2.0 is donationware, and I urge you to toss at least a few dollars into the hat if you take a liking to these most excellent tools.

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Every.shortcut.ever

David Chartier — 2006-02-27T07:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Fundamentals, Creative Suite, Mac OS X, Windows XP

Trevor Morris, of GFX^TM, has raised the bar for defining the phrase "too much time on one's hands" by producing a 4-page PDF containing (what I assume is) every keyboard shortcut for Photoshop CS2. As you might guess, he had to use some pretty small type to fit all the available keyboard shortcuts on only four pages, including editing mode-specific ones. For those not living on the bleeding edge of Photoshop/CS versions, it seems he's created documents like this for every Photoshop version back to 5.0, so take your pic.

[via creativebits]

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Terry White's Adobe Creative Suite Podcast rocks

Jan Kabili — 2006-02-26T08:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Third-party Podcasts, Creative Suite

Training podcasts are popping up everywhere. Here's one worth checking out. Trainer extraordinaire Terry White recently started the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast. Terry is one of those people who can make even the most difficult subject seem easy and fun. He plans to offer tutorials on all the Creative Suite products, including Photoshop.

In the latest episode, Terry shows how to take a bitmap logo that was made in Photoshop and turn it into a vector graphic using Illustrator CS2's automated tracing feature Live Trace.

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Resolution in Illustrator

Jan Kabili — 2006-02-25T20:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Blogs, Creative Suite

If you listened to our first podcast you have a handle on resolution in Photoshop. You may have assumed that resolution isn't much of an issue in Adobe Illustrator, because Illustrator is known primarily as a vector graphics program. Think again.

My buddy Mordy Golding, over at the Real World Illustrator blog, has an informative post on resolution in Illustrator. He covers three areas in which resolution comes into play in Illustrator: flatness (formerly known as object resolution), flattener resolution, and document raster effects settings.

Mordy knows what he's talking about when it comes to all things Illustrator. He worked as Illustrator program manager at Adobe and is the author of Real World Illustrator CS2.

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No Intel OS X updated Adobe apps till 07

David Chartier — 2006-02-02T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Creative Suite, Adobe, Apple

John Nack has answered the burning question of OS X Adobe app users everywhere on his blog yesterday: when will we see native Intel OS X versions for all the shiny new Macs Apple is rolling out this year? Unfortunately, the response is less than ideal. In fact, I think it belies something fishy is up either with Adobe, Apple or both.

John Nack's answer is basically that they have no plans to update the current CS2 or Studio 8 suites to run natively on Intel OS X, which means anyone buying a new Intel Mac this year will have to deal with running these apps in the Rosetta emulation layer. While it seems like this might be at least workable for some users, it is by no means ideal. The only way to get an Intel version of either suite, as of Adobe's current plans, is to purchase a new/upgrade suite sometime in 2007. Let's also not forget the just-released After Effects 7.0 - who knows when an Intel OS X copy of that will appear, but according to Adobe's FAQ (pdf link) on the matter, it sounds like purchasers of even that brand new app won't get an Intel version without buying an upgrade/new version.

Now I am not a software engineer, nor do I have a clue as to what goes on inside the walls at Adobe. Still, this less than ideal situation smells rotten to me, and I don't mean just Adobe. Ever since Apple's Intel announcement last summer, they've told the industry (at least the consumer side) that Intel Macs would appear by summer 2006. Yet they released two, one being a pro machine, last month, and they won't have even their own pro apps ready until sometime in March. I don't know about you, but the phrase "rushed to market" comes to mind.

Adding to the pile, I'm starting to believe that John Gruber (of Daring Fireball fame) might have something with a post last April, worrying about Adobe's move away from being a great software company to just a company with a product to sell and revenues to bolster. The fact that there won't be any updates or even a retail upgrade for previous versions of CS or Studio to run on Intel Macs is quite a slap in the face to consumers. Apple, by contrast, is at least allowing Final Cut Studio owners to trade their PowerPC discs in for Intel copies at the mere cost of $50. While some are complaining about even that $50 charge, it's still a lot better than the price of a full upgrade or an entirely new copy.

My gripes aside however, what do you TUPW readers think? Is 2007 far too long to wait? Is Adobe milking their customers for every dime they can? Or is this just another growing pain due to a processor switch by Apple? Let's hear your thoughts.

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More RAW support in Photoshop CS2

David Chartier — 2006-01-23T23:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Creative Suite, Camera Raw

Adobe today added support to their Camera Raw plugin (now at version 3.3) for 17 more cameras, reportedly bringing the grand total to over 113 cameras including those from Canon, Mamiya, Nikon, Pentax and more. Adobe also reminds users in their announcement that, as of version 2.3, the Camera Raw plugin supports RAW files in Adobe's DNG format.

Check Adobe's announcement for the full details on what new cameras were added. Interestingly on that page, Adobe is also promoting their Lightroom beta, which I absolutely loved.

[via creativepro.com]

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Photoshop detects currency

David Chartier — 2006-01-20T12:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Creative Suite

Another day, another quirky (yet sensical) new thing to learn about Photoshop: apparently, it has super-special algorithm magic baked in to detect currency and deterr its manipulation. Creativebits picked up on this and found a little more information at Slashdot, but basically: as of Photoshop 8 (CS), the app has gained the ability to detect US currency and credit cards, as well as Euro notes (possibly more), and display a message stating that Photoshop does not support "the unauthorized processing of banknote images." My first question is: so where's the plug-in?

But seriously, if you're in a situation like Terry at creativebits and you might be designing a credit card for a client, a simple work-around has been discovered: opening the image in ImageReady, then using File > Edit in Photoshop will apparently bypass this slight federal offense of counterfeiting hangup.

[via TUAW]

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