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.

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.

I know we're a little late on this one (finals just finished last week; I can now rejoin the world of the living), but a friend pointed out that Adobe has redesigned their site - and it looks like they hired Macromedia's site designers to do it. The new site looks a lot nicer and offers a more intuitive and navigable structure for the sheer volume of services and software that Adobe now offers.

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.

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.

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."

We're a little late on this one, but it appears that the Adobe Lightroom podcast has released its 4th episode (iTMS link). As John Nack summarizes on his blog, this one was recorded at the Greg Gorman digital photography workshop in CA. George and his guests (Martin Evening, Peter Carides and Bryan O'Neil Hughes) discuss digital photography workflows, fashion photography, Lightroom features and archiving strategies.

Check it out in the iTMS podcast directory or grab it at Adobe's RSS feed here.

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]