Quote of the Week

This one was posted on the Photoshop TV Blog for this week's show. It's from a viewer who wants his Metadata displayed when he posts images online at a public sharing site, because he got a nice digital camera for Christmas. His quote though, it priceless. He wrote, "...damnit, I want people to know that I finally got a camera that is not small and silver." I don't know this guy, but I already like him. :-)

Adobe Magazine Back Issues Still Online

I ran across this totally by accident, and I'm glad I did. Believe it or not, Adobe still has links to back issues, and more importantly, to the Q&A articles, from the original Adobe Magazine. Of course, some stuff is out-of-date because Adobe magazine stopped publishing back in 2001, but some of it is still relevant to this day. It's definitely worth a visit.

NEWS: Photoshop Crossword Puzzles

That's right, besides taking the Ultimate Photoshop Quiz, now you can test your Photoshop knowledge by completing a Photoshop Crossword puzzle at (you guessed it), PhotoshopCrosswords.com. Each month they post a new puzzle to (in their words) "Challenge your Photoshop and digital imaging knowledge." Note: if you're really into this, they also sell a Photoshop Crossword Puzzle book, too!

NEWS: Easier than Flickr: it's BubbleShare!

BubbleShare may have come up with the easiest, free online digital photo sharing site yet. In fact, it's so easy it makes the simple sharing site Flickr look overly complicated. Even though it's just in its Beta stage, it's already starting to create some serious noise on the Web. It' worth a look, just for it's elegant "less is more" simplicity, at http://www.bubbleshare.com

Our Mini-episode of Photoshop TV is Up!

We've posted a Mini Holiday version of Photoshop TV (by mini, I mean it's an abridged, shorter version with no news, no contests, and nothing but tip after tip, after tip). You can watch it in iTunes, or you can watch it online at http://www.photoshopTV.com

TIP: Getting Back to the Orignal Raw Image

If you're looking at thumbnails of your Raw images in the Bridge, and you see a tiny round icon that looks like two adjustment sliders (see the red arrow at left), that's telling you this image has been adjusted in Camera Raw (so the thumbnail you see represents a "tweaked" version of the original Raw image). That's not the tip. The tip is how to quickly remove those tweaks, so you're once again seeing the original unadjusted raw image, WITHOUT having to go back in to Camera Raw. Just click on the thumbnail image within the Bridge, then go under the Edit menu, under Apply Camera Raw Settings, and choose "Clear Camera Raw Settings" and your tweaks are instantly removed. That's the tip. That's it. There it is. The tip, I mean. That was the tip. Hey, stop it, you're getting me upset. ;-)

Photoshop Brushes O'Plenty

Looking for a boat-load of free Photoshop brushes? Then have I got a site for you. it's called 8nero.net, and it offers literally hundreds of free downloadable brushes, and there's only one stipulation—that you don't make these brushes downloadable from your site. Lots of wild, and often cool stuff here (check the menu bar on the site's left side for a list of brush collections by number).

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Here's wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas, and a wondeful, safe,and fun-filled Holiday Season. :)

Scott

P.S. My wife got me two 4Gig CF cards, and my buddy Dave got me a Epson P4000 Photo Storage viewer. It was a very digital Christmas!

Apple Releases Update to Aperture

Apple has released a free update (version 1.01) to Aperture (their digital photography workflow application). This update is designed to address output quality issues (see my post from the 22nd), and reliability problems, as well as some Metadata handling problems. The free update is available from the Downloads page on Apple's Website.

Thomas Knoll Recovers Your Edges

Photoshop Creator Thomas Knoll has released a software utility that brings back any pixels that may have been cropped (or masked) off (intentionally or otherwise) by your digital camera while shooting in Raw mode. Here's some quick info: (1) this was written by Thomas but it is NOT Adobe software. (2) It only works with Raw files (not JPEGs) and it requires you to convert your files to Adobe DNG first, before you run the utility, and (3) there are separate versions for both Windows and Mac. Get more info, and download it for free, as a courtesy of LuminousLandscape.com

Cool Brushes for Making Clouds

David Nagel, over at CreativeMac.com, just released a free set of Photoshop brushes that are pretty slick. They create realistic clouds (much better than the Clouds filter in Photoshop itself) and best of all, they're free! Just download 'em, and then load 'em into your Brush picker. Sweet! Download (and see some samples) at http://www.creativemac.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=36358

NEWS: Aperture's Review Woes Continue

Yikes! This may be the most damaging review yet of Aperture, Apple's new digital photography workflow app (I'm not sure it's actually even a review, as it's called "An open letter to Steve Jobs" on O'Grady's PowerPage). The piece is so short, I won't spill the beans here (you can read the whole thing in less than 30 seconds, and he has links to his testing examples), but the meat of this review is the poor quality of the final output from Aperture. It's worth a read at over at the PowerPage.

Yet Another Retouching Site

Although the previous sites have just been focused on retouching models, this retoucher (Greg Apodaca) also does commercial product retouching and coporate compositing as well (for some very big clients), and he shows it with the same "rollover" before and after technique. He does have a couple of models as well, but seeing some of his other commercial work is really fascinating. Check out Greg's work at http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/digital.html

Quote of the Week

A friend called me with this one, which he saw on the Adobe forums regarding Quark's recent purchase of ALAP (A Lowly Apprentice Productions), well-known maker of plug-ins for Adobe InDesign. It was along the lines of, "I think Quark did the right thing buying ALAP, because if Quark has any future at all, it'll be in selling plug-ins for InDesign." That one just cracked me up.

The Photography Channel

My buddy Jeff Revel sent this this amazing site/podcast my way, and I have to agree with him, it's one of the coolest podcasts out there. The site is dedicated to "Photographic storytelling for the modern media" and features "cinematic-quality [video] presentations of the world's best photography." Just an amazing site from top to bottom. See for yourself at http://www.everypicture.tv/

UK Mag Looks at Photoshop's History

Computer Arts, the popular UK-based design magazine, has a nice feature article on the history of Adobe Photoshop, starting before it was even called Photoshop. If you're not familiar with the story of how Photoshop became what it is today, make sure you check it out (click here). BTW: the capture shown here is of the Photoshop 1.0 toolbar.

Update for Photoshop's Help

Adobe released an update to the Adobe Help Center (version 2.1), which has the latest Help files for all the CS2 applications (including Photoshop). It's a free downloadable update (with Mac and PC versions), and they're available for download by clicking here for Mac, or click here for Windows

Using Levels But Want To Learn Curves?

If you're already using Levels, and you want to make the jump to using the more powerful Curves, but you're wondering how Curves relates to what you've been doing in Levels, then you'll love this example. It's an interactive tutorial from Greg Apodaca,and it does a great job of helping you make the jump, by showing exactly how they relate. Check it out at http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/teacher/lev_crv/lev_crv.html

Photoshop TV Around The World!

Apple has opened localized versions of the iTunes Music Store in different countries around the world, and although we're one of the top ranked Podcasts in the US, I thought I'd check out how we fared outside our borders, and I was delighted to learn that we're also one of the top ranked Podcasts in the world. Here's how we're ranked around the globe (according to Apple's iTunes Music Store, Top 100 Podcasts List):

Denmark: #8
In the UK,: #21
Finland, #6
Spain: #11
Canada: #7
France: #23
Greece: #5
Switzerland: #13
Italy: #5
Australia: #52
Germany: #12
Portugal: #11

NEWS: Apple's Aperture Takes Another Hit

Since Apple's Aperture program has now shipped, I've read half a dozen or so in-depth reviews, and I've yet to read one that, in the end, actually likes the program. They may like certain aspects of it, or a particular feature or two, but none that really likes the overall program. The trend contines as Jeremy Schultz over at Designorati.com just released a major in-depth review, and in the end he says "Aperture has problems with performance, missing features and its “form over function” philosophy that deserve hard scrutiny. Maybe in a few years, with versions 2 or 3, Aperture will be ready for the big leagues." Read the entire review, titled "Apple's Aperture: Mighty Casey Has Struck Out!" by clicking here.

Find ANY Camera Info Fast

This is so cool. It's a site called "CameraPedia" and it's basically an online encyclopedia of about every camera ever made, by every camera manufacturer. So, if you want to find out something about a particular camera, you just go there (http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), click on the camera manufacturer (or just do a search) and ALL their cameras come up. Click on the one you want, and it gives you plain English info on that camera. Makes you wonder what we did before the Web. ;-)

Write To Yourself In The Future

OK, this is totally un-Photoshop related, but I still thought it was cool enough to make the blog. It's a Web site that does just one thing--it lets you compose an email to yourself, and it will automatically mail it to you on any date in the future you'd like. You can email yourself a birthday wish in 2007, or a reminder for an anniversary, or it can remind you to upgrade to Photoshop CS4 (See, I brought it back to Photoshop now, didn't I?). Anyway, it's worth a quick visit at FutureMe.org

Photoshop TV Episode 8

Hey gang: "The new episode of Photoshop TV is live and on the air! Check it this week's episode at PhotshopTV.com or subscribe to the free show right from within iTunes--that way you'll get every episode each week.

Another Retouching Site

Last week I showed that UK site with the before/after retouching, and today a friend sent me a link to another site that is even more amazing than the last, and has great before and after examples for about 45 models, including retouched celebrities. CONTENT WARNING: This is the site of a glamour fashion retoucher (Glenn C. Feron), and the site features scantily clad female models (the shot here is among the most mild). I didn't see any nude shots, but I just wanted to warn you up front just in case you're Amish. Really fascinating stuff, though. Click this link http://glennferon.com/portfolio1/portfolio01.html then hit the "Next" button to see more examples. Also, make sure you click on his "Work" link afterward, so you can see these same shots used on the covers of real magazines.

New Plug-in Emulates Look of Film

Alien Skin has just announced a new Photoshop Plug-in that gives your digital camera images the look and feel of traditional film, like Velia, Ektachrome, GAF 500, etc. They haven't yet announced a ship date yet, they're just saying "early 2006." They did put some before/after examples on their site, at http://www.alienskin.com/exposure/index.html

Download Free Colorizing Software

There's a new software program out there that will automatically colorize black and white photos for you, with just a little input from you. It's called "Recolored" and basically you take a colored marker and mark over areas you want in a particular color, and it does all the "fill in" automatically. It looks pretty slick (click on the thumbnail here to see an example of how it works), and you can download a free Beta version (PC only) at the Recolored Web site.

TIP: Speeding Photoshop's Launch Time

This tip isn't for everybody--it's for people who either (a) create custom patterns for use with the Pattern Stamp Tool, or (b) load custom (or extra built-in sets) of patterns to use with the Pattern Fill Layer Style (if either of those made you go "huh?", it's probably not you). Anyway, I found an article that shows the simple step-by-step procedure for purging any extra custom patterns, which can significantly speed up Photoshop's load time. I tested this by simply unloading extra pattern sets, and reloading just the default set, and it sped up my launch time considerably. To read the article, click here.

TIP: Turning Off Raw Auto Correction

When you open a RAW image in Camera Raw (in CS2), it automatically tries to correct the image exposure for you, because Raw images look pretty...well..."raw" without some sort of adjustment (Your camera makes similar adjustments automatically when you shoot in JPEG mode, but not in Raw mode—you get just what the camera saw, nothing more, which can be pretty disapointing when compared to a processed JPEG). However, if you’d prefer these auto corrections were turned off by default (leaving it up to you if you want one or all four auto corrections turned on), just open a RAW photo in Camera Raw, turn off all four Auto checkboxes, then go under the Camera Raw flyout menu and choose Save New Camera Raw Defaults. Now, any photo taken with that same camera (it reads the EXIF data to know which camera) will have the Auto Correction checkboxes turned off automatically.

Dicky T. Edits New Photoshop Book

Congrats to my good friend, and long-time book editor, Richard "Dicky T." Theriault, who was the Development Editor for the brand new book "Photoshop CS2 for Advertising and Marketing" by Daniel Sorenson. I just saw a my first copy yesterday, and the book looks great. Plus, I can tell Daniel really understands Dicky, because in his acknowledgements he thanks Dicky for his "Persnickity" editing style. I wish I had thought of that term before Daniel did. ;-) My heartfelt kudos and best wishes to Dicky T. for a job well done!

Are You Up to The Test?

OK, are you ready for "The Ultimate Photoshop Quiz?" Well, we (and by "we" I mean NAPP), just launched an online Photoshop test that tests your knowledge of the program. It's a timed test, and if you score in the top 20%, then you get to go on and take "The Expert Edition" and see if you've really got game (sorry, that's street slang from about eight years ago, but it's all I've got. Cause I'm a playa, homie. See, it's getting worse). Anyway, give it a shot and see what you got (hey, that rhymes). The test is at http://www.photoshopuser.com/quiz/

TIP: Don't Change That Burn Tool!

If you're using the Burn tool to darken an area, and then you decide you want to lighten a nearby area (hey, it could happen), don't switch tools. That's right, instead just hold Option-O (PC: Alt-O) and your Burn tool will now Dodge (lighten) until you release those keys. That's right baby, no more trips to the Toolbar for you, cause you're Burnin' and Dodgin' all the with the same tool.

Reviewer Warns Pros About Apple's Aperture

Dave Girard, writing an indepth review of Apple's new Aperture application for the site ars technica.com warns professionals against making the leap (or spending the $500) on Apple's new Raw workflow application. Although there are a few features he seems to like, he slams everything from the quality of the raw image processing to the speed, to the interface. Check out the article for the first really in-depth review I've seen.

Way Cool Photoshop Action

OK, this is the cutest Photoshop Action I've seen in a while, and best of all...it's free! It takes your photo (only works on Landscape oriented photos) and turns it into a stamp. While that's fairly cool unto itself, it's the level of customization you can do that's really cool. The Action stops several times and prompts you to enter the name you want on the stamp, the date, the color and stroke, position of the date stamp, or you can just bypass it all. There are two different versions. Definitely worth a try. Download them free at http://www.panosfx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=27

Fascinating Retouching Site

You have to see this: it's a Web site which decries the heavy glamour retouching done on the covers of women's magazines, but the demo is so well done (it's really quite brilliant), that it's actually a learning tool for professional retouching (which I'm sure was not their intent). I do have to commend the site designer for such an ingenious method of showing the before and after, complete with pop-up comments. Really, surprisingly well done. When you get to the site (http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/ad/) click on the "Retouch Ad >>" link to see the demo.

Makes You Stop and Think

I found this fascinating quote on a new blog from Photographer Mike Johnson (http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/). In one of his posts he wrote: "Random Observation: Ninety-nine percent of the greatest masterpieces in the history of photography were taken with cameras that are not good enough for today's rank digital amateur." Makes you stop and think, doesn't it?

News: Cool new Nikon 18-200mm VR lens

Yesterday my son's doctor (who is also a NAPP member) pointed out something that I had totally missed. When Nikon introduced the new D200, they also quietly introduced a new VR (Vibration Reduction) lens that could wind up being the "must have" lens of the year for us Nikon shooters (you know who you are: Moose, Dave Moser, Vincent, Jeff, Larry, Roddy, etc.). Anyway, what makes it potentially very cool is its small size for an 18-200mm, the fact that it's a VR lens (using Nikon's brand new and improved VR II technology), and the price is less than you'd think for a Nikon brand VR (supposedly around $700). It's f/3.5 so it's not the fastest lens, but hey, it's only $700 for a VR! Look for it around Dec. 15th.

Photoshop TV: 374,000 Viewers in Nov.

Dig this: I just got the word from Jim Gilbert (our Web honco) that Photoshop TV, our Weekly Video Podcast, was downloaded more than 374,000 times during the month of November. In a word, "Whoo Hoo!" (OK, that's two words, but you know what I mean). If you haven't caught the show yet, you can watch it at PhotoshopTV.com or you can subscribe to it free on the iTunes Music Store in iTunes.By the way, the new episode goes live tomorrow afternoon (Monday).

Terry's New Bridge Book

If you know me, you know Terry "T-bone" White (5-time world heavy weight champion), and in that case you'll want to know that T-bone's new book on the Adobe Bridge just came out. I got my hands on a copy this week, and my hats off to Terry for writing an outstanding book (Hey, they don't call him T-bone for nuthin'). It's called "Secrets of Adobe Bridge" and Amazon.com's got it for just $16.49 making it the perfect Holiday gift. Buy it for people who don't even have Photoshop and watch their faces light up. ;-) Click here for more info.

Today's the day: Adobe + Macromedia

I just heard that Adobe has announced that their acquisition of Macromedia is now complete, and as of today the two have now officially become one. The new name of the combined company will either be "Frank's All-night Drive-thru Software Shack" or "Adobe Systems," whichever is shorter.

TIP: Fast Font Finding

This is actually a turn on an old Type trick that lets you quickly see your text in different fonts (perfect when you're not sure which font you want to use). You start by typing some text. Then highlight the text with the text tool (yes, you have to use the text tool to highlight it, or it won't work). Now press the Enter key on your keyboard twice, then press the Down arrow keys on your keyboard. Each time you press it, your text will change to the next font down in your font list. This works better than the old method, because the old method (of clicking in the Font field in the Options bar), left your text highlighted with a black bar over it. This new method doesn't. Give it a try and see what you think.

Don't enter the Digital Canvas Awards

As you probably know by now, we launched the first worldwide Photoshop competition, called the Digital Canvas Awards (http://www.digitalcanvasawards.com). Here's the thing: as you also know this is private blog that I produce just for family and invited personal friends, right? So if you're reading this, you must be either family or a personal friend (since this site is private, I have not listed it publicly anywhere). Which means (sadly) that you're disqualified from entering (as are employees of NAPP or KW Media Group). See, you knew being my friend was going come back and bite you one day. Sorry bout that.

TIP: What does that "dash" mean?

I'm sure you already know that if you look under the Window menu and see a check mark beside a palette, it means that palette is currently open, right? OK, so what does it mean if you see a dash beside it (like the one shown here--click on the image to see a full-sized version, so you can see the dash) instead? Believe it or not, that's Photoshop's way of telling you that the palette is open, but it's hidden behind another open palette. It doesn't mean it's a tab, nested with another palette. It literally means (in this case), you've moved some palette in front of the Info palette on screen, so the Info palette is totally hidden. See, doesn't that make your day just a little bit brighter?

A scary magazine cover

DIGIT, the first-rate graphics magazine based in the UK, ran a cover shot and story that just sent chills down my spine. The cover shot showed a promo shot for Apple's new Aperture application, and the headline read, "The New Photoshop?" We just got Aperture in-house, and we're testing it now, and I can safely answer DIGIT's question: No, it's not "The New Photoshop." Nevertheless, it was pretty chilling just seeing that cover. But hey, I'll bet it sells magazines.

New Photoshop Plug-in eZine debuts

If you're into 3rd party Photoshop plug-ins, then check out "plugsnpixels," the free downloadable PDF ezine all about plug-ins. The premiere issue is 20 pages, and has info and tutorials on plug-ins like Auto FX, Color Washer, some of the AV bros stuff, and a few more. You can download the PDF at http://www.plugsnpixels.com/ezine.html