kyleweems

<p>As others have mentioned already.. people already think it's a couple clicks and done.. what has changed?</p>

<p>The new tools still aren't magic. They help make things faster, but there is still no 'magic photoshop elf' button. </p>

<p>Content aware fill simply automates a lot of the cloning process.. you still have to clean it up and make it look right. (even the biggest photoshop fans have already confirmed this.. it never works perfect, but it is a much better/faster option than doing it by hand most of the time)</p>

<p>Puppet warp seems ok for small adjustments that liquify could already do, it just again makes it easier/faster to do it. Still requires work to make it right, and an understanding of how people should look to make it functional. I foresee photoshopdisasters.com getting a lot of new posts because of this one.</p>

<p>And so on.. it's not radically new things, it's doing some of the boring work for you. It's the work that anybody could do to begin with.. which is why a computer algorithm can do it for you.</p>

<p>Of course if your entire business is based on removing stray hair and fixing a few skin blemishes.. you're screwed. But you've also probably been out of business ever since the healing brush was introduced. Most of us do a bit more..</p>

<p>W T ...there are no competitors for autodesk? I assume you mean in the 3d modeling realm, not CAD, where they are currently getting their butts kicked.</p>

<p>As for piracy.. I don't think it's as big of a problem as people make it out to be. Is it wrong? absolutely. Is it really harming anything? possibly.</p>

<p>The majority of people who have pirated copies of photoshop are not professional users.. they are average people who barely know how to use it.. they mess with their snapshots and that's about it. These are people who would never spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on this software.</p>

<p>Every professional I've seen uses legitimate copies. These are the people making profit from the software, and I personally don't know any who don't pay for their software.. it's just a rather small business expense.</p>

<p>I too have been using PS since version 3.. and there have absolutely been some bs "upgrades" over the years. This isn't one of them.</p>

<p>This actually has real new features.. are they all things that have never existed before? no.. but in this industry always being first is simply impossible. I see photoshop as a base system.. an OS of sorts to build on. It does almost everything 'ok' and it does some things extremely well.. but it will always be beaten by 3rd parties who build upon it for a very specific purpose (plug-ins like Nik makes for example). You have to realize though that without PS and its advancements (be it incorporating existing tech, improving upon it, or doing something new) none of these other things would exist.</p>

<p>Do I agree with everything they do? not at all.. for example I still hate flash. They have absolutely 'sold out' in some ways, but they're a giant corporation, that is to be expected. However, they continue to deliver nice new features in an attempt to improve upon an already spectacular software.. as long as those new features come to be in a professional and ethical way, I don't care who invented them.</p>

<p>Honestly the big feature for me is content-aware fill.. it will save a lot of time. (see above for my thoughts on how it is useful). 64bit is probably the most useful, but without that 'update' I think there may have been riots in the graphics community so I can't really give them much credit for finally doing it.</p>

<p>Martin</p>

<p>Of course it uses repetitive patterns, it isn't the 'little magic photoshop elf' button. The idea is that it gets you -a lot- farther -a lot- faster.. and it seems to do that. I watched a few training pieces on it from around the web and it seems to be as good as they say. It still of course requires a good bit of work on your part to clean it all up and make it look real.. especially for larger areas.</p>

<p>Also.. adobe is rarely the first to take a big jump like this, they're big on buying up technology, or duplicating it.. have been for a long time.</p>

<p>Garrison, I hardly see this as 'sitting on their laurels'.. there are some seriously cool new features here that I'm sure took -tons- of work. It just was missing a few things I was hoping for (but didn't really expect)</p>

<p>Other web technologies are quickly popping up to show that flash isn't necessary. Therefor the advantage it always had is slipping away, and what you are left with is all the problems. Not a sound thing to build the future of a technology on..</p>

<p>Patrick</p>

<p>I agree, it's totally worth the upgrade. But I'm an american consumer.. I always want more :)</p>

<p>This one is far better than the cs4 upgrade.</p>

<p>I have no problem with killing flash personally.. </p>

<p>The issue here has nothing to do with the html5 vs. flash thing actually, this has to do with application development, not just web content. Apple has changed their rules on what you can do when developing a program to run on the iphone, and they did it specifically to take a shot at Adobe. I don't agree with it at all, since it somewhat unintentionally screws a lot of other developers as well.</p>

<p>And while I can appreciate the 'anti-mac' sentiment, I myself am a Mac user. As long as they continue to do things 'better' than everybody else, I'll continue to use them. Are their products perfect? absolutely not.. but they work extremely well at what they do, and what they do is what I happen to need.</p>

<p>If you think developers are going to pass up 85 million (and growing crazy fast) customers just because they like adobe, you're in for quite a surprise. The average website isn't that tough to make a non-flash version of.. and there are -plenty- of companies scrambling to do just that in order to be seen on an iPad.</p>

<p>Apple has a small market share, sure.. but it's a growing one. Things won't change simply because you want them to.. and at no point recently has their market share started to 'shrink'. You make 8% sound like a bad thing (I'm assuming that is an accurate number for the sake of argument).. it's an improvement and it's on the way up.</p>

<p>Edit: This post was in response to Kelly</p>

<p>Right, I get that..</p>

<p>I actually had no expectation of actual multi-core use on every process.. it simply doesn't work that way. Not all things lend themselves to multicore, and photo processing tends to be one of them in many cases. I was just referring to the magic that one of the supposed beta testers was claiming.</p>

<p>I was also hoping for some other feature beyond what they had already told us about a while back when they started doing preview videos..</p>

<p>Kyle</p>

<p>"EXPORT FLASH AS iPHONE APP"</p>

<p>Sorry to burst the bubble, but this won't be happening.. despite being a feature Adobe built into Flash.</p>

<p>The feature is there, but Apple has recently changed their application approval policy to essentially block this from happening. You are no longer allowed to develop apps in particular ways using more than a few approved languages.. for more details on that I'm sure google will point the way to the huge debate going on right now about it.</p>

<p>Cool new features? absolutely. What I hoped for? nope.</p>

<p>Somebody on this forum mentioned a while back that they were one of the testers for cs5.. claimed true multi-core support was coming (despite my reservations about how that would actually work).. yet, nothing. What happened to that?</p>

<p>64bit for mac is cool, but we all knew that was coming.. not really a surprise there.</p>

<p>Also.. to those looking forward to being able to create iPhone apps with the new Flash. Not gonna happen. The feature is there, but Apple has recently changed their application approval policy to essentially block this from happening. You are no longer allowed to develop apps in particular ways.. more more details on that I'm sure google will point the way to the huge debate going on right now about it.</p>

<p>It's still worth the upgrade for me for sure, but I was hoping for something more than just a recap of the 'preview' videos we've been seeing for quite a while.</p>

<p>Nik - Silver Effects Pro, D-Fine, Viveza 2</p>

<p>OnOne - Genuine Fractals Pro 6</p>

<p>That's about it. I do have a copy of noiseware as well, but I don't use it all that often.</p>

<p>I agree Robert, but that isn't necessarily the fault of the software.</p>

<p>If you're serious about painting stuff digitally.. nothing beats the Corel Painter series. PS stepping up a bit is nice of course, but if you -really- want to paint.. it's the wrong choice.</p>

<p>I just wanted to note that new Mac Pros are expected within the next couple weeks.</p>

<p>They are rumored to be sporting new 6-core chips with a better architecture and should once again open up the performance gap between the imac and mac pro.</p>

<p>If you had to buy today, the iMac is undoubtedly the better option (especially the quad-core i7 in the 27").. in a couple weeks, the Mac Pro should jump ahead again.</p>

<p>It will still be a couple grand more expensive however, so it's up to you if it is worth it. The expandability is a much, much greater in the mac pro as others have mentioned.. but you need to think about what you'll really need.</p>

<p>As for the benefit of multiple cores.. in video it's huge. In photo right now it's not really a factor.. we'll have to wait and see if that changes (not long, CS5 is being shown on april 12th).</p>

<p>Kyle</p>

<p>LR has that capability now. I believe it uses the exact same RAW engine as PS. It really is a pretty powerful package for photographers.</p>

<p>You can do all of your sorting and all of your RAW adjustments in LR, then send the image to PS for any localized detail type work. You can even get many of the plugins for things like sharpening or noise reduction in a LR version I believe.</p>

<p>Kyle</p>

<p>LR, for photographers anyway, does about 90% of the work.. and does it faster and easier typically. It also handles a lot of nice things like printing or even creating quick web galleries.</p>

<p>If you need to do detailed work and a lot of 'localized' edits, PS is where you want to be.</p>

<p>Kyle</p>

<p>It might 'mention' it.. but if that image is your idea of reality, we have very different ideas of what reality looks like.</p>

<p>I'd also like to mention that you're starting to sound like an advertisement.. only pushing somebody to spend a fortune on some tutorial package instead of offering any other ideas. If you think something in that is so useful, by all means please share.</p>

<p>Most the stuff you see with cars is shot that way with elaborate lighting setups.. no way around that unfortunately.</p>

<p>I know this thread is essentially done it seems.. but if you're working in PS and worried about a color issue with sharpening, convert to LAB mode and select the L channel and sharpen that. Can't possibly do anything to the color there since there is no color information in that channel.</p>

<p>Of course in LR I don't believe this is possible, but I figured it was worth adding to the discussion.</p>

<p>Just a thought.</p>

<p>I have to say I don't really like the before/afters from that page.. they destroy all skin detail and basically just paint on skin tones.. there a thin line between 'natural looking' and 'super fake' and it seems to cross it pretty quickly.</p>

<p>As for technique in retouching.. what Patrick suggested is your best bet. Lots of control, hugely flexible and effective.. it also creates a rather cool 'chalk drawing' effect if you work over the entire image and turn it back to normal mode :)</p>

<p>Kyle</p>

<p>I'm with Tim here.. you really shouldn't have to do much after ACR.</p>

<p>Essentially all of your global edits can be done there.. though perhaps I save noise reduction and sharpening for after.</p>

<p>The only thing past that is if I'm trying to fix a problem with the shot, or take it in a more creative direction. Certainly by the time I leave ACR though, most of my work is done.</p>

<p>Patrick,</p>

<p>Right I'm with you.. that's why I said I wasn't sure there was a better way than what had already been described. I was just commenting additionally on it not being a very ideal solution, just a necessary one :)</p>

<p>OP, ignore this sidebar discussion and use the LR brush with saturation tool, sorry for the confusion.</p>

<p>Ok seriously? All of these 150+ posts and you -still- don't understand the actual idea of ETTR?</p>

<p>You're arguing your idea of it.. the problem is, your idea of it is wrong.</p>

<p>Nobody is saying blow out highlights at all costs to preserve shadow detail. We're saying push them up if you can to help get more out of the image. At no point has anybody said otherwise except you.</p>

<p>As Jeff said several times, ETTR is for situations where the dynamic range is smaller than your censor range.. which means you could apply the idea without destroying highlights. If your premise is that these situations don't exist, you're either just plain wrong, or haven't done a whole lot of shooting.<br>

<br />As with anything, ETTR is a basic idea that should be applied within reason and as necessary. It's a tool, not a complete solution.</p>

<p>I've not had corners damaged, but I have received several with 'dents' in them on the cover.. just small indentions that become glaringly obvious when light hits it.</p>

<p>Patrick,</p>

<p>I forget that LR does have a nice black and white tool.. but I was actually referring to the comment above where they suggested using just a brush to desaturate.</p>

<p>Will LR let you set a nice black and white conversion, then paint it in? I didn't think it handled masks that way, but admittedly I don't use LR for these functions so perhaps I'm missing something?</p>

<p>While the above works, I can't say that I'd really ever want a black and white image that was made simply by setting saturation to 0.. not exactly an ideal method for making that type of image.</p>

<p>That said, I'm not sure that if usling lightroom only there is a better way.. it's really a software designed for global changes, not focused ones.</p>

<p>I think we've all established that the basis for this thread is a lack of understanding/ability.. why are we still arguing it? It has gone from rather amusing, to somewhat dull and repetitive.</p>

<p>[insert something here about a dead horse]</p>