Photoshop is Everything You Need and Then Some
As I tried to decide how to describe the latest version of Photoshop, I found myself thinking about the fable from India in which several blind men attempt to understand an elephant. Was the elephant a wall, a spear, a snake, a fan, a tree, or a rope? The elephant is, of course, like all of these. Similarly, I wondered if Photoshop is a program for photographers, graphic designers, website developers, new-media painters, or motion-graphics creators. It is, of course, for all them.
The Adobe Creative Suite 5 is a huge application and many of the components of the suite are themselves gigantic. If you want to know everything there is to know about Photoshop, you'll need to read several very large book and participate in many training exercises. So this review, while it will not be exhaustive might be exhausting.
Resources for learning Photoshop
The two resources I depend on for information ranging from the basic to in-depth training are Adobe's own "television" site and Lynda.com.
Lynda.com is a fee-based site, but some episodes of every training program are free for guests to view. These free episodes are identified by underlines on the segment's title. At the right is one of the Photoshop training programs (there are several, each concentrating on a different aspect of Photoshop) by Michael Ninnes.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) is Now Accessible
Because of limitations of cameras, lenses, film, computers, and paper, we cannot reproduce the same range of shades that the eye can see. On a sunny day you might stand in a sunlit forest clearing and look into the adjacent dense forest. Your eyes will see detail in the area that direct sunlight is reaching, in the shadowed area at the edge of the forest, and in the darker areas that are well inside the forest.
In part, this happens because of our persistence of vision. As our eyes move, the pupils adjust to suit our focal point. Shift your glance from the sunny area to the forested area and, because your eyes quickly adjust, you believe that you're simultaneously seeing detail in both areas. So in addition to the fact that our eyes' dynamic range is greater than that of film or computers, there's also a bit of hocus-pocus going on.
The camera doesn't work that way. It sees everything at once and the scene I've just described would require at least 3 images to include all the tonal detail. One image would need to be exposed for the sunny area, another for the shadowed area, and the third for the dark part of the forest.
That's the concept behind HDR imaging. It seems easy enough: Capture 3 to 7 images and then combine them to create a single final image. That is, it seems easy enough until you try to do it. Besides the difficulty of simply finding the way to combine all those images, there's another potential problem: If your camera wasn't on a tripod, the images won't align properly. And if the camera was on a tripod, another potential problem lurks: If anything in the image moved, you're going to have trouble with the combined file.
That's why I've spent so many futile hours trying to make HDR work only to come away with pitiable results.
Thanks to Lynda.com for the images used in this section. The images are of a California freeway. I have them open in Bridge here. One is exposed for the shadows, one for the midtones, and one for the highlights. Because this is a freeway, the cars are moving. You'll see the obvious problem in just a moment.
I've started in Bridge, where I selected the 3 images. Then I selected Merge to HDR Pro from the menu. This sends the 3 images to Photoshop and combines them as 3 layers of a single HDR image. Had these images been shot with a handheld camera, the process would also try to align them and it's surprising how good the alignment option is.
Here we are in Photoshop with the 3 merged images. You'll see lots of ghost images on the highway as HDR Pro tried to merge the 3 images.
Now it's easy to get rid of the ghosts. Click "Remove ghosts" in the control panel. Then you can choose any of the images to be the winner when ghosts are removed. By default, HDR Pro seems to pick the middle image most of the time, but you should examine the others because you might like the result better. In this case, I selected the image exposed for the shadows.
And here's the result. This is based on photo-realistic settings so the colors are generally correct and there's detail in areas where detail wouldn't be present using any of the 3 individual images.
After a bit of additional work on the image, here's the result.
Fake HDR
It's possible to create a faux HDR effect using just a single image. Here's a photo that I took in San Diego around 2003. It's a low-resolution image by today's standards. The train is a light-rail system that runs from north of San Diego to San Ysidro, across the border from Tijuana.
The image is an OK image. A little flat and somewhat blue because of the lighting. I wondered if adding a bit of hyper-realistic HDR would make the image more interesting.
Here it is on the preview screen. It's considerably more dramatic now. Gritty might be a good description. Whether it's better or not, I'll leave up to you.
And here's the final output version.
Making Trash Barrels Go Away
In Photoshop CS4, Content-Aware Scaling was the big "WOW!" feature. This time around it's Content-Aware Fill/Healing. Here's a picture that I created on the path that surrounds Antrim Lake. I like the image except for the trash barrel on the right. I could crop the image to remove it, but I like the composition as it is. I could use the clone tool to cover up the barrel, but that would take at least several minutes and would probably still be obvious.
Or I could draw a selection more or less around the barrel (precision is unimportant) and choose Content-Aware Fill. Can you see where the barrel was? If you feel that this should be improved, you'll find that a few additional seconds with the clone tool will be all you need.
Eliminating Noise
Thanks to Lynda.com for this image. If you use a high ISO speed to capture an image in a low-light situation, the result will often be luminance noise (gray speckles) and color noise (random dots of color). This image displays both. Earlier Photoshop versions had the ability to reduce this noise, but usually at the expense of sharpness. In CS5, reducing both luminance and color noise has improved dramatically.
You're viewing both of these images at 100%. The resulting normal-resolution image, either on screen or in print, will be substantially better after these 2 types of noise have been tamed.
If you're a photographer, you'll find a lot to like about Photoshop CS5.
Bottom Line: Serious about photography? You need Photoshop CS5.
I remember detesting Photoshop because it had a confusing interface. Over the years, the interface has improved a lot. The program's capabilities fall only slightly short of magic. Last year's content-aware scaling and this year's content-aware fill give photographers the ability to do things that have never before been possible.
For more information, visit the Adobe website.
Alien Skin's Film for Your Digital Camera
Remember film? Every film type had a particular look. Kodachrome was contrasty and yielded bright colors. Ektachome was more neutral. Fuji films did a great job with greens. Kodak's Vericolor was the clear choice of most professional photographers. Then came digital photography and everything was pretty much the same. Alien Skin's Exposure was designed to help digital photographers replicate that special film look and now version 3 is shipping. There's even a 64-bit version for the pros.
Tom Welsh, the architect of Exposure, explains it this way: "Exposure has grown beyond film simulation into a creativity tool, especially with the addition of Lo-Fi and vintage effects. There is carefully researched science under the hood, but we keep the controls simple so photographers can focus on their art."
I'll have a complete review of Exposure 3 on a later program. This is just a first look. Alien Skin says that Exposure 3 in 64-bit CS5 is more than twice as fast as Exposure 2 in CS4 on the Mac and about 30% faster on Windows. Speed is important because any time spent waiting on a computer is wasted.
Exposure makes it possible for you to replicate the look of discontinued films, to perform dark room tricks without the chemicals, and even to make digital images look like they came from old low-res cameras like the Holga or Lomo. Why? Because sometimes artistry is accomplished through images that aren't "perfect".
You start with more than 500 defined presets: Exposure 3 includes filters that make your images look like those captured on early Kodachrome (the film dates back to the mid 1930s), Technicolor, Autochrome, Panatomic-X (remember that great fine-grain B&W film?), and Tech Pan. You can replicate darkroom tricks such as bleach bypass and effects have been added to create vignettes, dust, and scratches if you really like the retro look.
The good news is that if you purchased Exposure 2 in or after April 2010, your upgrade will be free and you shouldn't need to do anything: Alien Skin will send upgrade information by e-mail.
Check back in a couple of weeks for a full review of Exposure 3.
Google Wants to be Your Phone Company
This week Google finally announced that anybody who wants a Google Voice phone number can obtain one. There's a lot to like about the program, a few things to dislike, and a fair amount to be concerned about.
What's to like?
- You don't have to remember multiple phone numbers. Give people your Google number and it will ring one or more of your cell or land-line phones when someone calls.
- If you make international calls, they're surprisingly inexpensive.
- If you want to record a conversation, you can do so with a couple of button pushes on your phone. This is a great feature for recording interviews.
- When a call goes to voice mail, Google transcribes it and sends the text to your e-mail account.
- Google Voice knows who you call. It will integrate with your phone's address book or Google Contacts.
- You can send and receive free text messages.
- You can program Google Voice to send some callers directly to voice mail and to send others to one or more of your phone numbers.
What's not to like?
The big problem is digital delay. When you're communicating by voice (a "phone call" -- does anyone do that these days?) there's a brief digital delay -- about 250 milliseconds -- that can make the call a bit difficult.
What's to be concerned about?
- Because you don't have to remember multiple phone numbers, Google knows all of your phone numbers.
- If you make international calls, Google knows.
- If you want to record a conversation, you'll record it on Google's servers.
- When a call goes to voice mail, Google transcribes it to one of their servers, sends the text to your e-mail account, and archives it.
- Google Voice knows who you call.
- You can send and receive free text messages, which can be read and used by Google to serve advertisements.
- Programming Google Voice to send some callers directly to voice mail and others to one or more of your phone numbers gives Google a clear picture of your social network.
Yes, most of the advantages are also points of concern.
It's "free". How much privacy are you willing to give up? Read more at Google's website.
Short Circuits
Warner Brothers Accused of Thievery
Warner Brothers. That's one of the big companies that likes to sue people they feel are pirating the company's movies and music. Now another company has sued Warner Brothers, claiming the big WB is illegally using its software. In all fairness, the case hasn't gone to court yet and Warner Brothers could easily settle out of court without admitting the thievery. But the irony is rich nonetheless.
Medien Patent Verwaltung, a German company, has filed patent-infringement suits against Warner Brothers in the US and in Germany. According to The Hollywood Reporter, MPV claims that it showed Warner Brothers how it could track pirated films back to their source. MPV did this, the complaint says, at Warner's request. And since then, the suit goes on, Warner Brothers has been using the technology without paying for it.
The suit was filed in the New York Southern District Court. According to the Courthouse News Service: The inventor, Gerhard Lehmann, described the system "in intricate detail" during a September 2003 confidential meeting with Warner Brothers. One month later, Medien says, Warner Brothers asked German film manufacturer TS Provide to replicate Lehmann's invention.
This isn't the first time something like this has occurred. In 2007, the Motion Picture Association of America's goon squad was forced to stop providing a "University Toolkit" because it is based on the Xubuntu operating system, which is licensed under the General Public License. The GPL requires anyone who makes a program based on GPL-licensed code to release the source code and license it under the GPL. The "University Toolkit" was given to universities so that they could spy on students' communications.
It seems to me that if you're going to sue people who you feel are illegally using your materials, you should be uncommonly careful about "accidentally" misappropriating someone else's materials.
Are You Stupid?
That may seem to be a needlessly offensive question, but if you have a phone that's capable of sending text messages, there's about a 50% chance that you're an idiot. Many of us think that it's teens who do stupid things such as send text messages while driving. They do this, we adults think, because their minds haven't yet fully developed. As it turns out, about 1/3 of teens admit to do this. Nearly half of adults admit it.
IF YOU SEND OR READ TEXT MESSAGES WHILE YOU'RE BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A MOVING VEHICLE, YOU ARE A MORON. Sorry to be shouting there, but I'm hoping to get your attention before you kill somebody I know or kill yourself.
The survey results are from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Talking on a cell phone while driving may not be as dangerous as texting while driving, but it's still not a good idea.
According to the survey, nearly half of all teen and adults say that they have been passengers in cars where the driver used a cell phone "in a dangerous way". If you're such a passenger, speak up. Tell the moron behind the wheel that he or she is endangering your life and the lives of others.
If you think it's not dangerous, consider this: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that nearly 5900 people died and more than half a million people were injured because some idiot was distracted by a cell phone while driving.
Twenty-eight states prohibit texting while driving. In a sane world, no state would have to make this illegal because drivers would understand that it's a stupid thing to do.
If you own a cell phone that can send or receive text messages and you must send or receive a text message while you're driving, would you please at least pull over to the side of the road!
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
