1 Dec 2019

Wow! Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, & Photoshop for 2020

There's a lot of new magic from Adobe and its 22,000 employees. I've been trying to digest information from the 2019 edition of Adobe Max in Los Angeles that was held at the beginning of November. Several new applications made their first appearance and hundreds of improvements have been added to the nearly 30 Creative Cloud apps. Today we'll take a look at the photo applications which are part of Creative Cloud but are also available in Adobe's $10/month photo application.

I'm limiting this week's report to just the photographic applications because trying to include the entire Creative Cloud suite just isn't possible in the time available. After all, we're dedicated to covering all the news that fits. So let's get on with it .....

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New for Mobile (Photoshop Comes to the IPad!)

You might expect information about the mobile applications to follow what's on the desktop, but not this year. Photoshop is now available for IPad users, a year after Adobe announced at Max 2018 that they were working on it. Don't expect every desktop feature to be in a version 1.0 release on the IPad, but do expect to be surprised by what Adobe's developers have done to make Photoshop run on a tablet.

Don't plan to use the mobile version of Photoshop for any production work, particularly if the work includes typefaces. That's because opening a file on the IPad can cause typeface substitution even if the typeface being used is one that's included in Adobe Fonts.

An image created on the desktop system will have a new option for saving locally and in the cloud. The cloud-based image has a different extension, "psdc" instead of "psd" and both will appear in the desktop-based instance of Photoshop.

The image I used for testing had a photograph with a text overlay. When I opened the file on the IPad, everything looked right until I attempted to edit the text. The text switched to a generic-looking typeface and I was unable to find a way to get the typeface used to create the image back. After exiting the edit on the IPad, which automatically saves changes to the cloud, I re-opened it on the desktop. A warning told me there was a problem with the typeface and offered the option to "update" the typeface. Choosing "No" left the typeface from the IPad in place. Choosing "Update" left the typeface from the IPad in place. Apparently additional development is needed here. The only way to restore the typeface on the desktop involved opening the file, selecting the text, remembering which typeface was used, and selecting it. The result was the same regardless of whether I used an Adobe typeface or a typeface from another source.

The mobile version shines in compositing, though. I started with a sample image from Adobe, removed the background, and added a photo taken in Photoshop with the IPad..

So Photoshop for the IPad 1.0 is an outstanding start but it's still a version 1.0 application. In general for Adobe "version 1.0" tends to mean "proof of concept". Adobe has shown that moving Photoshop capabilities to a mobile device is possible. The next several years will be spent refining and improving the application. And by this time next year Adobe will also be ready to introduce Illustrator for the IPad.

See Development: Adobe is Agile in Short Circuits for information about why seemingly unfinished products are released and why it's the better way of doing things.

New to Lightroom

Lightroom on the desktop can fill in blank areas that often occur when panoramic views are created from multiple images. More about that in a moment because Lightroom Classic also has this ability.

The Lightroom home screen on the desktop has a new section of guided tutorials. The tutorials help users become better photographers by learning more advanced skills right in the application. You'll also find examples that show how professional photographers edit their photos. These are called Interactive Edits and allow the user to download the photo used to practice step by step. Adobe's Terry White discussed the tutorials at Adobe Max.

Photoshop Elements users who want to experience the power of the professional applications finally have a way to migrate catalogs from the Elements applications. Note that this works only with Photoshop Elements catalogs from the 2019 and 2020 versions.

New to Lightroom Classic

Raw images, even from phone-based cameras, are huge and many people you want to share an image with may not have a way to open a raw file. Lightroom has always had an export option and users can create their own presets. You might have one preset that limits a file to 1000 pixels on the long side for use in emails and another that exports images that are 2048 pixels on the long side for Facebook. Professionals may have option for exporting larger or even full-size JPEG or TIFF images. If you need to create images in several sizes, the export process can be cumbersome. The preset options still exist, but now the Export dialog allows users to select multiple Lightroom and user presets to export multiple copies of each image.

Each new version of Lightroom Classic adds support for new cameras and lenses. Approximately two dozen new cameras are now supported. This also applies to Adobe Camera Raw. There's also a Sensei feature that patches the edges of panoramic images. Even when the photographer places the camera on a tripod, sometimes the top and bottom edges will be uneven. Sensei can fill in the blanks automatically. This works best, of course, when the area being replicated is relatively uniform — a sky with clouds, water, and grassy areas are ideal.

New to Photoshop

It's uncommon for a feature to show up in Photoshop Elements before it appears in Photoshop so I was surprised to see a single "select subject" button in the 2020 edition of Photoshop Elements, which I described in the 3 Nov program. It was no surprise when this capability came to the 2020 version of Photoshop. It's a more complete and complex implementation: The user can draw a rectangle or irregular shape around an object and tell Photoshop to select it but you can also just have Sensei find the subject and select it. I selected four images to test with the process.

The image on the left is the original with the selection as created by Sensei. The image on the right is what Sensei selected with the background dropped out. The gray checkered background is what Photoshop uses to show transparent areas.

My first test image was a cupcake on a white cloth in front of a black background. I selected this image to test because I knew that Sensei would get it exactly right. The cupcake and the leaf were isolated properly and Sensei even got the shadow in the lower left correct.

It's important to note here that I have done no edge refinement. Each of the images could be improved by using the edge refine function. The intent here is to show the starting point that Sensei establishes without any assistance from the user.

The next image is an iced cake on an orange plate. I had expected Sensei to select the cake, the fork, and the plate but instead the selection was just the cake, part of the fork, and a bit of the plate. The user would have two options with this photograph: Select just the cake and use the clone tool to remove the fork or expand the selection to include the plate. Either of these modifications would take only a moment to complete.

The third image, a relatively low resolution photo of a barbershop quartet against a red curtain background looked like one that would be challenging and it was. Sensei did a better job than I expected and identified far more of the subject than I expected while being fooled by less of the background than I thought. This is an image that would require some work, but Sensei gives the user an outstanding starting point.

I always try to select one image that I believe will fool the artificial intelligence, in this case a photo of a cat on a bed. I expected the AI to be fooled by some of the transitions, but it got them exactly right. This photo, more than the others, would need some edge refinement because of the cat's fur, but Adobe essentially nailed edge refinement several versions ago and finishing the selection would be quick and easy.

What else? In the 2019 edition of Photoshop, the default operation for resizing some items was changed to maintain proportions. In earlier versions, maintaining proportions required holding down the shift key. The new feature didn't apply to everything, though, so users had to remember whether they needed to press the shift key or not. This time around they got it right and the Transform option retains proportions consistently. The development team didn't stop there, though. For two decades it's been essential to hold the shift key to keep proportions, so the control's operation has been turned over to the user who can now choose whether to use the shift key to maintain proportion or to turn the feature off. You'll also find improvements in the Properties panel and the Transform Warp control.

Looking to the future Adobe chief product manager Scott Belsky noted the current problem with confidence in the legitimacy of photographs and video. Adobe's applications place the ability to manipulate photos and videos in anyone's hands and not everyone tells the truth in words, images, or motion pictures. At the Max conference in November, Belsky said it's a problem that needs to be resolved.

 Photographers will find a lot to like in the 2020 apps

Subscribers to the $10/month photography plan get all these features and more that there's just not time or space to get into. Those who subscribe to the full Creative Cloud program benefit from other new applications such as Fresco, improvements to existing applications such as Audition and the video suite, and new features and enhancements to Acrobat. Plan on spending some time to investigate what's new.
Additional details are available on the Adobe website.

Short Circuits

Why is Microsoft Support Sometimes so Poor?

As frustrating as it is when something goes wrong with Windows or a Microsoft application, the frustration is often made worse by clueless responses from Microsoft support.

Here's an example: My preferred application for opening JPEG files that are in email message or when I click them in a Windows Explorer listing is IrfanView, a small application that opens quickly. When I need to edit a JPEG image, I'll already have the application I want to use open but I don't want to wait for a large application to open when I just want to view an image. I had set the default application in Windows to IrfanView but then the operating system started opening a dialog box to ask which application I wanted to use every time I double-clicked a JPEG file. There's an option box "Always use this app to open ,jpg files" and I always clicked it.

But the inappropriate response continued to be the norm. So off to answers.microsoft.com to see if I could find a solution. Someone had asked the question and 155 people had clicked I have the same question. The Microsoft Agent/Moderator characterized the problem as "odd". Well, thanks for stating the obvious. The agent then suggested booting to safe mode to see if the problem persisted, then recommended creating a new user account to see if the problem existed there.

Eventually the agent suggested going to Default Programs in Settings, but the user had already done that.

In the meantime, the user had created a new account and found that opening JPEG images in that account worked as expected. The agent recommended using that secondary account instead. Users who have a lot of applications will lose most of their settings if they abandon their account and start using another. This is not an attractive solution for most people.

Then a Windows user suggested this: Go to Settings > Apps > Apps & Features. Click on Photos and select Advanced. Scroll down and click on "Reset". This is a solution he found in Windows 10 Forums. After resetting, the user can then re-establish the preferred application as the default. No need for safe mode. No need to create a new account. No need to spend hours moving files and reconfiguring programs. Just a few clicks and done.

So keep other resources in mind when you have a problem. Microsoft Support sometimes provides the right answer, but usually after taking the user through several unnecessary steps. Other good resources include Windows 10 Forums, Windows Report, SuperUser, Ten Forums, and Bleeping Computer. Just because Microsoft made the operating system doesn't mean that Microsoft provides the best support for the operating system.

But wait ...

Having grumbled about Microsoft, it's important to also say that sometimes they do a marvelous job. Here's one example: In mid November, Microsoft Office 365 applications displayed a message to tell me that there was a problem. The problem was that the account was due for renewal. I took care of that but later the same day the message appeared again. American Express had confirmed the payment, so I thought that everything would be fine the next day.

It wasn't. Microsoft's automated help system was useless and then I was offered an option to chat with a representative. The first person I spoke with in the billing department had me try some basic steps, including logging out of the application and logging back in. That didn't fix the problem, so the technician asked me to wait while she referred the connection to a support technician.

The support technician collected all the pertinent details quickly and then asked if she could connect to the computer using LogMeIn. She examined various Office 365 settings and some Windows settings, then launched a command prompt as Administrator, ran several complex commands, and fixed the problem. So there you have two examples, one bad and one excellent.

Development: Adobe is Agile

Some Adobe users are annoyed by the constant release of new features, some of which seem not to be quite ready. Take Photoshop for IPad. It's not a fully baked implementation, but pushing an early release out has advantages for users and for developers.

Users can see what's coming and then provide feedback to Adobe so the developers aren't working in a vacuum.

Two primary approaches exists for software development: Waterfall and agile. Evidence suggests that Adobe has developed the agile methodology.

• The traditional (waterfall) approach usually involves comprehensive project specifications, a development and testing phase, and product release. One problem with this approach is that if the development team has misunderstood what the users want, release is followed by catastrophic failure.
• Agile is a term that describes several processes that all aim to release "deliverables" quickly. Deliverables are program capabilities that can be used even if the entire project is incomplete.

One advantage of agile is that failures occur early in the process. If users condemn a new approach an unusable, the development team can begin work immediately to address the problem. New features can even be removed if they prove to be unpopular, something that can be accomplished in a waterfall development system only by scrapping the entire project and return to the beginning.

So the primary difference is that waterfall's goal is to get everything right the first time and agile's goal is to release updates quickly so that they can be modified an improved. Software, particularly when applications need to work on multiple platforms is sufficiently complex that the likelihood of any development team's getting everything right the first time approaches zero.