I just pre-ordered my copy of Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended. It’s £192.83 for the boxed upgrade including tax and shipping, which they say will be delivered around Friday 30th April. Be aware that currently the link to upgrade to the Extended version is identical to the normal upgrade. I have contacted Adobe about this…

Well I think we can safely say this is a Photographers update and this is the first time that Adobe have hyped up a product launch and I guess its because its the 20th year of Photoshop, either that or they got a new advertising and marketing company that knows what its doing…

So taking a leaf out of Apple’s book, we are going to be getting a month’s worth of videos and hype around all things Adobe. I am already hearing that Premiere Pro and After Effects are getting amazing write ups online. If you skipped CS4 then you are really going to want to get CS5. Not getting will effect the quality of your images… How’s that for a statement.

© Adobe Systems Incorporated 2010

Automatic Lens Correction

You can now quickly and easily remove both barrel, pincushion distortion and also vignetting which will please users of Nikon’s 70-200 F2.8 VR Mk1. This automates something that had to be done previously by hand and Adobe have also added in the ability to share settings online so that its users can eventually populate all lenses with correction settings.

© Adobe Systems Incorporated 2010

HDR Pro

Adobe took a pounding for not producing a better HDR suite in CS4 and they got beaten to the line by the guys at Photomatix. However, they seem to have got their act together and come back with an even more powerful HDR module which I believe is called HDR Pro. If this gets close to Photomatix Pro, then they could see a dramatic downturn in business and I would not be surprised if this feature is shoe-horned into Elements 9 as well just to make sure that any and all competition is blown out of the water.

Content Aware Fill

Now if you haven’t seen the demo’s floating about the web click here. This is going to be a powerful new feature but also a controversial one because of what it might potentially do in terms of removing copyright stamps and digital watermarks etc… I don’t think its a gimmick by any means though and in my view a welcome edition.

Update - Ok, I have had a few days to check this feature out and I don’t think its as good as Adobe are letting on. Don’t get me wrong compared to the alternatives of cloning, healing, selecting, copying, and pasting, its a huge improvement. But I have watched  Katrin Eismann, Terry White, Dave Cross and Julieann Kost demonstrate this new ground breaking feature and the only person to struggle was Dave Cross. Why? Well he used a shot of a building and the content aware fill did not like the repeating patterns that much, which does not surprise me because Photoshop has always struggled with this issue. I am not saying Dave did not know what he was doing, far from it. But what you got was a more real world demo which was refreshing in the fact that it was not as perfect as first made out by the other Adobe Evangelists.

Content Aware Healing

Update - The spot healing brush now contains the same content aware fill feature and this is where I think its going to have more long term appeal. I think being able to fine tune small areas at a time with a brush will suit this technology much better than just doing larger selections and asking Photoshop to replace large chunks of image data.

In conclusion content aware fill will be good for non-linear items found in nature where there is very little repeating patterns. So grass, stone, sand, water, cloud, dense foliage, skies, will all work much better than things like bricks, tiles, stained glass, man-made patterns etc…

Other Features

There will be 64-bit support for the MAC version and I would think we can see up dates for Refine Edge (See Below), Brushes, Camera RAW and whole host of minor tweaks that have not even mentioned. Thats all for now… I will update more later on tonight once the launch has started and link in to both NAPP and Adobe Tv as it happens.

Terry’s Top 5

Update - Adobe’s Terry White demo’s his Top 5 Favourite Features from Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended >

Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2

I had been out scouting a new assignment last week with my little G9 and I still had the images on the SD card. They are perfect for testing the new features and refinements in Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2.

Import & Library Module
The first thing I noticed was that the import module is a lot faster than in the first beta and compared to Lr2 is way faster. The engineers have tightened everything up and it all runs really smoothly. I particularly like the transition effect that happens once the images appear at the end of the import. This combined with better Library Module performance makes using this end of Lightroom a real pleasure. I am a big fan of using the module keyboard shortcuts and jumping from Library to Develop always seemed to have a bit of a delay in Lr2. But nows it gone and scrolling, zooming and navigating all works with no effort at all. They have improved the Flickr output and it will be interesting to see other developers like Smug Mug and YouTube adding to the list of services.

You can Import Video!
The import module now features the ability to import, rate, flag and color code video which in my view is a rushed feature that is trying to compete with Apple’s Aperture 3 Software. Its nice to include the video in the library, but I would really like to see some major functionality including, basic editing, color grading, and the ability to transcode and export video to different codecs and resolutions. Get this right and they have a real game changer which will widen their market share in a big way. Currently if you even want to play a video it pops it out into your default player which really sucks of you are still on Windows Vista Basic… You can just tell that video has been a real after thought.

Tethered Shooting
WOW! I just tried this out an hour ago and I had my Nikon D700 firing images into Lightroom at 5fps and it was coping with it without a hitch. This is much better than Aperture’s tethering capabilities and it just killed the market for 3rd party tethering software. You will not need any other software to shoot tethered. I can also report that when I tested this feature I was shooting via 2 x 5m USB cables joined up with the original USB lead and it all worked flawlessly. Tethering is only currently available for Canon and Nikon cameras, but they will be expanding the range very soon.

Watermarking
Now considering I am in the final stages of creating a training series called “Signature” all about digital watermarking. This is has come just in time for inclusion onto the DVD. On the one hand its a pain in the ass because I have lined up some brilliant work arounds for Lr2 users that wanted better graphical watermarking. But on the other hand the Lr3 improvements made by the engineers will be included as video tutorials. You can even create watermarks and personal brands for slideshows. There is a also new inset feature as well as better control over opacity, size, position, angle, offset, drop shadow and radius. Although some of theses features can only be seen currently in the MAC version of Lr3 Beta2. Sucks to be a PC user right now! Bing!! Sorry…

Develop Module
The luminance slider is now in full “slidey” mode and bloody hell have they knocked the noise out of all my G9 images. This is a major improvement in noise reduction and I will go even further by saying that its now the best noise reduction software out there. Combine that with the details sharpening and you are onto a real winner!! Shooting with the Canon G9 above ISO400 was always noisy in low light or gloomy conditions. Well, now the noise is gone and the detail remains. I especially love the colour noise reduction. I don’t know what tweaks have been done but this is amazing… I would hate to be a 3rd party software developer that makes noise reduction plugins for Photoshop, because Adobe just created a total game changer! Nuff said… Ok, more… I also like the new point to point curve adjustment. If you use Curves in Photoshop like I do, then this is a really sweet edition. Its not there by default, but no matter as long as its there.

Slideshow Module
I have never really used the Slideshow Module that much, but I can see it becoming more useful in the new studio in the coming months. So the fact that you can now fully prepare previews and also brand the slideshow along with the music refinements all ready included makes this a viable option for client presentations. I will play with this further and get back to you on how its going.

Print Module
I mainly use the print to file option and I love the new custom print facility that has two refinements on the rotate to fit and the rotate to cell side of things. Its still not as flexible as Storybook Album Designer, but its a start. Oh!, and it seems that they have increased the maximum print resolution to 720ppi.

Finally…

I feel they are really listening to photographers out there and that Lightroom 3 is going to be the best tool for the working photographer to manage and process their image library. At this moment in time its really starting to make my images look much better than they do in Lightroom 2 and I am seriously tempted to run dual catalogs just to see what the differences will look like between the editions. I know there are few more features to come in the shipping version but currently its a very stable, although some of the adjustment sliders are still a little on the jerky side of things.

What do you think of the Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2? >

You can register an interest at http://cs5launch.adobe.com/ and here is a sneak peek of the new “Content Aware Fill” feature.

Adobe is in a strange position because there are 2 versions of Photoshop. The standard version and the extended version. Yet, since CS4 was released a year or so ago, there has been a dramatic shift between Stills and Video. So will Adobe add video functionality to the standard version of CS5?

What features would you like to see in Photoshop CS5 and do you think it will be what I call a “Photographers Update”? Let me know… >

We are now on version 2.6 and version 3 is currently available on beta and it wasn’t until around the middle of last year that I truly started to appreciate the power of this software and I am really excited about the revisions that will be added to the 3rd version of software. But it was only the other day that I was able to make a subtle, but significant change to my workflow that I notched things up a gear.

© Stuart Little 2010

You see I was never really into using collections before now. I was a folders kinda guy! I would make sure that my image folders were neatly arranged so that I never lost an image but I did lose something else. Creativity! What do I mean? Well by sticking to an evolution of my tried and tested digital workflow. I was missing out a big part of how Lightroom works creatively and it wasn’t until the middle of last year that realised there was a better way of working by using collections and in particular collection sets.

But, I was locked into my existing workflow until the end of 2009, where by I could back everything up and start a fresh. Last Saturday was the first day I got out to take some shots in 2010. It was just for an hour and I thought I had better capture some of the snow before it went away. I need not have worried. It has hung around and only got a bit thicker!

So in the screencast above I thought I would demonstrate how Lightroom can be used creatively and you will also get a glimpse of how I am now working in an organised but creative manner with collections and collection sets.

© Stuart Little 2010

You will be seeing a lot more of Lightroom in 2010. Its going to be the cornerstone of a lot of what we will be doing in the studio as well as Adobe Photoshop of course. Don’t worry though if you only have Adobe Bridge CS4. Much of the same can be done there as well. Maybe with not the same style and finesse. But you will be not too far away. As for Lightroom well, I am over the half way point in creating a training series that covers the essentials and a heck of a lot more… It will be interesting to see which way our new poll swings.

Finally…

If you haven’t already watched the new screencast. Get the popcorn on. Its over 20mins long and covers more of the creative aspects of using Lightroom. As well as non-destructively recovering details in the sky that the RAW file had captured but were not seen by the initial preview. This is a good example of why you should shoot RAW, if you are not already doing so… Enjoy! >

Finally…

Now, don’t just download it and play with it up until the point that the new version is properly released. Try and think what you like about it and also what you do not like about it. Feedback is very important for the software engineers and I will be submitting comments to the Adobe Labs forums in due course. So if you don’t want to do it yourself, then leave your comments and thoughts here about Lightroom 3 and I will gather them up along with my own and submit them to Adobe on your behalf… >

© Stuart Little 2009 - Click Image for Larger Size on Flickr

I shot a wedding a couple of weekends ago and my good friend and fellow photographer Tony Barr kindly came along as 2nd shooter for the day. This shot of Tony was taken whilst we were checking out locations for the wedding couple the day before. So I got Tony to pose whilst I fired off a few shots with my new eZybox.

© Stuart Little 2009

Off Camera Flash Info:

Nikon D700 with Pop Up Flash (Commander)
Nikon 50mm F1.4 – 1/5000th @ F4 ISO 400
Aperture Priority -2EV Exposure Compensation.
1 X SB900 – Camera Right Shot through the diffuser and a 60cm Ezybox with +1.7EV flash compensation.

The light is in a similar position to the shots I did of Jools, couple of weeks ago. But the main difference is that even though it was a cloudy grey day. There was sunlight coming from camera left so I used that as my fill light. However when you get the eZybox in nice and close it gives a beautiful wrap around lighting anyway.

If you want to find out more about Lomography then check out the wiki

Finally…

As promised in the screencast. I have created a lomo effect action based upon my own settings and these will give you a good starting point for your own images.

DOWNLOAD ACTION

In return all that I ask in return is that you post an image with the effect applied onto our Flickr Group Pool, so that we can see the cool ways in which you are using the “Lomo Effect”. Enjoy! >