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Adobe adresses photographers’ Creative Cloud subscription, file legacy concerns

jmeyer — Wed, 29 May 2013 13:27:21 +0000

Adobe has issued a statement addressing photographers’ concerns about the Creative Cloud subscription-only model and the legacy of any work created in Photoshop CC, suggesting the company may soon offer a compromise.

Recognising the “unique needs” of the photographic community, Adobe has announced it is “looking at potential offerings that recognise the photography community – because it is so broad.”

Adobe’s statement comes in response to intense criticism the company has received following Adobe’s 6 May announcement of its next generation of ‘CC’ applications.

Chief among these updates was the launch of Photoshop CC, the latest version of its popular photo editing software, and the revelation that photographers could no longer buy Photoshop in a one-off purchase of a boxed disc or digital download.

Instead, photographers now pay a monthly Adobe Creative Cloud subscription for access to Photoshop CC each month.

Jump to our guide to the 10 most important features in Photoshop CC

Users can then download Photoshop CC to their desktop and use it as long as their Creative Cloud subscription remains active.

A full membership Creative Cloud subscription is £46.88 per month and gives you access to all applications and of course, all updates.

If you own the full Adobe Creative Suite 3 or later versions, this price is reduced to £27.34 per month. For photographers who only want to use Photoshop CC, you can choose the Single App option for £17.58 a month, which is reduced to £8.78 a month if you own Photoshop CS3 or later.

Photographers have raised concerns in the wake of the 6 May Adobe announcement that they will not only lose their software if their Creative Cloud subscription lapses, but they will also lose their work, as files saved in Photoshop CC are not compatible with other software.

“Through discussions with the community, we have heard some concerns around our move to Creative Cloud,” Adobe has responded in a statement sent to press. “Three main themes are coming through:

File access. Customers want to be sure that, if their membership to Creative Cloud lapses, they will still have access to their files.
Photographers, particularly photo-enthusiasts, are looking for a more tailored offering that focuses on their particular needs.
Some customers are not convinced that Creative Cloud is right for them and would rather continue to purchase desktop applications as before.

While Adobe does reinforce in its statement that it has “no plans to change our focus on Creative, we understand this is a big change and for customers who are not yet ready to move, we will continue to offer CS6 products through our reseller partners and Adobe.com.”

With regards to photographers’ concerns about the legacy of their files created in Photoshop CC, the company added: “Adobe completely agrees that customers should have access to their files if they choose to stop their Creative Cloud membership. Our job is to delight our customers with innovation, but there are a number of options open to us here and we expect to have news around this issue shortly.”

Does this latest announcement from Adobe suggest the company could soon offer photographers a way to ensure the legacy of their Photoshop CC files – or perhaps an alternative to the Creative Cloud subscription model?

We will update this story as it develops.

Photoshop CC: 10 things every photographer should know

Ben Brain — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:17:40 +0000

Adobe quietly announced some major changes to its Photoshop platform yesterday, chief among them re-branding the software as Photoshop CC to reinforce its commitment to its Creative Cloud service (which has also been updated with 15 new apps)

But what does this mean for you, the user? Along with new tools and technologies, as well as some key workflow enhancements, the shift to Photoshop CC also brings some long-term benefits like never having software that’s out of date. Below is our list of 10 things every photographer should know about Photoshop CC.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 01

Photoshop CC combines Photoshop Standard and Photoshop Extended. So all Photoshop Extended features, including 3D tools, are included in Photoshop CC.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 02

Photoshop CC introduces the sneak-peaked ‘deblur’ filter that’s been talked about since 2011, which is now revealed as: Camera Shake Reduction.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 03

Camera Raw 8 will include the new features being showcased in the Photohsop Lightroom 5 public beta, ie Advanced Healing brush, Radial Gradient tool and the Upright tool.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 04

Photoshop CC offers integration with Behance, the online portfolio sharing website for creative professional. This integration offers the ability to post directly into your Behance gallery from Photoshop.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 05

Along with the integration mentioned above, Photoshop CC subscribers get free access to the Behance Pro-site.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 06

Intelligent upsampling – in Photoshop CC you will be able to make big prints without compromising edge detail or introducing noise.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 07

Adobe is offering a special subscriber deal of $9.99 for Photoshop CS3 users and above – for the first year.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 08

It looks there’ll be no Photoshop CS7, and Photoshop CC will evolve with constant updates to subscribers. What this means is that there is no longer any need to wait 18 months to two years for an upgrade!

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 09

A perpetual license of Lightroom will still be available as will Photoshop CS6.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 10

You do not need to be connected to the internet to use Photoshop CC. This is a very common misconception. The Photoshop CC software is installed on your computer. However, Adobe will need to periodically check your subscription is current so you’ll need to log on once a month.

Adobe Lightroom 5: the 6 new features you need to know about

James Paterson — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:10:38 +0000

Ahead of the release of Adobe Lightroom 5, announced today, a beta version of the new Adobe Lightroom is now available to download from adobelabs.com for free. Here’s a quick rundown of the best new features in Lightroom 5 and what Adobe says they can do for your images…

NOTE: click each image to see a larger version of the Adobe Lightroom 5 interface

Adobe Lightroom 5 New Features: Improved Spot Removal

Previously the Spot Removal tool has only let you make circular heal points with the tool, but in Adobe Lightroom 5 you can now paint with it like a brush (just like using the Spot Healing Brush tool in Photoshop), which is great news for retouchers.

And if you’re plagued by sensor marks, there’s also a handy new feature called ‘Visualise Spots’ which places a mask over your image that highlights those pesky marks, making them easier to remove.

Adobe Lightroom 5 New Features: Better Lens Correction

The Lens Correction panel now sports automated options that allow you to fix perspective, correct converging verticals and put wonky horizons right. There are three modes that offer different levels of correction, ‘Full’ being the most aggressive.

Adobe Lightroom 5 New Features: New Radial Gradients

A new Radial Filter tool allows you to position circular gradients over your images to focus attention on the subject, which means vignettes can be placed wherever you want, rather than just in the corners of the frame. There are all the usual options to alter exposure, colour and clarity, as well as the softness of the circle.

Adobe Lightroom 5 New Features: New Smart Previews

In Adobe Lightroom 5 you can create ‘Smart Previews’ of your images as proxy versions for making adjustments. This means you don’t have to be connected to the Hard Drive containing the image to alter it. Which will no doubt prove very handy for photographers who need to work on-the-go.

Adobe Lightroom 5 New Features: Book Module changes

The book module now makes it easy to add page numbers and text into your templates. You can also save custom templates with a right-click and quickly make other pages.

Adobe Lightroom 5 New Features: Improved functionality

Alongside these improvements, Adobe have also listened to feedback from users and made over 50 minor improvements to functionality (which it calls ‘Just Do It’ improvements, or JDI’s) in Lightroom 5. These include Full Screen mode by hitting F, the ability to import PNGs, and LAB support for the Histogram.

Advertorial: Canon unveils important update to Project1709 platform

jmeyer — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:03:20 +0000

Canon has revealed a raft of new features and functionality to its Project1709 photo management platform, which promises to offer photographers even greater flexibility with their images.

Key to the Project1709 version 1.1 update is a new feature within the software’s interface that allows photographers to upload their images directly to Flickr from within the Project1709 interface – as well as download images already stored on Flickr.

What’s more, Project1709 users will also be able to comment on Flickr photos from within the Project1709 interface.

Photo management also becomes easier in version 1.1, with new tools for managing your images. The update brings photographers the ability to edit file names, rotate and delete images from within the Project1709 interface, as well as create albums.

Canon has also made improvements to the software’s search functionality, allowing you to filter results by new ANY or ALL tags, helping you find your images in an instant.

The improvements released in version 1.1 stem from user feedback on the beta version of Project1709, released last year, which is now open to all photographers and is the perfect one-stop shop for managing your images.

Users can store, manage, share and now make edits to their photos – and though Canon has developed the cloud-based platform, you can use it no matter what camera you shoot with!

To celebrate the update to Project1709, Canon is offering two lucky Digital Camera World readers a £100 gift voucher for its expert photography course ‘Making The Most Of Your Digital EOS’.

What’s more, two additional winners will receive Canon’s training DVDs ‘The Art Of Seeing’ and ‘Introduction To Photography With Your Digital EOS’.

Click here to find out how you can be in with a chance of winning these prizes from Canon.

Cintiq 13HD: Wacom unveils new ultra-compact pen tablet

jmeyer — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:00:38 +0000

Wacom has boosted its Cintiq line of pen displays, launching the Wacom Cintiq 13HD.

The new compact drawing tablet combines a 13in screen with HD resolution, an adjustable stand and an improved pen for creating directly on the screen.

The Cintiq 13HD can be set up with both Macs and PCs, and Wacom says the Cintiq 13HD’s stand can be used in a choice of four settings – flat, 22°, 35° and 50° and is detachable too

The new Wacom tablet’s signature feature, however, is its HD screen, which should appeal to photographers, image editors and designers.

The Cintiq 13HD’s screen displays 16.7m colours, and the wide-format HD LED display offers a wide viewing angle of 178° and a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.

An improved cordless and battery-free Pro Pen with 2,048 levels of pressure and tilt sensitivity offers image editors more precision and control, Wacom claims.

The new Wacom Cintiq 13HD will be available for £749.99 (incl. VAT) from April 2013 onwards
at Wacom’s eStore and other retailers.

Adobe to stop selling boxed copies of Creative Suite software

jmeyer — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:49:30 +0000

Adobe will cease selling boxed versions of Photoshop CS and the other programs in its Creative Suite software, according to reports.

TechHive quotes an Adobe representative, who confirms that Adobe will now make its Creative Suite programs – which includes Photoshop – available only through digital distribution or cloud service.

The website quotes the rep as saying: “As Adobe continues to focus on delivering world-class innovation through Creative Cloud and digital fulfillment, we will be phasing out shrink-wrapped, boxed versions of Creative Suite and Acrobat products.

“Electronic downloads for Creative Suite and Acrobat products will continue to be available—as they are today—from both Adobe.com, as well as reseller and retail partners. We are in the process of notifying our channel partners and customers, as plans solidify in each region.”

Furthermore, according to Adobe resellers Toolfarm and Softwaremedia the software giant will stop selling boxed copies of Creative Suite as of 1 May 2013.

The move comes as Adobe’s Creative Cloud software subscription service has recorded incredible growth. Adobe claims it receives 8000 new subscriptions for the service every week.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud service offers users access to all of the same software’s the boxed versions at monthly rates, and allows users to receive software updates the moment they’re released.

Via: PetaPixel

Win a Samsung Galaxy Camera just by saying hello to us at Focus On Imaging!

jmeyer — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:46:41 +0000

Come to our stand at Focus On Imaging and you could be in with a chance of winning a Samsung Galaxy Camera.

Future Publishing has teamed up with Samsung to offer readers of Digital Camera World, N-Photo, PhotoPlus and Practical Photoshop the chance to win a 16.3-megapixel, 21x zoom Samsung Galaxy GC100 camera, which offers photographers the instant ability to share or back-up photos through its 3G/4G + Wi-Fi connectivity (and powered by Android).

This contest is only open to readers attending the Focus On Imaging 2013 trade show in Birmingham, which runs from Sunday 3 March to Wednesday 6 March.

How to win

Simply come by our stand – number E32 – and say hello to someone on our team at any time during Focus’s opening hours. We’ll then scan your badge, which automatically enters you into our draw.

We will choose a name at random within two weeks of the conclusion of Focus On Imaging and notify the winner by email.

Get a free disc of our best photography tips and videos

Visitors to our stand at Focus will also receive a free disc packed with our best photography tips, video tutorials, jargon-free advice and much more.

We’ll also have an iPad on hand for visitors to preview our new interactive weekly iPad magazine, Photography Week.

So schedule some time in to come say hello. We’re just a few doors down from the Nikon stand and can’t wait to meet you!

Adobe Photoshop Touch phone app now available for Android, iPhone, iPod touch

jmeyer — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:01:40 +0000

Adobe has announced that a new version of its Photoshop Touch software is now available for iPhone, iPod touch and Android smart phones.

Inspired by the version for tablet devices, the Photoshop Touch phone app incorporates some of the core features of Photoshop desktop photo editing software, such as layers, selection tools, filters and tonal and colour adjustments.

Users can also apply effects and add graphical text with the new Photoshop Touch phone app, and edit images as large as 12 megapixels with layers.

Other features include a Scribble Selection tool, which lets users combine images and a version of the Refine Edge tool.

The Photoshop Touch phone app will also automatically sync images to Adobe Creative Cloud with 2GB of free storage space.
Adobe’s Photoshop Touch for phone is available now in the Apple App Store and Google Play, priced £2.99.

For iOS devices, the app requires iOS 5, iPhone 4S and iPod touch 5th generation; Android phones must run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later.

Below is a short video from Adobe showing the Photoshop Touch app in action.

Photoshop fail in the world’s largest photo?

jmeyer — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:45:31 +0000

Either we are living in an Inception- or Matrix-like dream world, or the world’s largest photo is suffering from a spot of dodgy stitching.

A joint project by BT and photographic firm 360Cities to produce the world’s largest photo was unveiled yesterday, revealing a stunning 360-degree view of London few have ever seen in a staggering 320-gigapixel resolution.

What’s more, the image was produced using just four Canon EOS 7D cameras with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lenses and Extender EF 2x III teleconverters.

The image comprises 48,640 individual frames, which were shot after the conclusion of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, and then stitched together over a period of weeks into a single, giant panorama that would be 98 meters across and 24 meters tall if printed at normal photographic resolution.

However, on closer inspection it looks like the stitching may not have gone according to plan!

Click on the image to see the larger version

Unless our reality is simple a construct of our minds or a computer simulation – or London suffered a catastrophic earthquake that went unreported – it would appear that London Bridge isn’t the only thing that’s falling down!

These buildings in Central London appear to be toppling over in rather dramatic fashion, taking entire blocks with them.

Some of us here at Practical Photoshop will be in London this weekend. We’ll visit this site and report back to you whether it’s actually a flaw in the stitching process (a completely understandable one, given the sheer number of frames) or if the reality we’ve come accustomed to is actually just a simulation.

Original 1990 Adobe Photoshop source code released

scliffe — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:48:20 +0000

In a blast from the past, the Computer History Museum has released the original source code to the 1990 version 1.0.1 of Photoshop with the permission of Adobe Systems Inc.

The Computer History Museum says:

“All the code is here with the exception of the MacApp applications library that was licensed from Apple. There are 179 files in the zipped folder, comprising about 128,000 lines of mostly uncommented but well-structured code. By line count, about 75% of the code is in Pascal, about 15% is in 68000 assembler language, and the rest is data of various sorts.”

The first ever version of Photoshop was released in 1988, and was the demo and first known copy of the software, but was not released publicly. It was developed by brothers Thomas and John Knoll, and was originally called ImagePro before they realised that the name had already been taken. The program was renamed Photoshop, and the name stuck.

After demonstrating the software to Apple and Adobe in 1988, Adobe bought the license to distribute in September of that year. In 1990, version 1.0.1 was released for Macintosh exclusively. It was the fourth ever version of Photoshop.

If you want to get your hands on this piece of computer history, download it here. You can also access the user guide, and a tutorial for this version.

Via: Engadget Source: Computer History Museum