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

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If you want to give you photographs that old vintage movie look, you’ll be pleased to know that you don’t have to go out and buy an old camera – you can easily achieve the same nostalgic look by applying some simple techniques in Photoshop. In this quick tutorial, we’ll be experimenting with colour adjustments, then adding grain and a vignette to give the impression that our picture has come straight out of the 1940s.

Our before shot

How to create a vintage look in Photoshop CS6

01 Add Colour Lookup Layer

Open the ‘color_lookup_before.jpg’ start image via File>Open. Next, click on the Adjustment  layer icon and select Color Lookup in the drop-down menu. All the options to adjust the colours in the image will appear in a separate properties dialog box below.

02 Change the Colours

There are three different tabs from which you can select the alternative colour effects. To give the image a vintage look, switch to the Abstract tab. Then, from the drop-down menu, select Gold-Crimson. You can experiment with alternative effects depending on how you want your final image to appear.

03 Add a Vignette

Next, duplicate the Background Layer and label it ‘Filter effects’. Right-click the Filter effects layer and select Convert to Smart Object. This means that you can add multiple filter effects in a non-destructive way. To add a vignette, go to Filter>Lens Correction and switch to the Custom tab. Under Vignette, change Amount to -60 and Midpoint to +40. Click OK.

04 Add Some Grain

Finally, to add some grain, go to Filter>Filter Gallery and under the Textures menu, select Grain. Increase Intensity to 20 and Contrast to 60. Keep Grain Type on Regular.
Click OK to apply the effect, then save the image as a PSD file to keep the layers intact.

The Photoshop Ruler tool enables you to measure the distance between two points, and even the angle of lines in an image.

Before you use the Photoshop Ruler tool, it makes sense to decide how you want to measure units in an image. Go to View>Rulers. Horizontal and Vertical rulers will appear at the side and top of the workspace. By default, these rulers use pixels as units of measurement.

The Photoshop Ruler tool will use pixels, too. If you’re planning to edit photographs then inches might be a more useful unit of measurement. Go to Photoshop’s Preferences menu and choose Units & Rulers. Set the Rulers drop-down menu to Inches and click OK.

The Rulers along the top and sides will now display measurements in inches. If you click and drag with the Ruler tool, the Options bar’s Width (W) and Height (H) fields will display values in Inches, too.

Open your start image. Grab the Photoshop Ruler tool. Click to place a point at the bottom left of the foreground rock and drag to measure the diagonal line where the rock meets the water.

In the Options bar you’ll see that this line has an angle (A) of approximately 31 degrees and a length (L1) of around 5.5 inches. If you place the mouse on the end point of the Ruler’s line and hold down Alt, an angle icon will appear.

You can now draw a second measurement line from this point and see its angle (A) and length (L2) in the Options bar.

How to straighten horizons using the Photoshop Ruler tool

01 Open the image
When shooting without a tripod your photo’s horizon might be tilted, which can be distracting. You could use the Crop tool to select the image and then drag outside the Crop window to rotate it. The Ruler tool provides a faster way to straighten a wonky horizon. Open your start image.

02 Draw a line
Grab the Photoshop Ruler tool from the Tools Panel. Click to place a point on the shoreline at the left of the image. Drag the Ruler right to draw a diagonal line that follows the tilted shoreline. In the Options bar, the Angle of tilt is 7.5 degrees. You can drag the start and end points to fine-tune the line if necessary.

03 Straighten the image
To make the tilted ruler run level, tick the Straighten Layer icon in the Options bar. This counteracts the 7.5-degree tilt so that it runs horizontally, straightening the shot’s horizon in the process. You’ll need to use the Crop tool to remove any transparent edges created by rotating the shot.

Adobe introduced three new Photoshop blur filters with CS6, which are grouped together at the top of the options in the Blur filter collection. Unlike other Photoshop blur filters, such as Gaussian Blur and Lens Blur, the Field Blur, Iris Blur and Tilt-Shift filters in the new Photoshop Blur Gallery allow you to target the softening effect and restrict it to specific areas.

The aim of the Photoshop Blur Gallery is to replicate some of the effects that can be created in-camera by limiting depth of field either by using a large aperture or by fitting an expensive tilt-shift lens.

This can give the sharp part of an image greater emphasis, subdue distracting backgrounds in portraits, or create the popular ‘miniature’ effect. It’s even possible to adjust the Bokeh (edge effect) of out of focus areas to make the blur look like it has been created optically.

Selecting any of the three new Blur options brings up the Blur Gallery panel on the right-hand side of the screen. From here you can quickly switch between the filters and apply them separately or in combination to create the effect that you want.

The Photoshop Blur Gallery panel has sliding controls that can be used to govern the degree of blur that’s applied, but the majority of adjustments are made using intuitive controls that overlay the image.

Unfortunately, the Photoshop Blur Gallery filters can’t be applied as Smart Filters, so in order to protect your original image it’s essential to create a duplicate layer (by going to Layer>Duplicate Layer or by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+J) that you can work on.

One tip to remember – Masking
When you add blur with the Blur Gallery you essentially create a mask, which can be revealed by holding down M. When you do this, the areas in white are blurred, while the black bits are sharp, and the grey is somewhere in between. This mask can be saved for creating selections by ticking the Save Mask to Channels option at the top of the screen before hitting OK to apply the filter.

Now, let’s take a look at each of the filters in the Photoshop CS6 Blur Gallery and see what they have to offer…

PAGE 1: What is the Photoshop Blur Gallery?
PAGE 2: Photoshop Blur Gallery Filters – Iris Blur
PAGE 3: Photoshop Blur Gallery Filters – Field Blur
PAGE 4: Photoshop Blur Gallery Filters – Tilt-Shift Blur
PAGE 5: Bokeh effects

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You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!

What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don’t require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available. (Special serial numbers are provided on the page for each product download.)

ORIGINAL STORY

Adobe appears to be offering free and legal downloads of Photoshop CS2, the older version of its popular photo editing software, according to a new page on the company’s website.

News of a possible free Photoshop CS2 download came to light when PetaPixel highlighted a new page on Adobe’s website titled “CS2 Downloads“, where people can download its older Creative Suite 2 software, which includes Photoshop CS2.

The CS2 Downloads page is down at the moment, but it was live long enough for fans of the photo editing software to take screen grabs of the page.

From these images (via PetaPixel) you can see that Photoshop CS2 and each of the other programs from Creative Suite 2 is being offered for download alongside a universal serial number for people to use.

However, because the page is no longer working it remains unclear if enthusiastic fans of the software have crashed the site or the page was simply an error on Adobe’s part.

We placed calls to representatives at Adobe and will update this story as more information becomes available.

Adobe CS2 includes Photoshop CS2, InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, Adobe ImageReady CS2 and Adobe Version Cue CS2.

Full installation of Adobe CS2 requires 2.62GB of space, and programs like Photoshop CS2 can also be downloaded individually, as can other Adobe products like Photoshop Elements 4/0/5.0.

With the latest SLRs and compact cameras offering the ability to shoot both still and video footage, photographers and artists can find themselves caught between the two formats. Most of us are used to printing out the final piece, or uploading it to a website.

However, when it comes to video there’s a size issue, and apart from uploading it to YouTube or burning to a disc, there’s really not a great deal of options.

With the latest technology, however, we now have a perfect avenue for these clips, in the form known as a cinemagraph, which blends a still image with moving video to create a picture that is predominately still, with some animated aspects.

The technique is simple. Take a short video sequence, export the footage as stills, then use Photoshop CS6’s new video masking tools to isolate the part of the image you’d like to have animated, and then export the resulting frames in a web-based format.

Our finished cinemagraph!

Part of the beauty of this technique is the surprise factor of having a moving still, but also the ability to apply all the usual enhancements and effects you want to the image to stylise and get the look you’re after.

Cinemagraph tutorial: step-by-step how to make animated photos

01 Trim the video
Go to File>Open and select ‘Cinemagraph_Before.mov’ to open the video in Photoshop. Next, in the Timeline Panel, use the Trim tool to select a section of footage of about two seconds in length. Move the Playhead to the point in the video that you want to use as the still.

02 Apply a filmic effect
Now apply a Curves Adjustment Layer with a subtle S-curve to improve tone and colour, then a Color Balance Adjustment Layer to increase the green and blue to give the image a filmic look. Press Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E to merge a copy of the layers.

03 Apply a mask
Add a Layer Mask, select a black brush, and paint over the balloon to mask the area. Make sure that each of the layers is clipped to the next (see Clipping Layers). Go to File>Export>Render to video and save it as an MP4. Now go to File>Import>Video frames to Layers.

04 Import video layers
Select From Beginning to End, tick Make frame animation, and click OK. In the Timeline at the bottom of the screen click frame 1, hold down Shift and click the last frame. Then, in the top left of the timeline, select Copy frames from the drop-down menu.

05 Reverse the sequence
Select Paste frames from the same menu to paste them after the selection. With the new frames selected, choose Reverse Frames. Select the first and last frames from the reversed selection and delete them. This will help to create a smooth animation.

06 Save for the web
Go to File>Save for Web, choose Adaptive from the Selective drop-down menu, tick the Transparency box and select Diffusion Transparency Dither in the menu below it. Leave the rest of the settings as they are. Click Save to finish. Once exported, the animation is ready to add to your web page.

Photoshop Tip: using Clipping Layers
The basic principles of video enhancement are the same as with images, but you’ll need to make sure that each layer is clipped to the next. You can check this by looking at the Layers Panel to see if there’s a small arrow indicating the clipping on each layer. To clip two layers together, hold down Alt, position the cursor between the two layers, and click.

Adobe has acquired the social portfolio sharing service Behance, the company has announced.

Popular with photographers and designers, Behance will be integrated into Adobe’s new Creative Cloud service.

Financial details of the transaction were not revealed.

Behance boasts over 1 million members and hosts more than 3 million portfolios from photographers and digital artists.

Adobe said its acquisition of Behance accelerates the company’s strategy to bring community features to Creative Cloud.

“When we launched Creative Cloud earlier this year, we committed that we would give members new value on an ongoing basis. Last week, we launched new training features, file synchronisation and sharing capabilities, digital publishing services and significant updates to a number of our tools, including Photoshop,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Adobe.

“Behance will play a key role in Adobe’s efforts to serve the creative world in the years to come and will accelerate our efforts to enable a more open and collaborative creative community.”

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Back in June Adobe had promised to provide Retina support for Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6, and finally the update is available. The update applies to in-app icons and menus as well as actual images and illustrator vector files being edited. If you own a 13 inch or 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro, you can now download the Retina version, which is around 129MB to download. Go and get it for quality graphics!

So now that the dust has settled, indulge us for a moment as we reflect on what we’d like to see in Photoshop CS7.

11 features we desperately want in Photoshop CS7

1. De-blur
The leaked video at Photoshop world that showed a filter capable of rescuing a blurred photo caused a sensation (with some denouncing it as a fake), yet there’s been no word of it since.

2. Tool to overlap or tuck layers
A feature previewed a while ago that allowed you to tuck a layer over or under one another, weaving them in and out.

3. The Old Crop tool
We’ve been using Photoshop CS6’s new Crop tool for a while now and keep waiting for it to click with us, but it’s just not happening. Three reasons why: The crop box looks too similar to the Transform bounding box; we miss the Front Image button; and call us old fashioned but we prefer dragging a crop box rather than having it already there.

4 Keyboard shortcut to alter brush angle
How about a keyboard shortcut for Photoshop CS7 that allows you to rotate your brush tip clockwise and anti-clockwise?

5. Clarity slider/brush/Adjustment Layer in CS
The Clarity slider is one of Adobe Camera Raw’s most useful controls, so why not bring the same functionality into Photoshop CS7? It would be great to have a Clarity Adjustment Layer.

6. Print templates
Everyone has a printer that uses standard paper sizes, so why not include a template feature in Photoshop CS7 that can allow you to print templates such as, say, 3 6×4 inch prints on one piece of A4? How about a dedicated Print Template command?

7. Blend Mode brush
We’d love to see a blend mode brush in Photoshop CS7 that allows you to change the blend mode of different parts of a layer simply by painting over it.

8. Command to open a sequence of images one after another
Let’s say you’ve got a bunch of wedding photos. You don’t want to open them all in one go, so you work on them in batches of ten or so instead. It would be great if Photoshop CS7 had a feature like the Autoloader plugin, which allows you to target a folder then open the files inside one at a time, with the next in the sequence opening automatically each time you close an image.

9. Price drop!
Come on Adobe, we know you produce amazing software, but does it really have to be so expensive? We’ve asked our readers several times what they’d like to see in Photoshop CS7, and this tops every list!

10. HUD for other filters like the Blur Gallery
The intuitive’ Heads Up Display’ in the new Blur and Lighting Effects gallery works like a dream. How about the same display for other filters in Photoshop CS7? Some, like Zoom Blur and Lens Flare (with their tiny square preview box that’s impossible to judge) could really benefit from an update.

11. Reset All sliders button for Adjustment Brush/Graduated Filter tool in ACR
Adobe Camera Raw’s Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter tools always remember the last used settings, which can be annoying if you want to make lots of different adjustments, as you end up hhaving to reset each slider every time. We’ve lost count the number of times we’ve forgotten to reset a slider (the temperature and Color box are regular culprits). Surely a Reset All control isn’t too much to ask for?

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This month, we’re delving into the Seven Wonders of Layers for our main feature. Layers are the cornerstone of most creative Photoshop projects. While Camera Raw and Lightroom are wonderfully powerful tools for teasing out the best possible quality from your photos, they don’t have any layer functionality. But if you want to take the creative process further and combine multiple images into a composite, use non-destructive Adjustment Layers, or add cool texture effects with Blend Modes, you’re going to need to get to grips with layers.

Our latest Creative Projects are packed with layers tips, tricks and advice, too, whether you want to master cool levitation techniques or add a surreal twist to your scenes. We also serve up a stunning digital painting tutorial with our lesson on making a pastel-on paper image.

Our Genius section teaches you the fundamentals of lens correction, batch processing your files in ACR to clean up multiple sensor marks and how to make a fashionable profile montage. We’ll also show you how to master the Crop tool, make abstract wallpaper for your desktop as well as whisking up a cool mystical zoom blur effect for your portraits.

Don’t forget that Practical Photoshop is also available on Apple Newsstand here or in a digital Zinio edition here

We’ve also got a great subscription offer for you, wherever you are in the world. Get the print edition of Practical Photoshop, with a free video disc every month, at a special rate. Just visit here or if you’re in the US or Canada, click here