Photoshop CS5-First thoughts

Yesterday i purchased and downloaded the new version of Adobes Photoshop-CS5, I have been a photoshop user for years and love the programme but recently i have been disappointed by some of the colours and have been using Phase Ones Captures one 5.1.1 which renders the colours much better than photoshop, Adobe announced CS5 a few weeks ago and the big selling point was the content aware feature where the software recognises the surrounding pixels and replaces the cloned item with something to match i.e you remove something from the scene quickly and easily just by drawing around it, I dont normally take stuff from a scene but i did have a couple of images from my recent trip to Florida that were prime candidates for this tool so yesterday i had a play, There are 2 ways to use the content aware feature, Firstly by using the healing brush and secondly by using the lasso tool, I took a Manatee image with a diver in the background and drew around the diver with the lasso tool then hit delete and return, Two seconds later and a message comes up saying there was not sufficient RAM available-Hmm not a good start and shows that the new programme is probably better aimed at 64 bit hardware with plenty of RAM, I had dark corners on the Manatee images and drawing around those quickly removed the dark areas and matched the surrounding areas , So it does work, Today i processed an image of a Curlew with a gull in the far background, I tried to remove the gull with both the lasso and then the healing brush and i must say that you could see where it had been so i tied the normal way without the content aware tool and it was much better so to say i was a bit disappointed would be an understatement, My buddy Pete showed me an image of a night heron that had a couple of twigs in front of it and he had removed them very successfully with the content aware healing brush-you would have never known that they were there so it proves that in some situations its a great tool but its not a gift sent from heaven that will work on every image

Its still early days and i have only had a couple of hours playing with the new CS5, It seems a tad faster to load the images in bridge and with a decent machine i am sure it will fly, There are plenty of videos on you tube that show what the software is capable of, If you already run CS3 or CS4 then the price of the upgrade wont break the bank, The colours are supposed to be improved and yesterday i processed a manatee image in both CS5 and Capture One and they were hard to tell apart, I will have to process a harlequin duck that i took last January and see how that looks as they are the images that CS4 had trouble getting right, As time goes on i will report back on CS5 and give some more views once that i have had a good chance to play with it

Dave

Photoshop CS5 Pricing

Last week when I announced the launch of CS5 here, Amazon.co.uk had it on their site for about £200, wheras Adobe were offering it at £186 for the upgrade version.  So against that I was not prepared to put it on the site here as you could get better deals elsewhere.

Now Amazon have matched, so this is as good as any at the moment.

Link here for either full versions or upgrades, in Windows or Mac.




Martin

Adobe launch Creative Suite 5 today

Later today, in about four hours time, Adobe launch the new Creative Suite 5. For most of our readers that means a new version of Photoshop CS5 might be of interest.

I will certainly look forward to it and judging by the some of the early feature releases, then I think this will be a good update.

I am expecting Adobe's handling of the Canon RAW files to get better.  The engine they have used in previous versions and Lightroom have not been good in my opinion, certainly on the later Canon models.  However, I have recently had a quick play with Lightroom 3 beta 2 and the files look pretty good with the 7D.

I will do a more comprehensive blog on LR3 beta 2 when I have had some more hands on time with it.

CS5 will be launched as a standard or extended product, and either in full version or upgrade variant.

If you have CS2 or newer, you can get away with the upgrade.  Older versions will see you shelling out around £600 or so.

Now on to pricing, which is where I start to get far more vexed about it.

In the US, the upgrade is scheduled to be $199, whereas with around a 1.5 $ to £ we pay....wait for it.  Roughly the same.

But if you think that is bad, wait for this.

You can buy the boxed version with a DVD, delivery, cardboard etc from Adobe for £186, or you can download it for £192.

Now maybe I am naive, but I would have thought that logic says that downloading would be cheaper.

Anyway, it is not due to ship until early to mid May.  I will wait until it has been out a couple or three months so that the early un paid 'beta testers' can find the bugs.  Certainly, CS 4 had some pretty serious problems with some aspects on launch.

Martin

Tips and Techniques - Sharpening

Well having read lots of questions about sharpening, and seen lots of problems with digital sharpening on prints, web images and digitally projected images I thought it was about time I did a 'Techniques and Tips' tutorial.

Before I start I need to issue a health check - there are many many ways to sharpen digital images - I know I have used many different ways to get to where I am now.

This is my way - it works for me. If your way works - great, stick with it but if it doesn't then here is an option for you to consider.

Before we start, lets just consider workflow.

I review my image with Breezebrowser Pro, check out link for Dave's review last month, using the view in HQ mode to see if the image is a keeper or bin fodder.

Once I have decided what I want to keep I convert the .cr2 file to a 16bit TIF - always. Not jpeg, not 8 bit.

I then post process, currently using Adobe Photoshop CS3. The image is generally still at original size unless I am doing a quick and dirty for a web post or something.

So global changes in the RAW processing, local changes using adjustment layer masks for levels, curves, sat, and selective colour.

Then I save the file as my master.

Now the next choice is what form of output do I go for. Once I have decided I will then crop or resize the image. I may, albeit rarely, run a bit of localised noise reduction using a layer mask in a separate layer and then only attack the noise areas, certainly not the main subject such as a bird, to avoid loss of detail.

Now I think about sharpening.

So I will show some quick screen grabs to illustrate.

Take your master, save as a separate file and flatten any layers that you have to help make the file size more manageable.

In the layers pallette, drag and drop the background layer onto the 'Create a new layer' icon at the bottom left. This will give you a duplicate layer. On that bottom row of icons, you will also see a 'Add Layer mask'.

Click that and you will see a small white rectangle next to the duplicate layer.
Click back on the duplicate layer thumbnail, next to the new layer mask. This will ensure that the sharpening changes you make are being applied to the image and not the mask.

Then select Filter >Sharpen > Unsharp mask.

Set the zoom at 100% if you are sharpening for web/digital projection and 50% if printing. For the former, I would use about 50%, 0.3 and 0. I then do this a few times until it is just oversharpened in the window. Then click OK.

Now on the full screen image at actual pixels, so Zoom, then actual pixels to get that, I then modulate the opacity of the layer using the percentage slider to fine tune the sharpening to exactly where I want it. If there are slight halos, I look to slide back until they have gone.

However, if they don't totally go, then don't fret - more later.

The next thing is I then click on the layer mask we added a bit ago, then select the paint bucket tool and fill the layer mask with black paint and all the sharpening disappears. Huh? I hear you say.

Stay with me.

Then click the \ key, select the paint brush tool, set the colour to white and start painting those areas of the subject you want sharp, and only those areas. The area you are painting will show as red so you can see where you have been. Just toggle the \ key on and off as you require to see the effects.

Complete the image and check. Use the opacity slider just to re verify you are happy with the level of sharpening.

If you have any halos, you can actually paint then out again, by selecting the brush, colour black, set the brush to a small and hard setting and paint the halos into history.

Make sure you paint sharpening onto any areas of the scene that you think needs to be sharp.

Now I have shown a Sanderling here. I only want the bird and the sand that is in the line of the DOF in focus. If I sharpen the background, I might induce noise or sharpening artefact's, so this method will allow me to keep that creamy smooth. Particularly important when I am making A3 + prints.

Also remember you can vary the levels of sharpening that you give an image across it by varying the levels of masking. If you have set the sharpening for one area at the optimum level, but you want a some but not as much in another area, then set the opacity of the brush tool to 50% or whatever is appropriate for your image and paint the sharpening out.

This might sound complicated, but once you have done it once or twice, it comes very quickly.

Now as I say, this works for me and if you have your own pet method, then do stay with it. But I have found I can avoid inducing or increasing noise, I can control the halos, only that part of an image that I want is sharpened.

if you try this, lets us know how you get on.

Scott Kelby shows a number of different ways to sharpen in his books that you might also like to look at.

Update: Replaced the last two images as the original ones showed you how to nicely sharpen the background and not the subject - apologies for the confusion

Martin

News - Adobe Photoshop CS4 Update

Adobe have announced an upgrade for CS4. It covers some major bugs like the clone/healing brushes being very slow. I downloaded it today and now works perfectly-Thank you Adobe-Full details are on Rob Galbraiths site.

Reviews - A good read for Photoshop CS4 users

If you buy the latest greatest Camera bodies you are normally forced to up grade various components to go with it. Like software and even your PC to work with the new programmes. This is something I had to do when I bought the Canon 1D3,To open the RAW files in Photoshop I had to buy the new CS3 as I prefer Photoshop to Canons DPP software, I could have opened the RAW files in DPP then converted to Tiff and then opened in CS2 but I like to work on a RAW not a Tiff so I purchased Photoshop CS3 and then found that my PC was too old for the new software so ended up with a new Dell-A lot of extra money on top of the Camera body, Now moving over to Nikons new bodies i purchased in advance from Adobe the new Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom programmes, CS4 is not that different to CS3 but it does have one or 2 nice new features tucked away in the ACR engine,The adjustment brush for one, Now I am the first to admit i am not really into processing and keep it to a bare minimum,I always try to get it right in camera so basically my workflow involves adjusting levels,Curves,Saturation and sharpening along with cropping and levelling if needed,So i have £500 software and use 2% of it, So i decided that now is the time to learn how to use the product more just in case I need to, After looking around the shops and forums one book kept coming up and that suit my needs-Photoshop CS4 for Nature Photographers-'A workshop in a book' By Ellen and Josh Anon, I purchased it from Amazon and for the last week or so have been going through it,The thing that I like is that it comes with a DVD that lasts about an hour and shows you how to set up 'Bridge' and runs through the new features found on CS4 over CS3,By watching the DVD you can clearly see how to do things and its done it a very simple manner-perfect for me as I hate it when people who know what they are doing write stuff like everybody would know how to do it,The book has lots of images of before and after and what the screen should look like as you are doing things-very layman's terms. It's priced here in the states at $39.99 but on Amazon its much cheaper-A good read and perfect for the Nature Photographer who is trying to get his/her head around Photoshop CS4-Now just need to get one for Lightroom 2

Dave