April 03, 2006

15,000-layer Photoshop file

‘Tis the season of gigantic PSDs: Digital painter Bert Monroy sees Kevin Hulsey’s work and raises him a couple of gigs. Bert, a former matte painter at ILM and elsewhere, has been pushing Photoshop since v1.0, and at Photoshop World he unveiled his latest creation: a monster painting that’s 1.7GB (when flat!), comprised of some 15,000 layers, 500 alpha channels, and 250,000 paths. Man… what a testament to Bert’s artistry & commitment to his craft. [Via]
Photoshop handles tasks from creating sub-1KB Web graphics to wrangling files of basically unlimited size, and that makes it tricky for us to ship the app with settings that address all scenarios optimally. The Support team publishes some tips on optimizing performance (Mac/Win), and we’re looking at ways to make it easier to tune the app.
[Update: Tobias Hollerich points out that the site has been "dugg," making it slow to load. The Digg.com entry lists some mirror sites & links to videos of Bert in action.]

Lightroom podcasts, vol. 3

George Jardine has posted a new Lightroom podcast. He writes:

Recorded March 23rd 2006 at the Greg Gorman digital photography workshop in Mendocino, CA. Guests include Greg, with Marc Pawliger, Bryan O’Neil Hughes and George Jardine from Adobe Systems. George and his guests have a casual discussion about the workshop, digital photography workflows, what the students are learning, about the food and wine, and the gorgeous environment for photography here on the Northern Coast of California.

Check it out by searching the iTunes Music Store for Lightroom, or via this link.
[Update: More info and photos are available on Photoshop News.]

Ultrashock PS tutorials; new VP surfaces; more