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Archive for June, 2014

Photoshop CC 2014 – Sony RAW video support

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Richard Curtis | Comments (0)

The 2014 release of Photoshop CC video feature has been enhanced to support the Sony RAW video file as footage. This screen shot is showing RAW files from the Sony F55 video camera.

Photoshop CC 2014 – Canon RAW video support

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Richard Curtis | Comments (0)

The 2014 release of Photoshop CC video feature has been enhanced to support the Canon RAW video file as footage. This screen shot is showing RAW files from the Canon C300 video camera.

Photoshop CC 2014 – 3D printer profile updates

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Richard Curtis | Comments (0)

As part of the Photoshop CC 2014 release, there is support for some more 3D printers for Photoshop. These printer profiles are available for download from the Photoshop.com 3D printing page . As well as local printing to the Makerbot, MCOR, 3D Systems Cube and the Solidoodle, we also support the online printing services from Sculpteo and Shapeways.

#CreativeFriday – Photoshop 2014 – Deep Dive on Linked Smart Objects and Layer Comps

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Richard Curtis | Comments (0)

The 2014 release of Photoshop CC introduced the package facility for objects that contain any linked smart objects, as well as supporting access to any Layer Comps inside the smart object. This feature will offer great flexibility and time saving when it comes to re-using content across your PSD file, as well as an efficient way of packaging up these into a folder structure, ready for distribution. This release also introduced the ability to have Fonts from Typekit follow the document around with anyone that is on the Creative Cloud (30 Day trials also have access to this feature).

Distribution of assets can be achieved with many different technologies, but the Creative Cloud now offers private folder sharing to fully managed and utilise your creative assets, with a way to roll back and forward changes in a 10 day rolling window.

I have put this video together to you you all of these features and walk you through how it all works.

Lightroom 5.5 now available

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Richard Curtis | Comments (0)

Lightroom 5.5 now available

Lightroom 5.5 is now available as a final release on Adobe.com and through the update mechanism in Lightroom 5. The goal of this release is to provide support for Lightroom mobile, additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom.

Release Notes

New Camera Support in Lightroom 5.5

Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark II
Fujifilm FinePix S1
Nikon 1 J4
Nikon 1 S2
Nikon 1 V3
Olympus OM-D E-M10
Panasonic DMC-GH4
Pentax 645Z
Samsung NX3000
Sony DSC-RX100 III
Sony A7S (ILCE-7S)
Sony Alpha SLT-A77 II (ILCA-77M2)

New Lens Profile Support in Lightroom 5.5

Mount	Name
Canon	Sigma 50m F1.4 DG HSM A014
Canon	Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014
Canon	Tamron 16-300mm F3.5-6.3 Dill VC PZD MACRO B0163
Fujifilm	Fujifilm Tele Conversion Lens TCL-X100
Nikon	Nikon 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f3.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM
Nikon	Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED VR
Nikon	Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM A014
Nikon	Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014
Nikon	Tamron 16-300mm F3.5-6.3 Dill VC PZD MACRO B016N
Nikon	Tamron SP 150-600mm F5-6.3 Di VC USD A011N
Pentax	Sigma 30mm F.14 DC HSM A013
Sigma	Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM A014
Sigma	Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014
Sony Alpha	Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC HSM A013
Sony Alpha	Sony Alpha 28-75mm F2.8 SAM

Bugs Corrected in Lightroom5.5

Improved responsiveness in Develop module while Lightroom mobile sync is occurring.
Custom Develop module default settings were not syncing correctly to Lightroom mobile.
Initial rendition in Develop would sometimes appear posterized.
Undo function failed and applied a preset instead.
Scaling looked inaccurate when scaling to 200% in Windows.
Manual slideshows sometimes did not advance to the next slide as expected.
Aspect ratio changed when modifying the crop rectangle and when rotating the crop
Image flips between portrait and landscape after switching orientation while shooting tethered with Leica S cameras.
Fixed issue with Fujifilm X-T1 raw images appearing too bright at high ISO settings when using Dynamic Range 200% and 400%. Unfortunately, this fix may affect the appearance of existing images captured with this combination of settings. It is recommended that you (1) purge the Camera Raw cache via the Preferences dialog, and (2) review images shot at ISO settings higher than 1600 for unexpected brightness changes.
Fixed image quality issue (noisy result) when applying spot healing to floating-point (HDR) images.
Fixed issue with reading lossless compressed Nikon raw files (NEF files) from the camera models listed below. Previously, some images could be read but would appear as random noise, whereas attempting to open others would result in an error dialog. You will need to purge your Camera Raw cache via the Preferences dialog.
- Nikon D1
- Nikon D1H
- Nikon D1X
- Nikon D2H
- Nikon D2Hs
- Nikon D2X
- Nikon D2Xs
- Nikon D100
- Nikon D200

Download Links:

Lightroom 5.5:

Mac – http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5791

Win – http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5792

Post taken from the Lightroom Journal – http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal.

Adobe Kuler panel is now available for Photoshop CC 2014

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Richard Curtis | Comments (13)

The Kuler panel for Photoshop CC 2014 is back ! and better than ever. As well as the ability to create a new theme, you can also find swatches, as well as access your own from your creative identity. If you have created a new swatch using the Kuler iPhone app for example, and synced to the Creative Cloud, then you will see it the next time you login to this panel in Photoshop CC. You can get the new panel from the Adobe Add-ons page on the Creative Cloud web view, or via your adobe.com creative identity. The Kuler panel is easy to find, either type “Kuler” into the search field marked in red below.

Once you have found the plugin, click the icon and you should see the summary page.

Once downloaded, the Kuler panel will be available within the Extensions menu option.

The Kuler panel is made up of “Creation, Explore, My themes” as well as the ability to edit and use them in your artwork. Any swathes that have been added into your creative identity will appear under My Themes.

#CreativeFriday – Photoshop CC 2014 and Focus Area

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Richard Curtis | Comments (3)

The new Photoshop CC 2014 Focus Area is a brand new way to select parts of an image based on the depth of field within an image. The Focus Area is very different from the regular selection tools, these tools tend to work on edge contrast to create the selection. The Focus Area tool will examine the photograph and look for parts of the image in the foreground and isolate those first from layers of Depth of field.

The tool will run in automatic mode initially, but, can be changed later by using the in-focus range slider (marked in Red below).

If the noise level is too high in the background, you can increase or decrease the Image noise level slider. (marked purple).

The output (marked Yellow), of the feature is able to create the following :-

The Focus Area will create a binary result (on the focus plane or not on the focus plane), this can result in a hard mask, the edge can be softened by using the check box (marked in blue). To enhance the output result, the refine edge command can be run and allow you to mark the areas on the cut out to make a more refined selection.

What is the purpose of the Advanced slider – “Image Noise Level”

With the tests that I have made on my own images, this slider is used to tell Photoshop that there are larger amounts of noise in the image and to take this into consideration when making the Focus Area selection. Noise in an image alters the way that blurred parts of the image interact with the sharp areas making difficult to automatically work out where the DOF occurs.

Take this image below

There is no noise in this image and not a large DOF.

Using the Focus Area tool on this image will perform a great starting point, notice how the image noise level is set to auto, and the result is extremely low in this case.