Julieanne Kost's Blog

If you have recently updated to Creative Cloud, here is an updated list of my 68 favorite new  tools, feature enhancements, and productivity improvements since Photoshop CS6. Have fun!

1/50 Refinements to the Crop Tool

2/50 – Making Nondestructive Adjustments using Liquify in Photoshop CC

3/50 -Applying Non-destructive Field, Tilt & Iris Blur Filters in Photoshop CC

4/50 – How to Add Realistic Spinning Motion Blur Effects using Spin Blur in Photoshop CC

5/50 – Using Path Blur to Add Motion Blur Effects Along a Path in Photoshop CC

6/50 – Re-Editable Rounded Rectangles in Photoshop CC (Live Shapes)

7/50 Disabling Photoshop’s Properties Panel from Auto Showing on Shape Creation

8/50 –  Path Creation and Selection Improvements in Photoshop CC

9/50 – Upright Perspective Corrections in Camera Raw for Photoshop CC

10/50 – Sync Upright’s Numeric Transforms in Camera Raw

11/50 – The Radial Filter in Camera Raw in Photoshop CC

12/50 – The Graduated and Radial Filter’s New Brush Feature in Camera Raw in Photoshop CC

13/50 – The Advanced Healing Brush in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CC

14/50 – Additional Secrets of the Advanced Healing Brush (Spot Removal Tool) in Adobe Camera Raw

15/50 – Using Adobe Camera Raw as a Smart Filter  to Create a High Dynamic Range ( HDR) Image

16/50 – Setting Default Type Styles in Photoshop CC

17/50 – System Font Matching and Sub Pixel Rendering in Photoshop CC

18/50 – Typekit Font Matching in Photoshop CC

19/50 – Font Search, Instant Type Preview and Typkit Features in Photoshop CC

20/50 – Camera Shake Reduction as a Smart Filter in Photoshop CC

21/50 – The Crop Tool, Workflow Options and Image Size in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CC

22/50 – Workflow Presets Now Available in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CC

23/50 – New Save Image Options in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CC

24/50 – New Image Sizing Options in Camera Raw in Photoshop CC

25/50 – Soft Proofing Now Available in Adobe Camera Raw 8.1 for Photoshop CC

26/50 – Improved Image Size and Smart Sharpen Technologies in Photoshop CC

27/50 – Linked Smart Objects in Photoshop CC

28/50 – Converting Embedded Smart Objects and Packaging Linked Files in Photoshop CC

To quickly change the size of the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw, Control -click (Mac) | Right -click Win drag left/right to decrease/increase the size of the brush. Add the Shift key and drag left/right to decrease/increase the Feather value.

These updates include support for 24 new cameras and 57 new lens profiles, as well as assorted bug fixes (click here to see the entire list).

Lightroom 5.7 now supports the Collaboration and Feedback features found in Lightroom mobile and the Lightroom web interface including the ability to view comments and likes from Lightroom web. More specifically:

• Synced collections now show a more prominent share button at the top of the Toolbar in the Lightroom desktop app.  This allows you to quickly share your synced collection with friends, family, and clients using Lightroom web (http://lightroom.adobe.com).
• Comments and likes left on Lightroom web now sync to the Lightroom desktop catalog.  Comments and Likes will be shown in the “Comment” panel for synced collections.
• Images with comments and likes will display a badge indicating that there are comments and a colored badge to indicate that there are unread comments.
• Additional details on the new Lightroom 5.7 can be found here.

The ACR 8.7 update for CC includes HiDPI support on Windows.

• Additional details on the new ACR 8.7 features can be found here.

Camera Raw has a new button designed to display a per-panel preview that is applied directly to the main view of the image. Clicking this button will reset the settings in the selected panel to their defaults. Clicking it again will reset them to the previous settings. Or,  use the shortcut Command + Option + P (Mac) | Control + Alt + P (Win) to toggle the preview.

Image with per-panel preview “Showing Current Settings” (modifications made to the HSL/Grayscale panel are visible in the image area).

Image with per-panel preview toggled “visible panel set to default settings” (the HSL/Grayscale panel is set to the default settings).

Although the preview behavior might appear to look the same as it did in previous versions, this new button actually works a bit differently “under the hood”. Instead of simply showing and hiding the settings in a panel, this button actually resets the panel (clicking the button again restores the previous settings).
So, you might be asking why did we change the per-panel preview behavior? Well, since Camera Raw is not a database program (like Lightroom is), it can’t keep track of different “states” that a panel might be in. This means that in previous versions of Camera Raw, if you had toggled off the preview state of a panel, and then clicked “Done” or “Open Image”, Camera Raw would apply the slider values—even if the preview was turned off for that panel. Therefore, what you saw in Camera Raw may not have matched the resulting file. As you can imagine, when this mismatch occurred, it was not only confusing to the customer, but also unacceptable to the engineering team.
With this release, I believe the engineers have provided us with the best of both worlds; we can still use the new Before/After features (those are completely unchanged), as well as have an improved per-panel preview as a standalone feature.

Camera Raw can now display a before/after Preview (with side-by-side and split-view support) to compare your edits to the original. The Preview check box in earlier versions of ACR has been replaced by three buttons in the bottom-right of the ACR main dialog. From left to right, they are Mode, Swap and Copy:

• Click the Mode button to cycle through left/right and top/bottom side-by-side and split-view modes.

• Click-and-hold the Mode button to bring up a popup menu for directly choosing Preview modes and accessing the Preview Preferences (the Preview Preferences support customizing the Preview modes used for cycling as well as some drawing options including divider and pane options).

• Tap Q to cycle through the Preview modes.

• Click the Swap button to swap Before/After settings.

• Tap P to swap Before/After settings for the primary selected image only.

• Shift + P to swap Before/After settings for all selected images.

• Click the Copy button to copy the After settings to the Before settings. This is useful for establishing a temporary “checkpoint” for your image editing session.

• Option + P (Mac) | Alt  + P (Win) to copy After settings to the Before settings for the primary selected image only.

• Option + Shift + P (Mac) | Alt + Shift + P (Win) to copy After settings to the Before settings for all selected images.

• When making changes to images, the changes can only be made to the “after” image and the slider settings (in the panels) will always reflect the “after” image settings.

• The standard single-image view always shows the “after state”.

• Zooming and panning on one view will automatically zoom and pan the other.

Note: while tapping the Q key will cycle through all of the Preview modes in Camera Raw in Photoshop, I primarily use the same view 95+% of the time. So that I don’t have to cycle through so many different options, I click-hold the Mode button to display the pop-up menu for Preview Preferences. Unchecking all but one of the Preview modes allows me to tap the “Q” key to quickly toggle my Before/After Left Right view on and off.

The Red Eye tool can now correct bright pupils in animals. Select the tool and, in the Red Eye Removal panel, Select ‘Pet Eye’ from the drop down menu to locate and fix pet eyes. You can also automatically add catchlights and drag to reposition them.

The Grain effect in Camera Raw now varies from image to image to facilitate editing time-lapse and video frame sequences.

The Histogram is now interactive in Camera Raw. Instead of selecting the sliders in the Basic panel, simply click and drag on the Histogram to adjust the Blacks, Shadows, Exposure, Highlights, and Whites. The video below demonstrates how.

In addition, Control -click (Mac) | Right Mouse -click (Win) within the Histogram to enable Lab color readouts, even when the Workflow Options are set to another color space (such as Adobe RGB). Note: the context menu can also be used to toggle the shadow, highlight, and gamut clipping warnings.

Discover all of the new refinements made to the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw including the ability to reposition brush adjustments in the video below.

In addition, these shortcuts will help when using the Adjustment Brush:
• Command + Option -drag (Mac) | Control + Alt -drag (Win) an Adjustment Brush pin to duplicate the pin.
• Option -click (Mac) | Alt -click(Win) to delete the pin.
• If you prefer, Control -click (Mac) | Right Mouse -click (Win) displays both options – to duplicate or delete a pin.
• Control -click (Mac) | Right Mouse -click (Win) on the pin to access the option to “Reset Local Correction Settings” from the context menu. Or, use the fly-out menu to choose “Reset Local Correction Settings” – whichever is faster for you.

When photographing in low light, shadow areas within an image can appear to have “splotchy” areas of color. Watch the video below to see how to remove this low-frequency color mottling using the new Color Smoothness adjustment slider in Camera Raw.

Jeff Tranberry has been very busy creating, curating and updating resources to help answer frequently asked customer questions about the transition from Photoshop CC to the 2014 Release of Photoshop. He found that the majority of questions focused around “Where’s my Stuff…” Click here for the answers to questions such as:

Where are my settings & workspaces?

Where are my presets?

Where are my custom panels?

Where are my 3rd party plug-ins?

Why do I now have two versions of Photoshop installed?

In addition, if you want to know more about Photoshop CC 2014 and HTML5 Compatible Extension Panels, click here.

Camera Raw in Photoshop CC now includes the ability to select RGB, CMYK and LAB ICC profiles to soft proof images. To select a profile, click the workflow Options (accessed via the blue hyperlink at the bottom of the Camera Raw window) and in the Color Space section, choose the Space from the pop-down menu. Once a profile is selected, Camera Raw displays a “soft proof” of that image. In addition you have the ability to choose either Perceptual or Relative as your rendering Intent and can choose whether or not to Simulate Paper and Ink. Note: there is not an option for Black Point Compensation because it is always enabled in Camera Raw. In addition, Grayscale color profiles will only appear in the Space popup when processing a monochrome image or when converting a color image to grayscale. And finally, when using a Lab or CMYK color space, the histogram and color readouts will change accordingly. Check out the details in the video below:

Note: For accurate results, monitor calibration is a must! In addition, there may very well be some colors that simply aren’t reproducible on a monitor that can be printed and vice versa.

There are two choices in the Image Sizing area of the Workflow Options in Camera Raw that I didn’t understand the difference between: Width & Height and Dimensions. Well, thanks to Eric Chan, now I know!

• Width & Height: One would use this option to resize using both the image width and height. The width of the resized image will be limited to the unit specified in the “W” field, and the height of the resized image will be limited to the unit specified in the “H” field. It’s like you’re setting a bounding rectangle for the image to fit inside of (while maintaining the aspect ratio of the image).

• Dimensions: This option is similar to the “Width & Height” described above, but it disregards the image orientation. That is, the longer edge of the resized image will be limited to the larger of the two specified units. Similarly, the shorter edge of the resized image will be limited to the smaller of the two specified units.

In addition, when changing image size, a new option to change based on Percentage is available in the drop down menu.

As many of you know, batch saving multiple images from Camera Raw, can be a significant time saver.

In Camera Raw in Photoshop CC, the Save Image options have been updated to  include Color Space, Image Sizing and Output Sharpening. This gives us the benefit of being able to quickly save out our images using the Save Image button without having to change our current workflow settings.

And, if you use the same Save Image setting again and again, be sure to save them as presets so that they’re easily accessible.

Workflow presets are now available for defining and then quickly choosing different workflow settings in Camera Raw. Click on the Workflow settings (the hyperlink at the bottom of the Camera Raw dialog) to access the options then, after creating your custom presets and exiting the workflow settings, Control -click (Mac) | Right Mouse -click (Win) the workflow link to quickly switch between your saved presets. This video will show you how.