Adobe Lightroom Beta Available to the Public see the link:
Adobe has announced the availability of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 beta for Windows and Mac. Adobe Lightroom is a photography workflow application that allows photography enthusiasts and professionals to enhance, organize and share photos.
The Lightroom 5 beta offers a free, public preview of new features and tools that will be offered in the final release, expected later this year. Winston Hendrickson, vice president of digital imaging products, Adobe, says the Lightroom 5 beta offers photographers and enthusiasts many new features including:
° Advanced Healing Brush allows customers to heal imperfections and remove distracting elements;
° Upright tool analyzes an image to automatically level horizons and straighten objects like buildings to correct a keystone effect;
° Radial Gradient tool creates off-center or multiple vignette effects;
° Smart Previews allow customers to edit images without needing the original raw file;
° Video slideshow enables customers to combine still images, video clips and music in a creative HD slideshow;
° Upgrades to the Book module enhancing the ability to create, customize and order elegant photo books using a variety of tailored templates.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 beta is available immediately as a free download on both Mac and Windows at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom5/ .
The Lightroom 5 beta offers a free, public preview of new features and tools that will be offered in the final release, expected later this year. Winston Hendrickson, vice president of digital imaging products, Adobe, says the Lightroom 5 beta offers photographers and enthusiasts many new features including:
° Advanced Healing Brush allows customers to heal imperfections and remove distracting elements;
° Upright tool analyzes an image to automatically level horizons and straighten objects like buildings to correct a keystone effect;
° Radial Gradient tool creates off-center or multiple vignette effects;
° Smart Previews allow customers to edit images without needing the original raw file;
° Video slideshow enables customers to combine still images, video clips and music in a creative HD slideshow;
° Upgrades to the Book module enhancing the ability to create, customize and order elegant photo books using a variety of tailored templates.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 beta is available immediately as a free download on both Mac and Windows at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom5/ .
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Chrome Browser Tightens Security With Flash Player
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Google’s latest version of the Chrome web browser offers an even more secure, tightly sandboxed version of the browser’s Flash Player plugin.
If you haven’t already updated you can download Chrome 21 from Google. Existing users may need to restart their browser for any updates to apply.
At the moment the Flash Player improvements are only available to Windows users, but the change does apply to the entire Windows spectrum, covering everything from Windows XP (where Chrome is the only option if you want to keep Flash sandboxed) to the coming Windows 8.
As Chrome Software Engineer Justin Schuh writes on the Chromium blog, “Windows Flash is now inside a sandbox that’s as strong as Chrome’s native sandbox, and dramatically more robust than anything else available.”
The Flash update sees Chrome dropping the older Netscape Plugin API — which browsers have long relied on for plugin security — in favor of Google’s own Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI). Since PPAPI has a tighter sandbox it makes it harder to exploit Flash, but Schuh says the new architecture will make Flash more stable as well. “By eliminating the complexity and legacy code associated with NPAPI, we’ve reduced Flash crashes by about 20%.”
There are also performance gains since the PPAPI offloads some of the display work to your PC’s GPU, which makes for faster rendering and smooth scrolling. The new Pepper API also means Flash will work in Windows 8′s don’t-call-it-Metro mode.
Google says that it’s working on bring the same Pepper-based sandboxing to Chrome for Mac OS X and hopes to “ship it soon” (Linux users have enjoyed PPAPI-based Flash Player since Chrome 20).
Google’s latest version of the Chrome web browser offers an even more secure, tightly sandboxed version of the browser’s Flash Player plugin.
If you haven’t already updated you can download Chrome 21 from Google. Existing users may need to restart their browser for any updates to apply.
At the moment the Flash Player improvements are only available to Windows users, but the change does apply to the entire Windows spectrum, covering everything from Windows XP (where Chrome is the only option if you want to keep Flash sandboxed) to the coming Windows 8.
As Chrome Software Engineer Justin Schuh writes on the Chromium blog, “Windows Flash is now inside a sandbox that’s as strong as Chrome’s native sandbox, and dramatically more robust than anything else available.”
The Flash update sees Chrome dropping the older Netscape Plugin API — which browsers have long relied on for plugin security — in favor of Google’s own Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI). Since PPAPI has a tighter sandbox it makes it harder to exploit Flash, but Schuh says the new architecture will make Flash more stable as well. “By eliminating the complexity and legacy code associated with NPAPI, we’ve reduced Flash crashes by about 20%.”
There are also performance gains since the PPAPI offloads some of the display work to your PC’s GPU, which makes for faster rendering and smooth scrolling. The new Pepper API also means Flash will work in Windows 8′s don’t-call-it-Metro mode.
Google says that it’s working on bring the same Pepper-based sandboxing to Chrome for Mac OS X and hopes to “ship it soon” (Linux users have enjoyed PPAPI-based Flash Player since Chrome 20).
Flash exploit fix for all platforms released by Adobe; Windows users grab it especially.
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Adobe has released a security update for all versions of Flash Player, addressing a security exploit that it says is already being used in the wild. According to a security bulletin posted Friday, the vulnerability could cause Flash to crash, and in the process allow an attacker to take control of a user's system. The company notes that it has received reports that the exploit is already being taken advantage of by attackers via email; clicking on a malicious file attachment initiates the attack on a vulnerable system. The cited attack is currently targeted only at Internet Explorer users on Windows, but the vulnerability itself is present in Flash Player for Windows, OS X, Linux, and Android.
Computer users are urged to update to Flash Player version 11.2.202.235 by visiting Adobe's website; Android users can update via the Google Play Store (version 11.1.115.8 for Ice Cream Sandwich and 11.1.111.9 for devices running Android 3.0 or earlier). Google Chrome users should already be safe, as the browser's built-in implementation of Flash updates automatically — though of course if you have Flash installed on your overall system as well you'll need to address that update directly. You can visit the Flash "about" page to determine what version of the software your machine is currently running.
Adobe has released a security update for all versions of Flash Player, addressing a security exploit that it says is already being used in the wild. According to a security bulletin posted Friday, the vulnerability could cause Flash to crash, and in the process allow an attacker to take control of a user's system. The company notes that it has received reports that the exploit is already being taken advantage of by attackers via email; clicking on a malicious file attachment initiates the attack on a vulnerable system. The cited attack is currently targeted only at Internet Explorer users on Windows, but the vulnerability itself is present in Flash Player for Windows, OS X, Linux, and Android.
Computer users are urged to update to Flash Player version 11.2.202.235 by visiting Adobe's website; Android users can update via the Google Play Store (version 11.1.115.8 for Ice Cream Sandwich and 11.1.111.9 for devices running Android 3.0 or earlier). Google Chrome users should already be safe, as the browser's built-in implementation of Flash updates automatically — though of course if you have Flash installed on your overall system as well you'll need to address that update directly. You can visit the Flash "about" page to determine what version of the software your machine is currently running.
Adobe CS6 is here. Also a subscription-based Creative Cloud service (video)
www.tech-sanity.com
Adobe is introducing Creative Suite 6. It comes complete with 14 applications. Photoshop CS6 which which is an update that'll provide "near instant results" thanks to the Mercury Graphics Engine -- while Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move are sure to please artists suffering from the "Surely you can fix this in post!" clientele backlash. Adobe Muse is happily entering the scene for the first time, described as a "radical tool that'll enables designers to create and publish HTML5 web sites without writing code." (We're still waiting for Flash to comment.)
In related news, those who aren't up for paying $1,299 (and up) for one of the new suites can try something a bit different: monthly installments. That's coming courtesy of Creative Cloud, an quasi-new initiative designed to harness the power of cloud-based app distribution and streaming in a way that'll make CS6 more accessible than any of the packs that came before. You can tap into CS6's amenities over your broadband connection for $74.99 per month, while those who agree to an annual subscription can get in for $49.99 per month. To be clear, that provides unbridled access to any CS6 tool: Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and AfterEffects, and the rest of the gang. If you're jonesing for Photoshop alone, that one will be available for $29.99 per month month (no contract) or $19.99 per month (annual agreement). There's no set release date just yet, but we're told to expect the new goods "within 30 days," and pre-orders seem to be a go. Head on down to the source links for more details on each individual aspect, and catch a promo video for the cloud-based subscription offering just after the break.
Adobe is introducing Creative Suite 6. It comes complete with 14 applications. Photoshop CS6 which which is an update that'll provide "near instant results" thanks to the Mercury Graphics Engine -- while Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move are sure to please artists suffering from the "Surely you can fix this in post!" clientele backlash. Adobe Muse is happily entering the scene for the first time, described as a "radical tool that'll enables designers to create and publish HTML5 web sites without writing code." (We're still waiting for Flash to comment.)
In related news, those who aren't up for paying $1,299 (and up) for one of the new suites can try something a bit different: monthly installments. That's coming courtesy of Creative Cloud, an quasi-new initiative designed to harness the power of cloud-based app distribution and streaming in a way that'll make CS6 more accessible than any of the packs that came before. You can tap into CS6's amenities over your broadband connection for $74.99 per month, while those who agree to an annual subscription can get in for $49.99 per month. To be clear, that provides unbridled access to any CS6 tool: Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and AfterEffects, and the rest of the gang. If you're jonesing for Photoshop alone, that one will be available for $29.99 per month month (no contract) or $19.99 per month (annual agreement). There's no set release date just yet, but we're told to expect the new goods "within 30 days," and pre-orders seem to be a go. Head on down to the source links for more details on each individual aspect, and catch a promo video for the cloud-based subscription offering just after the break.
Adobe Photoshop CS6 hands-on preview
www.tech-sanity.com
Update! here is the link to the free beta from Adobe
First Look: Photoshop CS6 Beta is dark, swift, and content aware
Beta release reveals advances under the hood for boosting speed, intelligent operations, and 3D functionality
Adobe has announced, for the second time in its history, a free public beta of Photoshop. Photoshop CS6 will be available to try for the next few months as Adobe readies its Creative Suite of applications for launch alongside the brand new Creative Cloud online hub, targeted to creative pros. The Photoshop beta is available now on Adobe Labs. The new Photoshop version works only on 64-bit Mac systems, and no longer in 32-bit mode.
Various under-the-hood improvements promise to make life easier and protect long hours of labor intensive operations. The highest profile of these include Background Save and Auto Recovery, Preset Migration and Sharing, and the new Mercury Graphics Engine.
Simply selecting some program preferences lets Photoshop automatically save and recover your work in the event of a power interruption. When you upgraded from previous versions of Photoshop, you often lost painstakingly applied presets that automated many repetitive tasks. The new version lets you apply your presets, tools, and workspaces to the new upgrade. While the Mercury engine is familiar to users of Premiere Pro, Photoshop's new Mercury Graphics Engine is mostly a software-based implementation of multicore functionality.
The dark side
The changes in the new version of Photoshop are immediately apparent. The program has gone over to the dark side by default, opening to a sophisticated-looking dark gray interface. This is intended to complement themes of some of Adobe's other creative programs—specifically Lightroom 4, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.
Additional default themes in medium gray, light gray, and black are also included. However, you can set the interface colors to whatever you want, and they change immediately. The same holds true for Photoshop’s companion asset management application, the now 64-bit Bridge. The dark, Aperture-like theme looks attractive, but as with all light type on a dark background, menu items can be difficult to read.
And speaking of interface updates, Adobe has also redesigned and streamlined the program’s menu icons, though they’re still familiar and easily recognizeable. Panels are now labeled in upper- and lowercase type instead of in all caps, enhancing legibility. A new Properties panel now combines Adjustment layer and Mask settings into a single panel. Attention to such details keeps the Photoshop looking fresh.
Photoshop CS6 defaults to a dark interface with light type. But you can change it to whatever you want at any time.
Content awareness
In past versions of Photoshop, Adobe introduced the concept of content-aware image technology, in which edits can take into account the relationship between objects and elements in an image. This lets you edit in an intuitive way with more realistic looking results. Adobe now has added to the content-aware features of previous versions the new Content Aware Move and Content Aware Patch functions. The Content Aware Move tool lets you pick up an object and relocate it to another part of the image while the program performs a content-aware fill operation in the background. The Patch tool's new Content Aware option, a more refined cloning operation, lets you choose the pixels used to fill a designated area in an image, as opposed to letting the program decide. Thus, Photoshop performs a little extra blending to make lines and patterns match.
The new content-aware tools are grouped with the Healing Brush in the toolbar.
The Content Aware Move tool lets you relocate objects within an image. The horse at the right was moved closer to his companions—note the selected new location.
Layer improvements
Over the years, Photoshop's layers feature has received much attention and many improvements. Photoshop CS6 adds a Layer Search function and the use of vector layers to apply—for the first time—strokes, dashed lines, and gradients to vector objects. Other tweaks include the ability to simultaneously change the blend mode of and to duplicate multiple layers. You can also now see opacity, fill, and blend modes of hidden layers. And you can now simultaneously change layer styles and effects for all layers in a group.
Adaptive Wide Angle filter
Photoshop CS6 offers a new way to achieve lens corrections. The Adaptive Wide Angle adjustment filter lets you quickly straighten objects that appear curved in photos shot with wide-angle or fish-eye lenses, or panoramas created with Photomerge. Using Adobe’s CS5 lens correction system, which fixes lens-based geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting, the new filter reads lens metadata and lets you click and drag new on-canvas tools to straighten and align objects vertically or horizontally in the scene.
Using the new interactive Constraint tool, you can click to directly adjust an angled element in your image.
Crop tool
Photoshop CS6’s GPU-enabled, nondestructive Crop tool sports new composition controls. Whereas CS5 included a basic grid and Rule of Thirds overlay, CS6 lets you preview Golden Ratio, Diagonal, Triangle, and Golden Spiral overlays. You can also use the new Perspective Crop tool to straighten images. The new Crop tool is designed to help you change the aspect ratio (shape) of your image more easily, without accidentally changing resolution and thus the image quality.
A reconfigured Crop tool in Photoshop CS6 offers additional cropping overlays such as Golden Spiral (shown here) and Triangle. There’s a new Perspective Crop tool for straightening.
Blur Gallery
Added to Photoshop CS5’s 11 Blur plug-ins is a new Blur Gallery consisting of Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt-Shift. These on-image controls add blurs to any image without requiring selections, layers, or depth maps. Iris Blur creates a shallow depth of field and lets you control the blur’s area and intensity. Field Blur lets you pinpoint (with a virtual pushpin) the parts of an image you want blurred and control blur intensity. The Tilt-Shift blur applies blurs along one or more planes, letting you adjust both location and intensity, like the popular Lensbaby tilt-shift lens. You can also apply and adjust a bokeh (background blur) effect with any of the three new Blur tools. The Blur Gallery offers a full-screen preview with collapsible panels, allowing you to see your results at a respectable size.
The new Blur gallery adds three different adjustable blurs that you can also use with the bokeh effect. This is the Iris blur, which lets you use interactive, on-canvas controls with a full preview.
Camera Raw 7
You can edit an image in the Camera Raw interface whether or not it was shot in Raw format. Adobe has rewritten the Camera Raw Basic panel and its controls for easier use. All sliders start at zero, so it’s easy to see how to fix even low-resolution shots. Two new controls, Highlights and Shadows (derived from Lightroom 4’s processing engine) help pull more detail from images than previous Raw plug-ins. Overall, the Camera Raw 7 plug-in offers more image controls that can be applied with the Adjustment Brush, including Temperature, Tint, Highlights, Shadows, Noise Reduction, and Moiré Reduction.
Unlike past versions, all sliders start at zero so the corrections are more intuitive.
The interface for Camera Raw 7 is easier to use than past versions and offers new Shadows and Highlights sliders.
Painting and Drawing
Photoshop would not be Photoshop without fresh tools and streamlined methods of painting and drawing. New erodible brush tips are designed to wear down naturally. You can also use erodible tips with the Brush tool, Pencil tool, Mixer Brush tool, and Eraser tool. A new Airbrush tip features a real physics engine to make airbrushing more realistic. That’s in addition to improved brush rotation, painting presets, and more. A new Oil Paint filter lets you instantly turn a photo into an oil painting.
Sometimes, a routine image just looks better as an oil painting. With the new Oil Paint filter, you won't have to wait around for the results.
Video
Photoshop CS6’s new video functionality—designed as a starting point for video creation—features a new Timeline panel in addition to Photoshop's familiar Animation panel. The workflow, targeted to photographers, includes letting you create, edit, splice, and add audio track and transitions to your clips in a drag-and-drop interface. Having all Photoshop's editing tools at your disposal offers manifold artistic options. You can then export and render video in a number of formats.
It's easy to select and drop video clips and stills into the timeline. Add titles and transitions via drag and drop.
Output your video to a large number of formats.
Improved Auto Correction
Photoshop always let you automatically correct images with various controls under the Image menu. Photoshop CS6 approaches auto corrections in a different and more intelligent way. Auto options are available in Curves, Levels, and—for the first time—Brightness/Contrast controls. The interface is the same, but the underlying algorithms driving them have changed. The Auto button derives its results from a database of thousands of hand-edited images. An Enhance Brightness and Contrast algorithm—developed with reference to thousands of manually corrected examples—bases calculations on image data.
Not all auto corrections are the same, and a new algorithm bases auto corrections on a database of hand-corrected images.
3D
Adobe has revamped its 3D engine for CS6 to make it easier and faster to create and manipulate 3D objects. A new in-context and on-canvas editing interface is designed to enhance usability. Right-clicking on a 3D object shows contextual pop-up panels with content of the panel related to the area clicked.
Adobe has scrapped CS5’s large Reposé dialog box and subsumed the 3D technology into the interface. Now, a Properties panel and widgets enable 3D extrusion and the manipulation of 3D objects in real time. The program also supports draggable shadows and ground plane reflections. The Picture In Picture window shows an alternate view of the 3D object. With it, you can switch camera views, pan, zoom, and swap this view with the main document window.
For combining 2D and 3D functions, you can add 3D objects to a photo and have the object align with the Vanishing Point of the image.
The new 3D interface emphasizes responsiveness and ease of use with in-context and on-canvas controls.
Skin tone aware selections and masking
Photoshop CS6 introduces more controls for preserving skin tones in images where you either want to change or adjust the skin color, or preserve skin tones as you change other parts of the picture. The Color Range dialog box, under the Select menu, offers both a Skin Tones option and a Detect Faces checkbox. Used in concert, they can help you create an accurate mask.
Choose Color Range from the Select pull-down menu, and then choose Skin Tones and Detect Faces to preserve accurate flesh tones.
There's lots more
These are only a few highlights of the new Photoshop CS6 upgrade, now available in beta on Adobe Labs, and due out by summer. There's a lot more to look at in the beta, including Character and Paragraph styles, and a lorem ipsum generator for creating placeholder text and Rich cursors, a handy informational overlay that appears whenever you use the Move, Crop, Free Transform, and similar tools. It shows size information, rotation angle, and x/y coordinates. The new version of Photoshop welcomes Contact Sheet II and PDF Presentation back into the package, as well as a redesigned, streamlined print dialog box. New Bicubic Automatic image resampling (handy for enlargements) lets Photoshop pick the best interpolation method. It's also used with the Crop tool and Free Transform tools.
Update! here is the link to the free beta from Adobe
First Look: Photoshop CS6 Beta is dark, swift, and content aware
Beta release reveals advances under the hood for boosting speed, intelligent operations, and 3D functionality
Adobe has announced, for the second time in its history, a free public beta of Photoshop. Photoshop CS6 will be available to try for the next few months as Adobe readies its Creative Suite of applications for launch alongside the brand new Creative Cloud online hub, targeted to creative pros. The Photoshop beta is available now on Adobe Labs. The new Photoshop version works only on 64-bit Mac systems, and no longer in 32-bit mode.
Various under-the-hood improvements promise to make life easier and protect long hours of labor intensive operations. The highest profile of these include Background Save and Auto Recovery, Preset Migration and Sharing, and the new Mercury Graphics Engine.
Simply selecting some program preferences lets Photoshop automatically save and recover your work in the event of a power interruption. When you upgraded from previous versions of Photoshop, you often lost painstakingly applied presets that automated many repetitive tasks. The new version lets you apply your presets, tools, and workspaces to the new upgrade. While the Mercury engine is familiar to users of Premiere Pro, Photoshop's new Mercury Graphics Engine is mostly a software-based implementation of multicore functionality.
The dark side
The changes in the new version of Photoshop are immediately apparent. The program has gone over to the dark side by default, opening to a sophisticated-looking dark gray interface. This is intended to complement themes of some of Adobe's other creative programs—specifically Lightroom 4, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.
Additional default themes in medium gray, light gray, and black are also included. However, you can set the interface colors to whatever you want, and they change immediately. The same holds true for Photoshop’s companion asset management application, the now 64-bit Bridge. The dark, Aperture-like theme looks attractive, but as with all light type on a dark background, menu items can be difficult to read.
And speaking of interface updates, Adobe has also redesigned and streamlined the program’s menu icons, though they’re still familiar and easily recognizeable. Panels are now labeled in upper- and lowercase type instead of in all caps, enhancing legibility. A new Properties panel now combines Adjustment layer and Mask settings into a single panel. Attention to such details keeps the Photoshop looking fresh.
Photoshop CS6 defaults to a dark interface with light type. But you can change it to whatever you want at any time.
Content awareness
In past versions of Photoshop, Adobe introduced the concept of content-aware image technology, in which edits can take into account the relationship between objects and elements in an image. This lets you edit in an intuitive way with more realistic looking results. Adobe now has added to the content-aware features of previous versions the new Content Aware Move and Content Aware Patch functions. The Content Aware Move tool lets you pick up an object and relocate it to another part of the image while the program performs a content-aware fill operation in the background. The Patch tool's new Content Aware option, a more refined cloning operation, lets you choose the pixels used to fill a designated area in an image, as opposed to letting the program decide. Thus, Photoshop performs a little extra blending to make lines and patterns match.
The new content-aware tools are grouped with the Healing Brush in the toolbar.
The Content Aware Move tool lets you relocate objects within an image. The horse at the right was moved closer to his companions—note the selected new location.
Layer improvements
Over the years, Photoshop's layers feature has received much attention and many improvements. Photoshop CS6 adds a Layer Search function and the use of vector layers to apply—for the first time—strokes, dashed lines, and gradients to vector objects. Other tweaks include the ability to simultaneously change the blend mode of and to duplicate multiple layers. You can also now see opacity, fill, and blend modes of hidden layers. And you can now simultaneously change layer styles and effects for all layers in a group.
Adaptive Wide Angle filter
Photoshop CS6 offers a new way to achieve lens corrections. The Adaptive Wide Angle adjustment filter lets you quickly straighten objects that appear curved in photos shot with wide-angle or fish-eye lenses, or panoramas created with Photomerge. Using Adobe’s CS5 lens correction system, which fixes lens-based geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting, the new filter reads lens metadata and lets you click and drag new on-canvas tools to straighten and align objects vertically or horizontally in the scene.
Using the new interactive Constraint tool, you can click to directly adjust an angled element in your image.
Crop tool
Photoshop CS6’s GPU-enabled, nondestructive Crop tool sports new composition controls. Whereas CS5 included a basic grid and Rule of Thirds overlay, CS6 lets you preview Golden Ratio, Diagonal, Triangle, and Golden Spiral overlays. You can also use the new Perspective Crop tool to straighten images. The new Crop tool is designed to help you change the aspect ratio (shape) of your image more easily, without accidentally changing resolution and thus the image quality.
A reconfigured Crop tool in Photoshop CS6 offers additional cropping overlays such as Golden Spiral (shown here) and Triangle. There’s a new Perspective Crop tool for straightening.
Blur Gallery
Added to Photoshop CS5’s 11 Blur plug-ins is a new Blur Gallery consisting of Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt-Shift. These on-image controls add blurs to any image without requiring selections, layers, or depth maps. Iris Blur creates a shallow depth of field and lets you control the blur’s area and intensity. Field Blur lets you pinpoint (with a virtual pushpin) the parts of an image you want blurred and control blur intensity. The Tilt-Shift blur applies blurs along one or more planes, letting you adjust both location and intensity, like the popular Lensbaby tilt-shift lens. You can also apply and adjust a bokeh (background blur) effect with any of the three new Blur tools. The Blur Gallery offers a full-screen preview with collapsible panels, allowing you to see your results at a respectable size.
The new Blur gallery adds three different adjustable blurs that you can also use with the bokeh effect. This is the Iris blur, which lets you use interactive, on-canvas controls with a full preview.
Camera Raw 7
You can edit an image in the Camera Raw interface whether or not it was shot in Raw format. Adobe has rewritten the Camera Raw Basic panel and its controls for easier use. All sliders start at zero, so it’s easy to see how to fix even low-resolution shots. Two new controls, Highlights and Shadows (derived from Lightroom 4’s processing engine) help pull more detail from images than previous Raw plug-ins. Overall, the Camera Raw 7 plug-in offers more image controls that can be applied with the Adjustment Brush, including Temperature, Tint, Highlights, Shadows, Noise Reduction, and Moiré Reduction.
Unlike past versions, all sliders start at zero so the corrections are more intuitive.
The interface for Camera Raw 7 is easier to use than past versions and offers new Shadows and Highlights sliders.
Painting and Drawing
Photoshop would not be Photoshop without fresh tools and streamlined methods of painting and drawing. New erodible brush tips are designed to wear down naturally. You can also use erodible tips with the Brush tool, Pencil tool, Mixer Brush tool, and Eraser tool. A new Airbrush tip features a real physics engine to make airbrushing more realistic. That’s in addition to improved brush rotation, painting presets, and more. A new Oil Paint filter lets you instantly turn a photo into an oil painting.
Sometimes, a routine image just looks better as an oil painting. With the new Oil Paint filter, you won't have to wait around for the results.
Video
Photoshop CS6’s new video functionality—designed as a starting point for video creation—features a new Timeline panel in addition to Photoshop's familiar Animation panel. The workflow, targeted to photographers, includes letting you create, edit, splice, and add audio track and transitions to your clips in a drag-and-drop interface. Having all Photoshop's editing tools at your disposal offers manifold artistic options. You can then export and render video in a number of formats.
It's easy to select and drop video clips and stills into the timeline. Add titles and transitions via drag and drop.
Output your video to a large number of formats.
Improved Auto Correction
Photoshop always let you automatically correct images with various controls under the Image menu. Photoshop CS6 approaches auto corrections in a different and more intelligent way. Auto options are available in Curves, Levels, and—for the first time—Brightness/Contrast controls. The interface is the same, but the underlying algorithms driving them have changed. The Auto button derives its results from a database of thousands of hand-edited images. An Enhance Brightness and Contrast algorithm—developed with reference to thousands of manually corrected examples—bases calculations on image data.
Not all auto corrections are the same, and a new algorithm bases auto corrections on a database of hand-corrected images.
3D
Adobe has revamped its 3D engine for CS6 to make it easier and faster to create and manipulate 3D objects. A new in-context and on-canvas editing interface is designed to enhance usability. Right-clicking on a 3D object shows contextual pop-up panels with content of the panel related to the area clicked.
Adobe has scrapped CS5’s large Reposé dialog box and subsumed the 3D technology into the interface. Now, a Properties panel and widgets enable 3D extrusion and the manipulation of 3D objects in real time. The program also supports draggable shadows and ground plane reflections. The Picture In Picture window shows an alternate view of the 3D object. With it, you can switch camera views, pan, zoom, and swap this view with the main document window.
For combining 2D and 3D functions, you can add 3D objects to a photo and have the object align with the Vanishing Point of the image.
The new 3D interface emphasizes responsiveness and ease of use with in-context and on-canvas controls.
Skin tone aware selections and masking
Photoshop CS6 introduces more controls for preserving skin tones in images where you either want to change or adjust the skin color, or preserve skin tones as you change other parts of the picture. The Color Range dialog box, under the Select menu, offers both a Skin Tones option and a Detect Faces checkbox. Used in concert, they can help you create an accurate mask.
Choose Color Range from the Select pull-down menu, and then choose Skin Tones and Detect Faces to preserve accurate flesh tones.
There's lots more
These are only a few highlights of the new Photoshop CS6 upgrade, now available in beta on Adobe Labs, and due out by summer. There's a lot more to look at in the beta, including Character and Paragraph styles, and a lorem ipsum generator for creating placeholder text and Rich cursors, a handy informational overlay that appears whenever you use the Move, Crop, Free Transform, and similar tools. It shows size information, rotation angle, and x/y coordinates. The new version of Photoshop welcomes Contact Sheet II and PDF Presentation back into the package, as well as a redesigned, streamlined print dialog box. New Bicubic Automatic image resampling (handy for enlargements) lets Photoshop pick the best interpolation method. It's also used with the Crop tool and Free Transform tools.
Adobe ships Photoshop Lightroom 4 and cuts price in half
www.tech-sanity.com
Adobe has released version 4 of Photoshop Lightroom, its professional photo management application, following a beta period of about two months. But perhaps the biggest news is that Adobe has permanently cut the price of Lightroom in half. Version 4 is priced at $149, as opposed to the $299 shipping price of version 3. The upgrade price is now $79, as opposed to the previous upgrade price of $99. "Lowering the price makes Lightroom more accessible to a broader range of photographers—from pros to amateurs,” said Tom Hogarty, Lightroom's principal product manager.
Adobe has released version 4 of Photoshop Lightroom, its professional photo management application, following a beta period of about two months. But perhaps the biggest news is that Adobe has permanently cut the price of Lightroom in half. Version 4 is priced at $149, as opposed to the $299 shipping price of version 3. The upgrade price is now $79, as opposed to the previous upgrade price of $99. "Lowering the price makes Lightroom more accessible to a broader range of photographers—from pros to amateurs,” said Tom Hogarty, Lightroom's principal product manager.
Touch-Optimized Version Of Adobe Photoshop Available In App Store - For A While
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In just a snap, shortly after we posted about a probable Feb. 27 release for the iPad version of Adobe Photoshop Touch, the hotly anticipated app has already hit the App Store. 9to5Mac reports that Photoshop Touch, which was initially released in the Android Market, was made available for App Store customers in New Zealand for a short while. The App Store availability of the app was expected to propagate to other countries in the next few hours, but it was eventually pulled to be released as originally scheduled, on Monday.
While the basic Adobe Photoshop Express has long been at the disposal of iPhone and iPad users, it’s only now that a dedicated and feature-rich iOS companion to Adobe’s popular photo-editing program is made available. Photoshop Touch for iPad inherits many of the core features of Photoshop for Mac and PC. It supports layering, tool selection, adjustments and filters, all of which utilize the iPad’s multitouch capabilities.
A couple of special features are highlighted in the app. There’s the Scribble Selection tool, which allows for selecting parts of an image to retain or remove by merely scribbling in and around the image. There’s also an instrument called Refine Edge, which makes zeroing in on hard-to-select elements much easier. Watch the video overview below for a demonstration of these features by John Nack, Principal Product Manager for Photoshop Touch.Of course, Adobe would be terribly amiss not to include a social layer to the app. It has options to share images on Facebook and viewing comments directly on the app, but there’s no mention of any sort of connectivity with the other trendy social network, Twitter. Creative Cloud, Adobe’s paid storage service, is also integrated in the app, as well as image searching and downloading through Google Images.
Photoshop is the first in a projected series of six tablet apps based on Adobe’s Creative Suite software; Adobe Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler and Proto should be coming soon. Before you purchase Photoshop Touch, though, be aware that it is compatible only with iPad 2 units that are running on iOS 5. Another limitation to note is the maximum supported image resolution, which is set at only 1600 x 1600 pixels.
You can download Photoshop Touch for iPad for $9.99 in the App Store beginning Monday.
In just a snap, shortly after we posted about a probable Feb. 27 release for the iPad version of Adobe Photoshop Touch, the hotly anticipated app has already hit the App Store. 9to5Mac reports that Photoshop Touch, which was initially released in the Android Market, was made available for App Store customers in New Zealand for a short while. The App Store availability of the app was expected to propagate to other countries in the next few hours, but it was eventually pulled to be released as originally scheduled, on Monday.
While the basic Adobe Photoshop Express has long been at the disposal of iPhone and iPad users, it’s only now that a dedicated and feature-rich iOS companion to Adobe’s popular photo-editing program is made available. Photoshop Touch for iPad inherits many of the core features of Photoshop for Mac and PC. It supports layering, tool selection, adjustments and filters, all of which utilize the iPad’s multitouch capabilities.
A couple of special features are highlighted in the app. There’s the Scribble Selection tool, which allows for selecting parts of an image to retain or remove by merely scribbling in and around the image. There’s also an instrument called Refine Edge, which makes zeroing in on hard-to-select elements much easier. Watch the video overview below for a demonstration of these features by John Nack, Principal Product Manager for Photoshop Touch.Of course, Adobe would be terribly amiss not to include a social layer to the app. It has options to share images on Facebook and viewing comments directly on the app, but there’s no mention of any sort of connectivity with the other trendy social network, Twitter. Creative Cloud, Adobe’s paid storage service, is also integrated in the app, as well as image searching and downloading through Google Images.
Photoshop is the first in a projected series of six tablet apps based on Adobe’s Creative Suite software; Adobe Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler and Proto should be coming soon. Before you purchase Photoshop Touch, though, be aware that it is compatible only with iPad 2 units that are running on iOS 5. Another limitation to note is the maximum supported image resolution, which is set at only 1600 x 1600 pixels.
You can download Photoshop Touch for iPad for $9.99 in the App Store beginning Monday.
Adobe's new Creative Cloud service
Microsoft currently testing its own smartphone, says WSJBy Sam Byford on November 2, 2012 12:51 am Email @345triangle98COMMENTS34LikeTweet140This page has been shared 140 times. View these Tweets.85inShareMicrosoft surprised the world earlier this year when it moved into producing its own computer hardware with the Surface, but the company's plans may not stop there. According to the Wall Street