Content Aware Scale


I’ve been out in the field for two long days during my workshop at the Palm Springs Photo Festival. One of the techniques we practiced is exploring how using Photoshop’s Transform and Content-Aware Scale can change the way you make exposures – opening up possibilities for both strengthening classic compositions and also for making new compositions you might otherwise pass by – or not see.
The classic Photoshop Transform tools have been long overlooked and underutilized. Now, in Photoshop CS4, we’ve got a new way to Transform our images – Content-Aware Scale. This will scale specific areas of an image more than others. Many photographers scale an image to resize it. Sometimes portrait photographers squeeze images 10% horizontally to make people look thinner. But how many photographers use these tools to create more compelling proportions in their images? How many use them as a tool to strengthen or weaken relationships in their images by making areas of an image closer to or further away from one another. Few. These are new tools. They’re not hard to master technically. Activate the tool of your choice and then push or pull. Simple. (Favor squeezing instead of expanding to avoid upsampling artifacts.) This may be challenging for some to feel comfortable with as an accepted practice. We accept the distortions of lenses. Why is this type of post-processing any less acceptable? This is challenging to master perceptually. Incorporating these new tools into your ways of seeing takes practice. Once you do master them, you’ll find you’ll make new types of exposures with these possibilities in mind. You’ll learn one more way of seeing your subjects. New possibilities bring new ways of seeing. To master them you’ve got to use them – a lot. It takes practice. Try it. And keep using it. This technique can make an amazing difference in many images.
Learn these and other techniques in my upcoming Workshops.
Find out more in my downloads.

Jeff Schewe on CS4 at Digital Photo Pro


Adobe alpha tester and all-around digital master Jeff Schewe takes us on a tour of the improvements to the new version of the Adobe Creative Suite, CS4
Here are two excerpts.
“Probably the single largest engineering effort has gone into completely changing the way Adjustment Layers work. No longer are the adjustments locked into modal dialog boxes; they now live in a live Adjustment Panel. Click on an Adjustment Layer and you have live access to the adjustments. This was major engineering to do although you may not yet see the benefits, but they’re there. Plus, a new Adjustment, Vibrance (inspired by Lightroom), has been added.”
“Another new panel is the Mask Panel, which allows for nondestructive adjustments to layer masks for functions such as feathering and mask density. These mask adjustments remain fully adjustable as long as you don’t do a destructive manipulation, such as running a filter on the mask. You have direct access to the Refine Edge tool that was new in CS3. It should be noted that Refine Edge isn’t nondestructive. For those who make a lot of selections using Color Range, a new functionality called Localized Color Clusters allows selections to be regionalized directly in the dialog.”
Read the rest here.
Check out more from Schewe at PhotoshopNews.com.
Check out the rest of my CS4 posts. Click on the category Photoshop.
Learn CS4 in my workshops.

PhotoPlus East – Expo


PhotoPlus East starts next week.
It’s the premiere photographic tradeshow in the US.
The presentations at manufacturer booths are free.
The seminars are fee based.
Both are are excellent.
I’ll be presenting a number of sessions.
Thursday, Oct 23
9-12             Fine Art Workflow (with Mac Holbert)(TA10)
3:30-4:15     Lightroom 2 – Fine Art Output (Adobe Booth)
Friday, 10/24
9-12              Extending Dynamic Range (FA7)
2-3                Epson Poster Signing (Epson Booth)
Saturday, 10/25
9-12              The Fine Digital Print (SA9)
12:30-1:15     Lightroom 2 – Fine Art Output (Adobe Booth)

Adobe Announces CS4


This morning Adobe announced CS4 with a web broadcast demonstrating many new features across the entire product line. In it, John Loiacono (senior vice president of Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business Unit) described CS4 as “The most compelling release in adobe’s history.”
Here are three stunning new Photoshop features.
1    Real time panning and zooming in huge high resolution files (440mp 2gig).
2    Creating spherical 3d images and easily compositing new elements into them.
3    Content aware scaling.
There’s much more!
You can find out about many of the new features on Adobe TV.
Check these videos out.
See Bryan O’Neil Hughes’ – Photoshop Bridge CS4 Feature Tour here.
See Zoranna Gee (Product Manager) show the new CS4 Extended features here.
The Russell Brown Show – Content Aware Scaling here.
The Russell Brown Show – Spherical Panoramas here.
(And yes, all of my workshops and seminars will be updated for Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4.)

John Loiacono Discusses the Future of Photoshop

Known for his engaging personality, “Johnny L” (senior vice president of Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business Unit) discusses his thoughts on the future of imaging and how Photoshop plays a part of that. He gets it. He really gets it. And he’s got an inside track on future imaging technology. Among the many key ideas he addresses is what I consider to be an extremely important issue, enriching the experience of engaging high density information (beginning of video 2). Check out these videos for a glimpse into the future and one of the minds helping guide us there.
And check back here tomorrow for news on an important announcement from Adobe tomorrow.
Are you ready for something brilliant?