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Photoshop CS5, first impressions

Saturday, May 15, 2010, 10:31 PM
Graphic Design by John (Article #268)

I'm not the king of the earlier adopters. But, I fell head over heels for Adobe's lavish tech demo of Photoshop CS5 and made the leap.

Was it worth it? Overall, yeah.

But, the first day I was really pissed. Let's just be clear upfront about the #1 thing that's making people adopt CS5 so quickly: it's the beneficiary of a very good tech demo.

CS5, simply put, isn't as magical as the tech demo makes it look.

Take the content-aware fill, the part that still pisses me off. The tech demos for CS5 make the content-aware fill look like you can completely remove anything. And that Photoshop will figure it out by pure voodoo. In effect, the content-aware fill is supposed to be a near 100% replacement for the clone tool.

Not even close. after using CS5 for a week, my verdict on the content-aware fill is that it's a nice tool that will amazingly . . . when CS7 hits the market in 2014.

The content-aware fill takes way too many tries to get it right. And often the results, even when decent, look more like a poorly done clone tool effort. It's simply should not have been included in a finished product.

The magic selection tool is another tech demo meant to inspire awe. The first day I dealt with it, it was a bit disappointing. Again, the Adobe tech demos make this function look like pure voodoo. Instead, it tends to go off selecting half the damned image when all you want is to select the subject's arm.

The second day with the magic select tool was a lot better. I learned quickly that it needs to be trained a bit. Frankly, Adobe would do themselves a favor to buy out a machine learning company so I'm not retraining the damned tool every time I make a selection.

What I found is that you use the additive selection tool first. If it overshoots your target, shrug it off. Come back through with the subtractive selection tool, and fix it quickly. Keep adjusting the hits and misses until your selection is right.

There's a tweak tool that was heavily demoed. In theory, it's supposed to handle things like backgrounds showing through semi-transparent thing like hair. In practice, it's a complete waste. I saw better results from third-party plug-ins for PS6! And embarrassingly bad addition to an otherwise worthwhile tool. Another part of CS5 that had no business being shipped with a commercial product.

The pseudo-HDR tool was less pimped. Too bad. It's the one that works 100% as advertised. While not a 100% replacement for doing HDR the right way, it's good. It's about a 95% replacement for real HDR. Which, if you only have one image you want to HDR, is pretty handy.

The ringing from the pseudo HDR is obnoxious, but in truth the ringing from real HDR is obnoxious, too. The different with CS5 is you can turn the ringing off.

The 3-D effects tools were also heavily touted. Here I have to hedge my response a bit. I'm used to using 3D Studio Max and Brazil render engine. Nothing CS5 was going to deliver was going to impress me.

That said, I've seen better results from pre-alpha releases of open source projects with little participation. The 3-D tools suck. Plain and simple. For real 3-D, they're worthless. They have some value insofar as they provide the means to quickly deploy 3-D into Photoshop and work it. So, if you're doing text effects, the 3-D tools are serviceable. Probably worth shipping, but not worth getting excited about unless you're trying to avoid using a serious 3-D rendering package.

For as hard as all that sounds, I think CS5 was worth acquiring. Not big time worth it, but worth it.

Mind you, for most trades Photoshop hasn't added anything of real value since Photoshop 6. If your version of PS is getting everything done for you, CS5 is hardly a must buy. But, if you're laying out the cash to buy PS anyhow, CS5 won't leave you in that downgrade from Vista-to-XP type of bad spot.

Overall, the tools have the potential. As I said: I suspect a lot of this will look mind-bendingly awesome when CS7 debuts in the middle of the decade.

Recommendation? A soft buy.

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Rescue photos in Photoshop with two simple tips

Saturday, December 26, 2009, 10:46 PM
Graphic Design by John (Article #256)

If you've ever been out taking photographs, it's a simple, but dread problem: your images lack pop. Too much shadow, not enough color. Everything gets lost.

The example on the right is a very good example of this problem. The reason the before image is so lost is because it is a city shot (specifically Two PNC Place in Pittsburgh, PA). The shadows of the surrounding building lose a lot of the light for us, and leave the picture feeling lost.

Now, here are two quick tips for fixing this problem.

#1. Make friends with the Shadows adjustment.

You'll find the shadows adjustment under Image >> Adjustments >> Shadows / Highlight ...

Check the 'Show More Options Box'.

Set the tonal range under shadows to 75%. Tinker with the radius somewhere between 25-100 px depending on the image you're fixing.

Tread carefully with the highlights settings, but play with them. The highlights settings have a tendency to blow very shadowy pictures out and make them appear unreal.

In many cases, that's all you will need to fix a photo. But, if not . . .

#2. Layers

Make three copies of the layer you just applied the shadows filter to.

These layers should be, a 'Color Dodge' layer, a 'Linear Burn Layer' and an 'Overlay Layer'. Adjust the opacity of each layer to control the effect as needed.

These two techniques give you a super fast method for cleaning up shadowy and colorless photos. They also provide a lot of knobs for fine-tuning.

If you look at the photo I've included, you'll see that the finished product (right) has a lot more life and color. Especially toward the base of the building. Before, almost every color down there was lost. Now it looks like a beautiful park. Certainly it looks a lot closer to what the architects were hoping when they designed the building.

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Playing with macro photography

Wednesday, December 24, 2008, 2:34 AM
Graphic Design by John (Article #236)

I was bored and decided to hack together a macro photography kit from a cheap pair of binoculars I bought at Aldi. Just shooting at night, with crappy yellowish room light, the photo to the right is an example of what I got for results.

The basic process is:

1. Remove both of the main lenses from the binoculars.

2. Tape the binocular lenses together.

3. Take four two-inch pieces of sturdy wire, and tape the lenses at the end.

4. Tape the open end of the wires to a 50mm SLR lens.

5. Practice adjusting the distance you need from the subject to the lens. This should be somewhere from one inch to three inches away.

That's it. Dirt-cheap macro lens.

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Playing with the Photoshop CS 3 beta

Monday, February 19, 2007, 11:25 PM
Graphic Design by John (Article #140)

First, the background: I come to Photoshop CS 3's beta from using a copy of Photoshop 6 that I bought from a surplus a few years ago. So, the gap we're jumping here is a bit more significant than the gap for CS 2 users.

My main impression of CS 3 goes like so: CS 3 is fine for the job, and if you are purchasing a new copy then it will have value. If you are upgrading, it really depends on how long it has been since your last upgrade.

By far, the biggest argument for upgrading to CS 3 from an older version is improved Wacom tablet compatibility. However, I have a friend who has CS 2, and the Wacom improvements clearly did not come along with CS 3.

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Don't assume they've seen Google

Friday, October 27, 2006, 10:43 PM
Graphic Design by John (Article #125)

One of the oddest and sometimes hardest things to pass on to clients is the importance of keeping website designs simple.

One cause is that clients have often confused web design with other media. They think full-color, full-bleed, full-gloss is the standard in printing, so why would it be bad in web design, right? Of course, it can be bad, because a website is first an interface, and only much later a work of art.

Another cause however is they just have not thought deeply on the matter or even looked at Google.

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Up Style versus down style

Monday, July 17, 2006, 9:21 AM
Graphic Design by John (Article #91)

Some days goofy thoughts dive into your brain. Today's goofy thought is about the possibility of discontinuing the use of so-called "Up Style".

A little backgrounder for those who never had this argument ... There are two common ways to stylistically represent a headline: Up Style and downstyle. Up Style is where the first letter of every major word in a sentence is capitalized. Down style is normal typing: the first letter of the headline, proper nouns, etc. are capitalized.

Up Style is an out-cropping of an era when we had fewer design options. Most headlines were in black and white and printed on crappy, thin paper that was an ugly shade of gray.

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Free Photoshop filter

Wednesday, July 5, 2006, 12:22 PM
Graphic Design by John (Article #82)

This one is from some spring cleaning of the morguefiles. It is a filter for Photoshop 6 that produces a scanline effect.

It's a leftover from an old programming website I used to run, called Programs by JC.

The controls handle the amount of opacity. It's a braindead simple filter that does exactly one thing.

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Download jc-scanline.zip

Centering and the Rule of Thirds

Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 3:44 PM
Graphic Design by John (Article #69)

One of the most commonly parroted design concepts is the so-called Rule of Thirds, that states any image can be made more interesting by moving its focal points to the four point defined if you the image into thirds (nine squares total).

What is surprising is the number of people who take this to mean that centering is inherently evil, lazy, stupid, whatever.

I have seen very few people try to take advantage of the Rule of Thirds while centering their subject. Not only is it possible, but when overlayed with a more tradition Rule of Thirds layout, is can add additional interest.

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Your own stock photography

Tuesday, May 9, 2006, 9:02 AM
Graphic Design by John (Article #39)

One of the goofer things that I find a lot of people in graphic design and websites doing is ignoring the importance of developing their stock photography work.

It is important for several reasons.

First: working with photography on your own sharpens your sense of what others should deliver.

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A good master list of stock image sites

Tuesday, May 2, 2006, 4:55 AM
Graphic Design by John (Article #26)

Because there are never too many stock photos.

This is an excellent list, at the risk that somehow StockXChng doesn't get it done for you.

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