Adobe CS5 adds many features

As a member of NAPP, I had the good fortune to be included in Beta testing the new Adobe Photoshop CS5. So often when a new upgrade comes out, the tendency is to wait a version or two to allow more new features to be added to make the upgrade price worthwhile. I’ve been using CS4 for less than a year, but can easily say that I will upgrade to CS5 because the new improvements are so numerous and so dramatic. The time savers and new capabilities make it well worth the cost to upgrade and, since NAPP offers a 15% discount on all Adobe products, the price is even better (a bonus). We were prevented as beta testers from revealing, first, that we even were beta testers, and second, from saying anything about the new features in CS5. But Adobe announced the release of CS5 on Monday, and so now the lid is off and we are free to talk. NAPP has been running webinars twice a day all week to tout the new release and all its new features. I still have not tested everything, but what I have tested is amazing. Here are a few things I have to show you.

One of my more recent directions with my photographic art has been the creation of photographic abstracts. In Photoshop CS5, there is a new tool called Puppet Warp that will help me to do new things in my abstracts that I simply could not do before. Puppet Warp allows you to place “push pins” at location on a mesh type grid, anchoring the image at those points. You are then free to warp the image and maintain those anchors where they are. It’s amazing to see. These two images were created using Puppet Warp in the process with other steps.

During the webinars that NAPP has been running, R. C. Concepcion showed a demo using Puppet Warp with a small cartoon character on a white background. By anchoring points on the body, he could warp-move the arms and legs and head like animation. The anchors even have depth or order about them that allow you to bring the points forward or send them backward, warping objects in front or behind others. It’s amazing.

The second abstract above also uses another new feature in CS5. HDR toning.  HDR or High Dynamic Range photography is all the rage these days with programs like Photomatix being the software of choice for this kind of manipulation. Essentially it allows the combination of several images of the same scene, shot on a tripod at a range of exposures so all areas from deep shadow to bright highlight can be compressed to appear in the image. This can be a subtle effect or it can be exaggerated (as you will see in many HDR images these days) to create very edgy high contrast graphic images.

CS5 has incorporated HDR Pro now that allows this to be done directly in Photoshop. Unlike Photomatix HDR images, Photoshop controls the amount of noise that results with much greater success. The controls are fairly elaborate, though not as extensive as Photomatix. But very wide ranging in their ability. This HDR feature can be used to create the same edgy look as many popular HDR images or can simply be used to control contrast and dynamic range in general images such as in this landscape, created from four exposures. One of the big advantages of HDR Pro in CS5 is the anti-ghosting feature that allows you to choose the frame from which you wish to extract detail that might show movement in the combination resulting in ghosting, such as water reflections or leaves moving in a breeze. The image below was shot on a breezy day, but no ghosting appears.

In addition, Photoshop CS5 also has a feature called HDR toning that is simply an adjustment operation to a single image, that creates the popular HDR look without combining several images. It comes with a number of presets (none of which seem to look very good at first, unfortunately) and the ability to create your own presets and save them. Here are a few examples of the HDR Toning adjustment using my own preset.

Probably the most talked about feature in CS5 to be added is Content Aware Fill. When I first saw this, I was blown away. This is a feature that is not well suited for every instance of object replacement in a scene or repair of a mistake. But what it can do, when used in the right place, is often unbelievable. It may not do everything you’d like when you apply it, but it will bring you so much closer in a fraction of the time, that what you have left to do is minimal. For those who do Panoramas by merging several shots, you know how you must crop major areas to square up the panorama.  Content Aware Fill does an amazing job of creating content to fill those edge areas so extensive cropping is not required.

Here are some examples of Content Aware Fill. The first shot is one that had a bad lens flare. This one took a bit of experimenting with the selections, but with a little cleanup work, the results were very good and took far less time than I would have spent without Content Aware Fill. Here’s the before and after.

Here are a couple of other before and afters just to show how well this works. Both required minimal cleanup with healing brush or the clone tool.

Before

After

Before

After

In addition to Content Aware Fill, there is also Content Aware Healing Brush. Here’s one that was just fun using Content Aware.

It actually has great promise for retouchers and those who repair old images.

These are just a few examples. CS5 also includes new Noise Reduction in Camera Raw as well as the addition of Grain effects. There is an amazing upgrade to Refine Edge when dealing with tricky selections like wispy hair. There’s 3D Repousse that allows you to turn almost any shape, type, etc. into a 3D object with just a click. There are new perspective features, a big upgrade to Lens Correction, great new brush features, and Mini Bridge, a small version of Bridge that allows you to view files in Photoshop in a small panel without having to shift out to the Bridge application (although Bridge does have to be running in the background because Mini Bridge is actually connected to the main version of Bridge). And there’s even more.

So if you are a regular Photoshop user, you’re gonna love the enhancements. Adobe is planning to ship by mid May say all the reports, so preorder now. You’ll be glad you did.

“Artcards” Reaches a Milestone

At the beginning of this year I began another blog called “Artcards” aimed at showing some of the photographs I have taken that have been worked in Photoshop to create photoart. Some of these have had very simple treatments and some very complex. Some are simply enhanced through various filters, others have had multiple treatments and have been through several generations to arrive at the final result, and may not even be finished yet. Regardless, they are my experiments and my effort to take images and give them an extra boost to bring out something interesting or unique or to set a mood or tell a story. I expected to post one a week, but here it is the end of May and I’ve already posted 100 images. It began with nature. The sunflower was Artcard #1.

It has included a number of nature and landscape images. Especially images from my many pictures of trees. Many of the artcard images are treated to look like watercolors or serigraphs. It’s a treatment that seems to work well with nature subjects. Or even pets.

There are some images that have been given a mood enhancement with layers of overlaid colors and textures. These have been some favorites and have brought numerous comments so must be something viewers like to see.

Some images lend themselves to more of a comic book style illustration or to dramatic color treatments. The laundry, the crocs, the stage singer.

Some images have been converted to abstracts through tiling or color reversals.

The nostalgic mood seems to suit some images very well. I love this old photograph look for certain timeless sorts of subjects.

I have reached back into the archives for a few of these, pulling from old color slides to give new life to an old image.

And others are brand new images that simply call out to become something more than just a photograph.

Hopefully they will all become part of the offering of Imageguy Artcards postcards. A little piece of art to send or save or frame. The experiment has brought new life from images that might have been fine on their own, but have become something unique as a result. It has given me a much greater knowledge of what Photoshop is capable of and ways to manipulate photos to create photart. It has changed my style and the way I look at my photographs, opening up so many more possibilities.

So here’s to Artcard #100! A Toast!

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved.

What was I thinking? The new face of photography.

When digital photography first appeared I was determined to remain steadfast and loyal to film. The cameras were either poor quality or incredibly expensive. Today the technology is better and the costs have come down. And I have abandoned film entirely as have many photographers. Some of today’s kids will never even know what film was. I had already given up my darkroom years ago. Kodachrome was my friend. But it was expensive to process and you had to develop everything, sight unseen. You might spend the costs to develop a roll of slides only to end up with just a few you were really happy with. And then there was the cataloging and storage and projectors or light tables to view them. What was I thinking?

Digital has not only freed me to shoot all I want, see what I like as I do it, and make corrections on the spot, so I end up with more images to keep. It has the instant gratification of Polaroid. And the ease of storage and retrieval with today’s software, DVD’s, big hard drives, and metadata make life so much easier. What was I thinking?

It has created a world of photographers and image makers from the entire population. With camera phones, 10 megapixel point and shoots, email and photo storage sites on the web, it seems everyone is taking, saving, exchanging, and sharing pictures. And the film industry is fading into obsolescence.

One of the most amazing changes for me is the ability to experiment with my pictures. To make photo art.

Thank you Adobe for bringing us Photoshop! Today I can do at my computer in a matter of minutes what would have taken hours, maybe days, in the darkroom, with costly chemistry and paper and a lot of wasted material through trial and error. Not to mention repeatability! There’s conversions from color to black and white, split toning, solarization, posterization, soft focus and color reversal and stitching. There’s sketching and watercolors and blur and stretch and warp and liquefy. There’s filters and actions and plug-ins galore. It’s an amusement park of imagery and design. And I haven’t even scratched the surface.

These images show a before and after. The original and the new creation. And these are mild compared to the things people are doing with this program. I learn something new every week and it just keeps coming. It’s creative madness and I wish I was retired so I could do this every day.

The first image is the original unaltered capture, either raw, tiff, or jpg. I don’t often show these since most images need at least a little adjustment to levels or saturation, something to perk them up. The next image is after working some photoshop magic.

Some images offer options for various treatments. The first alteration here of the bike photo is from an action called Retro. The next is a Sketch action applied to the Retro image.

Toned black and white conversions in Photoshop are so much easier than what I used to go through in the darkroom. Here, even split toning or a slight hand colored look is easy to achieve. The bridge and spring trees is accomplished by using a single color channel that is turned into a selection and then colorized for tone.

Some images lend themselves well to the feel of painted graphics or the look of print making techniques. This image has been posterized to appear to look like a serigraph.

This photo took on the effect of watercolor painting very successfully.

Here an action that simulates a comic book illustration is applied.

The possibilities are endless and the creative stimulation fueled by new discoveries leads to unexpected art. Every image has some potential. It has changed the way I look at photography forever opening new avenues with each creation session. Photography has a new face. Thank you Adobe.

All Images are Copyright © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved
Except the Giraffe photo which is Copyright © Tessa Cannon.