Software Review: Adobe Master Collection – Photoshop CS3 From Adobe Systems
Posted on November 30, 2007 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
This is the first of a series of reviews that will cover what is contained in the Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) Master Collection. When Adobe released CS3 earlier this year, they not only released single version products, but also six separate suites of products. They are Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Standard, Production Premium, and Master Collection. You can go online to compare what is contained in each version. The goal of this series it to define what each product does and provide information of what the new version brings to the table.
What do you need to run Adobe Photoshop CS3? On Windows you need an Intel® Pentium® 4, Intel Centrino®, Intel Xeon®, or Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor, Windows XP SP2 or Vista, on Mac, PowerPC® G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor, Mac OS X v10.4.8 – 10.5 (Leopard), 512 MB RAM, 64 MB Video RAM, 1,024×768 monitor resolution with 16-bit video card, 2GB hard drive space and DVD-ROM Drive.
The release of Photoshop CS3 marked the first time in Photoshop's history that Adobe released two versions of the product. The standard Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended; the latter being targeted to professionals in film and television, manufacturing, architecture and engineering, and medicine and science industries.
Photoshop CS3 is the graphics editor that is developed and published by Adobe Systems and currently is the market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation. Originally developed by Thomas Knoll, and later with his brother John Knoll, the first version of Photoshop was released in 1990. Photoshop CS3 is version 10 of the product.
Photoshop CS3 is a raster graphics editor. That is, it is an editor that allows users to paint and edit pictures on a computer screen and save them in one of many popular raster file formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF and TIFF. The other popular image editing format is a vector format. Adobe Illustrator is a vector image editor.
So what is new with Photoshop CS3?
• Much more streamlined interface – With CS3, Adobe maximizes the work area by making the arrangement of your workspace much easier to manage. The tools palette is now in a single column arrangement and the other pallets are in self adjusting docks. This allows for more room on the screen for your work.
• Stacks and Filters in Adobe Bridge CS3 – While I will cover Adobe Bridge in a later installment, in Photoshop CS3 it comes with a three-column layout with saved workspaces and faster performance. You can stack related images into a single thumbnail which provides for easier browsing. You can also filter your views based on dates, metadata, as well as other criteria.
• Quick Selection Tool – While there has always been the ability to extract areas from within an image, in Photoshop CS3 they have made it much easier to choose the image area with the Quick Select Tool.
• Refine Edge – reinvents the Feather feature in prior versions of Photoshop. It improves the quality of a selection's edges, and allows you to view the selection against different backgrounds for easier editing.
• Non-destructive Smart Filters – is one of the really great features in this version that allows Photoshop filters to be applied in a non-destructive manner. This means that you can re-edit your filter changes. Because Smart Filters have their own Layer Mask, you can use the mask to filter exact spots on the image. You can also scale, transform, and filter your images in a non-destructive workflow.
• Camera Raw 4.x – offers new image processing abilities that correspond to the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program and shares the same Adobe Camera Raw processing engine. These include Recovery, Fill Light Controls, and Vibrance adjustments. The other big improvement in ACR 4, is that you can now edit non-raw images such as JPEGs and TIFF directly.
• Adjustable Cloning and Healing with Preview Overlay – While the Cloning tool and Healing brush have been available in prior versions, in Photoshop CS3 they now have enhanced capabilities. Now you can precisely position the destination for the brush stroke as well as offset width, height and rotation for the source area.
• Black and White Conversion – is now much easier and much more powerful with an adjustment that allows you to quickly remap the colors in your image to monochrome. The slider settings let you set the proportions of the color components that are used to create the black and white conversion.
• Improved Curves Adjustment – will allow you to make precise color corrections with much less work. You can use the new color-correction presets included with Photoshop CS3, or create your own to use over and over.
• Vanishing Point 2 – Improving on the Vanishing point plug-in you can now wrap images around multipoint surfaces connected at any angle.
• Automatic Layer Alignment and Blending – will let you create advanced image composites; that is combining the best parts of multiple images of the same scene to create one best image. See the image below.
• Zoomify Export – allows you to export full resolution images to the web. Using the Zoomify technology you can let your viewers zoom in on details with minimum delay. Effectively, you image stays small, letting the page load, then if your visitor wants to see more they can zoom in with ease.
• Improved Printing – now incorporates more print options such as being able to set the paper orientation and printer model directly within the dialog, or go directly to a Print Online service. Also the print preview image is color managed so you can better see what you will print.
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Integration – Photoshop CS3 is fully integrated with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, so any changes you make in one are compatible with the other.
Photoshop CS3 Extended Edition also has improvements in almost every module.
• Every thing in the Standard edition – All of the same features as listed above come with the extended version.
• 3D Visualization and Texture Editing – now gives you 3D support that allows you to easily place, manipulate, and create composites using your 3D assets. You can now open your 3D Models as 3D Layers and manipulate them in 3D space in a Photoshop document.
• Motion Graphics and Video Layers – It used to be that those in the film and video industry could only export frames as still Photoshop files, now you can edit a video on a frame by frame basis, or add a layer to the video and create edits that will appear on every frame.
• Movie Paint – brings the ability to paint, retouch and use pixel level editing to every frame of a movie file using the complete set of Photoshop tools.
• Measurement and Data – Photoshop CS3 now gives you the ability to use quantitative data as well as the traditional qualitative data. That is, by defining the scale of an image using a known value, you can then set up the measurements you wish to take in the image, and Photoshop CS3 Extended will take all of the measurement and present them in a tabular format.
• Measurement and Data – Once you set a scale on your image, you can then use the ruler tool to measure distances between objects.
• DICOM Support – has the ability to open multi-frame files, open multiple frames as individual layers or as a single layer of tiled images. You can preview the metadata in the file, as well has the option to remove patient-identifying data from the metadata.
• MATLAB Support – now eases the difficult task of visualizing the results of MATLAB processing routine results with interoperability with the MATLAB command line.
• Image Stack Processing – not to be confused the thumbnail stacks in Adobe Bridge, Image Stacks in Photoshop CS3 Extended refers to a new level of automated processing that can be applied to a series of images contained in the layers of a Photoshop Document.
After two years, this version of Photoshop is not the biggest upgrade in the history of Photoshop, but there are enough features, that make it a very welcome upgrade. Some of my favorite features are the new interface, the much improved Camera Raw image processing. I like the Smart Objects, but would like the ability to link a Mask to a Smart Object. I also like the upgrades to the Curves adjustments, Layer Alignments, and the Zoomify Export is really cool to work with. Since I also play with 3D, I like that as well in the extended version.
In my opinion, the new features make it very much worth the upgrade; especially if you are using CS1 or earlier. Should you get Standard or Extended? That really depends on the usefulness of the added features and your ability to spend an additional $350.00 USD for a new version, or $150.00 more for an upgrade.
Lens Test: Pentax SMCP-FA 50mm f/1.4 AF
Posted on November 30, 2007 - Filed Under Cameras, Photo, Reviews | Leave a Comment
This high-speed, normal prime ($199, street) has been around for a decade. Why test it now? No other lens in the current Pentax catalog can throw backgrounds into creamy defocus like this. Even better, on a Pentax K10D, K100D, or K100D Super DSLR, it scales up to a medium-tele 75mm, a fine choice for portraits. Better still? The low price.
HANDS ON
A half-inch shorter and several ounces lighter than comparable Canon and Nikon 50mm f/1.4s, this full-framer predates digital. The small, rubber-clad, manual-focus ring’s turning action is a bit rough. Distance scales are large and easily legible; ditto for the depth-of-field scale (remember those?). The AF action on our test camera, the Pentax *ist DL, was rapid and quiet.
Kodak CCD image sensor technology
Posted on November 28, 2007 - Filed Under Digital | Leave a Comment
Kodak CCD image sensor technology : Kodak has introduced an advancement in Charge Coupled Device – CCD image sensor technology that significantly improves performance for applied imaging applications. Kodak’s new Interline Transfer CCD technology platform will be the basis for a full portfolio of image sensor products targeted to markets such as industrial and scientific imaging, starting with the newly announced Kodak KAI-01050 Image Sensor. The eighth generation of Interline Transfer CCD technology developed by Kodak, this new platform reduces pixel size by almost 50%, doubles the maximum frame rate available from the image sensor, and provides a significant increase in image quality compared to the previous technology generation.
With these advancements, customers working in applied markets will have access to new levels of performance, improving the capabilities and performance of their imaging systems. “Exceptional imaging performance is vital to the success of applied imaging applications,” said Chris McNiffe, General Manager of Kodak’s Image Sensor Solution group. “This new technology platform was developed specifically to address this need by improving key sensor parameters such as pixel size, frame rate, and image quality. As camera manufacturers develop products with our new KAI-01050 image sensor, and later with other image sensors developed using this new technology, they will be able to offer a new generation of cameras that provide improved throughput, performance, and quality for their customers.”
Transfer CCD ranging from VGA to 16 megapixel resolution
Kodak has a rich history of supplying image sensors for use in applied imaging markets. With a broad portfolio of interline transfer CCDs ranging from VGA to 16 megapixels in resolution, Kodak is a leading supplier of image sensors used today in applied applications such as the automated inspection and assembly of electronics components, traffic monitoring, and medical and scientific imaging. As these applications have evolved, the ongoing requirement for improved throughput and imaging performance has driven the development of this new sensor technology to address these needs.
Kodak Interline Transfer CCD platform
Kodak’s new Interline Transfer CCD platform was developed using a “clean sheet” approach, leveraging best practices in Kodak sensor design to optimize the imaging performance available from these new devices. To facilitate the design process for camera manufacturers, Kodak will also use a common package layout with shared electrical specifications where possible for image sensors commercialized using this new technology, allowing manufacturers to develop a single camera design that can easily support multiple sensors.
Kodak CCD image sensor KAI-01050
The Kodak KAI-01050 Image Sensor is the first product to be commercialized using Kodak’s new Interline Transfer CCD technology. With a 1024 x 1024 array of 5.5 micron pixels, the sensor provides a readout speed of up to 120 frame-per-second in a 1/2-inch optical format. Engineering grade devices of the KAI-01050 are currently available, with volume production planned for early 2008.
Casio unleashes firmware bonanza
Posted on November 25, 2007 - Filed Under Digital, Photo, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Casio today made available firmware updates for no less than TEN cameras. There are improvements to movie white balance for seven models and 8GB+ SDHC support for a further three. The updates are available now via Casio’s support site, link after the jump where you’ll also find a breakdown of the changes implemented.
Breakdown of changes
| Model | Changes for Firmware 1.01 |
|---|---|
| Exilim EX-V8 | Stabilizes movie white balance |
| Exilim EX-S880 | Stabilizes movie white balance |
| Exilim EX-Z1080 | Stabilizes movie white balance |
| Exilim EX-Z77 | Stabilizes movie white balance |
| Exilim EX-Z15 | Stabilizes movie white balance |
| Exilim EX-Z12 | Stabilizes movie white balance |
| Exilim EX-Z8 | Stabilizes movie white balance |
| Exilim EX-Z7 | Provides support for SDHC memory cards with capacities of 8GB or greater |
| Exilim EX-Z6 | Provides support for SDHC memory cards with capacities of 8GB or greater |
| Exilim EX-Z5 | Provides support for SDHC memory cards with capacities of 8GB or greater |
Camera Test: Kodak EasyShare Z885
Posted on November 22, 2007 - Filed Under Cameras, Photo, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Just how much camera can you get for less than $200? A whole lot, it turns out. Our test case: the Kodak EasyShare Z885 ($166, street), which comes with 8.1MP capture (more than enough), a 5x zoom (a leap ahead of the usual 3x), and an ISO 8000 setting (holy cow!).
As for image quality, you also get a whole lot. At ISO 80 and 100, the Z885′s Certified Lab Test results were Excellent, with average resolution over 1700 lines, Very Low and Low noise, respectively, and Excellent color accuracy. At ISO 200 and 400 there was no significant drop-off in resolution, while the noise did bump up to Moderate.
By ISO 800, noise increased to the Unacceptable level — although not by much — with a mild drop of about 7 percent in resolution, to about 1590 lines, ranking Extremely High. At ISO 1600, additional noise reduction obviously kicked in, with resolution just squeaking into Extremely High at about 1500 lines. So the Z885 is still quite usable at ISO 800-1600, as long as you stay with moderate enlargement. (Compare it with other current compacts: Its noise performance at these ISOs is considerably better than the noise from the much pricier Canon PowerShot G7, Nikon Coolpix P5000, and Ricoh Caplio GX100.)
6Sight: PureDepth Shows Multi-Layer Display Tech
Posted on November 22, 2007 - Filed Under News, Photo | Leave a Comment
Monterey, CA–PureDepth discussed its new Multi-Layer Display (MLD) technology at the 6Sight conference in Monterey, CA this week. MLD uses two or more LCD layers with a single backlight to display images with an appearance of depth and increased dynamic range. PureDepth’s technology removes interference and coordinates the optical properties between display layers by using interstitial filters. PureDepth’s technology has recently been licensed to Samsung, and can be implemented in any display size, from mobile devices to desktop monitors and televisions.
Activate the YouTube clip below to see a video demonstration of PureDepth’s MLD technology.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10 Review at PhotographyBLOG
Posted on November 19, 2007 - Filed Under Digital, Ratings, Reviews, Tips | Leave a Comment
PhotographyBLOG reviews the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10 where they conclude – ‘Trying to decide what award the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10 should receive has proven to be a difficult task, principally because the overall package that’s currently available doesn’t make too much sense. Panasonic have gone to great lengths to make the L10 the perfect beginner’s DSLR, suitable for all those people who are considering stepping-up from a compact camera…..
Highly-recommended if you can make the significant financial jump from £200 / $350 compact to £900 / $1300 DSLR, with the bonus of that quality lens, but only Recommended for the rest of us less well-off mortals.’
WidgetBucks – Trend Watch – WidgetBucks.com
Field Report: Olympus E-3
Posted on November 19, 2007 - Filed Under Cameras, Photo, Reviews | Leave a Comment
It doesn’t take much of a camera to capture a simple snapshot. But what if you spot a little girl in the park standing amid a flock of startled pigeons? Or you’re photographing the unpredictable twirls of dancers on a stage? Or you’re shooting travel scenes in bright, contrasty mid-day sun? For that you need a special camera.
And to prove that the new 10.1-megapixel Olympus E-3 is a special camera that can handle just about anything a setting can dish out, Olympus invited me and other members of the photographic press to Puerto Rico in early November for several days of hands-on evaluation.
A full test of the E-3 ($1,700, estimated street, body only) is now underway in the Pop Photo Lab, and we’ll give you the numbers as soon as the data is certified. But in the meantime, let me offer some thoughts on how the E-3 fares in the field.
Fast Thinking
That photo op with the little girl and the pigeons was exactly what I faced as I walked around Ponce, the quiet port city on Puerto Rico’s southern Caribbean coast. With the E-3 hanging on my shoulder, I literally had just enough time to swing it up and shoot before the girl, the birds, and the opportunity were gone.
This is where the camera’s new autofocus system really proved itself. A far cry from the slow and fairly crude AF system on 2003′s E-1, the E-3′s AF system is as fast as it is unique.
There are 11 AF points clustered around the center of the screen where Olympus engineers have determined that most subjects appear (surprise!). While the E-3 won’t win for sheer AF-point quantity (that distinction belongs to the Nikon D300, with 51 points), each of the E-3′s 11 points has a twin that is offset by half a pixel. The result: thorough coverage and super sensitivity. The little girl in my shot is tack sharp, with the focus right where I wanted it.
Canon EOS-1D Mark III AF: Canon Europe issues statement
Posted on November 18, 2007 - Filed Under Digital, Photo, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Canon Europe today released an official statement on the AF problems experienced by some users of its EOS-1D Mark III DSLR. It seems the sub-mirror assembly is to blame for focus and tracking inaccuracy in AI servo continuous mode particularly when working in high ambient temperatures. Bodies with serial numbers 501001 through 546561 are said to be affected, and Canon are preparing to offer free repairs from late November.
This statement is available in alternative languages via the link below. Choose your country then perform a search for case ID 72525.
Canon’s statement:
Title: Why do I experience inconsistent Auto Focus (AF) behaviour with my EOS-1D Mark III?
Phenomenon:
The focus or AF tracking is inconsistent when using the Artificial Intelligent (AI) servo continuous shooting mode under high temperatures in particular.
Cause:
In the digital SLR camera, EOS-1D Mark III that was launched in May this year, Canon has found that some cameras have an adjustment problem with the mirror for AF. The adjustment problem means for the affected products that the focus is not stable or that the Auto Focus tracking is not right when using the AI servo continuous shooting under high temperatures in particular.
Affected products:
The products that could have this problem can be identified as explained below.
If the serial number on the bottom of the camera is between 501001 and 546561, it could contain one of the AF mirrors with the adjustment problem.
Support:
For customers who have affected products and are experiencing these problems, we are making preparations to offer free of charge repairs planned to start from late November. We will announce additional details about the repair process on our Web site as soon as they become available.
In case you have questions about this or other issues, please contact Technical Support using the button at the end of this message. Alternatively you can also call our Helpdesk. Please click here for the phone number.
We offer our most sincere apologies to all affected customers who have been inconvenienced by this issue.
6Sight: Visan Demos RocketLife Online Photo Product Technology
Posted on November 18, 2007 - Filed Under News, Photo | Leave a Comment
Monterey, CA–Visan showed its RocketLife technology for creating photo books and merchandise at the 6Sight conference in Monterey, CA. RocketLife can be implemented in photo Web sites by any individual or organization that wants to allow friends or customers to order books and other items featuring images hosted on the site. Visan’s RocketLife technology currently powers Kodak’s Custom Creations software, one of Popular Photography’s 2007 POP Award winners.
RocketLife allows users to set up an “instant storefront” as a new site or part of an existing site. The RocketLife system also handles all aspects of photo merchandise sales, from creation and production to sales fulfillment. The technology provides customers with tools for automatically creating and customizing photo merchandise, and displays photo-realistic 3D renderings of the final products. For photo books, RocketLife automatically lays out the group of photos selected by the customer, and then allows the customer to make adjustments to the layout as desired. RocketLife uses a “smart arrangement” technology to design the layouts. It analyzes photo metadata and image content in order to group photos thematically and apply effects and design elements. The RocketLife photo merchandise storefront and 3D display is also optimized to be viewed and used on mobile devices.
Visan charges resellers $395 to create a branded Web site that implements RocketLife technology and provides print and photo merchandise fulfillment — a package designed to appeal to clients such as event photographers who want to expand the range of photo items they offer to customers on their Web sites. The company is also currently exploring partnerships with online social networking sites and photo sharing and gallery sites. It hopes to work with sites that will integrate the RocketLife photo merchandise creation tools into their users’ online photo galleries, allowing visitors to order merchandise, as well as giving users a way to easily create items with custom photo layouts, such as brochures and catalogs.
You can give the new technology a spin for free on Visan’s RocketLife Web site or in Kodak’s Custom Creations downloa.
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