One onOne with Mike Wong

Like many other companies that develop software for the Mac, we've had to update some of our plug-ins to be fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. We announced the updates earlier this week and most users should get their update through our auto-update feature when you launch the plug-in from within Photoshop.

But like many things in the software world, there seem to be a few cases where users are getting a message during the update process that the installer could not locate a version of the software to be updated.

If this happens to you, please visit our online knowledge base where our Tech Support team has posted an article on how to work around this issue if you run into it.

Posted by Mike Wong at 2:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's never too early to start making your plans for Photoshop World 2008, and with a title like "The Evolution", how can you NOT start making your plans? So save the date, April 2-4 at the Orange County Convention Center in lovely Orlando, Florida.

Register by February 29, 2008 (it's a Leap Year!) and you'll save $100 on your registration.

Posted by Mike Wong at 1:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

To all of you photographers out there, the PhotographyCorner.com website has announced their anticipated 2007 Photo of the Year contest. They've gathered up over $20,000 in prizes (including several copies of the onOne Plug-In Suite 3) to give away so head over to their website, read the rules and then submit your favorite photos!

Good luck!

Posted by Mike Wong at 12:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We have officially released our Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) updates today. For details on the releases, you can go to the official press release and read all of the juicy (or not so juicy) details.

If you just want to go and download the updates, you can go directly to the updates page and start downloading the patches that you need and you'll be good to go. The download page can be found at http://www.ononesoftware.com/download.php#updates.

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, I got my hands on a Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens from Lens Pro To Go. I've rented from them before and I must say that they offer a great service at a very reasonable price (plus if you're a NAPP member you save 10 percent).

Anyway, I've been wanting to play with this lens for a while (I don't have $1700 to spend on a lens) and boy is it fun. The lens is HUGE, but that is to be expected with that much glass in it. Anyway, it takes some getting used to with the depth of field you can generate with this bad boy. Here are a couple of examples of some shots I took last night.

Canon 20D, 85mm, f/1.2, 1/50 sec, ISO 200

Canon 20D, 85mm, f/1.2, 1/15 sec, ISO 100

I love how it blurs out the background. I'll be having lots of fun with this over the next week before I have to return it.

Posted by Mike Wong at 3:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was just looking at the landscape shot of the Three Sisters mountains that I talked about in the last entry on PhotoTools (see PhotoTools - Landscape Enhance with Glow) and realized that I stopped a little short with that picture. So, in my effort to procrastinate yet again on my big project, I'd like to offer up a quick tip on how you can use PhotoTools to clean up an image like this that has an area that is under exposed that you want to, well, expose.

To correct this, I'm going to use the Digital Fill Flash effect in PhotoTools. This is something that you would normally do with a flash or reflector to increase the brightness in dark areas of your subject matter. This is a great technique to use if you exposed your image for the sky for example and under exposed the foreground. You can click on most of the screenshots for a larger version.

Open your image in Photoshop and then launch PhotoTools or PhotoTools Professional Edition (this effect is in both versions).

Next, go to the Image Optimize section and choose onOne Digital Fill Flash.

Double click on the Digital Fill Flash effect and it will be added to your stack. You can see that we will get some improvement in the middle of the photo where it is too dark.

It is still a little dark for my preference so the next thing I did was to adjust the Fade slider to increase the strength of the Digital Fill Flash effect. By default it is set to 50% but I'll move it all the way up to 100%.

It's still just a little too dark for me. Not much, but enough that it will bug me if I don't fix it. I can't move the slider up past 100 but one of the cool things about PhotoTools is that it lets me stack multiple effects together. In this case, I'm just going to stack the Digital Fill Flash effect again to deal with those pesky dark areas of my photo. So just double click the Digital Fill Flash again and you'll see that by default it sets the strength to 50% which I will leave alone this time.

Posted by Mike Wong at 2:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've got a new Preset for PhotoTools Professional Edition that I'd like to share today. I was going through some pictures for a year end project and found this picture that I took in Central Oregon at a place called Black Butte Ranch. It's a shot of the Three Sisters mountains, part of the Cascade Mountain Range. I love it here. It's absolutely wonderful and we go every summer. Anyway...the original photo was a bit flat with some room for improvement. PhotoTools to the rescue.

I started off with an effect to improve the overall tone and then dropped the Kubota Radiant Landscape effect. I could have stopped there but decided to drop the Kubota Soft Glow effect which added a little more to the clouds. At that point, I stopped. Sometimes it's hard to stop, but that's the secret, knowing when to stop.

Here's the preset if you'd like to download it and use it. You'll need PhotoTools Professional Edition because of the use of Kevin Kubota's effects.

All images copyright Mike Wong 2007.

Posted by Mike Wong at 4:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Adobe has posted a Photoshop Lightroom 1.3.1 update that adds additional Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard enhancements.

Mac users can get the download here. Sorry, I don't have the Windows link but if someone sends it to me I'll update the post.

In addition to the additional Leopard improvements several new cameras are now supported including the Canon 1Ds Mark III (why hasn't anyone sent me one of these yet?, the Nikon D3, Nikon D300, the Olympus E-3 and more.

This post also happens to mark a milestone of sorts of this blog - it is the 200th post.

Posted by Mike Wong at 4:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It is as if someone over at Wacom could read my mind. Either that, or I'm just like everybody else who has ever seen a huge 21 inch Wacom Cintiq display in use but didn't have the $2500 to buy one. Well, now you don't need to have $2500 to get a Wacom Cintiq that lets you draw with one of the the Wacom pens directly on screen.

Wacom has introduced here in the U.S. this week (they announced them in Europe earlier, here and here) two new products in their Cintiq lineup that look to be very promising. The first is a 20 inch widescreen model with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The other is 12 inch wide screen display that you can pick up and put on your lap. You can also use the kick stand and set it on your desk, but I think that I would use this like a piece of paper and either have it on my lap or lying flat on my desk. Pretty cool. The 12 inch model will only set you back $999. Not bad for a display with this type of functionality. I need to get my hands on one somehow...

Posted by Mike Wong at 5:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

For all of you (or none of you) who have me on your Christmas shopping list this year, here's a late addition that is a match made in heaven for my Canon Powershot G9 that I picked up in October.

It's the Really Right Stuff BG9-L L-plate for the G9 which in and of itself is very cool (though I must admit, it would be pretty funny to see this mounted on the RRS BH-55 that I have).

Now, the L-plate is cool enough, but Really Right Stuff also has a lightweight Body Armor cover for the G9 (and the G7 too). You can get them both for only $130 which seems like a good deal to me. Here are some pictures of the L plate and body armor.

Check out the Really Right Stuff website for more pictures and details.

Posted by Mike Wong at 2:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was recently going through some pictures that I took throughout 2007 as part of a year-end slide show, semi-movie project that I like to do for my family. While cruising through my Lightroom library, I stumbled upon this picture of my son that I took in October at one of his soccer games.

I really liked it for two reasons. First, I really liked the lighting - that late afternoon light in the fall can be really nice. Second, I liked it be because Nathan wasn't pulling a goofy face which is he prone to do at his age in just about every picture I take of him. The goofy faces are nice, but even a parent wants a straight face sometimes. Anyway, I thought it would make a good black and white photo so I quickly opened it up in Photoshop CS3 and the took it into PhotoTools Professional Edition.

I added two effects that Jack Davis created for PhotoTools. The first was a Black and White effect specifically designed for portraits (effect name: Davis-WOW Portrait-B&W). I then added the Davis-Diffuse Glow effect set to the Substantial Large setting because I really wanted to get a nice glow and blow out some of the highlights on the left side of Nathan's face so they would blend into the background. I know Jack would disagree with me about blowing out the highlights but I had almost blown them out in the original photo so I figured I might as well go to town and completely blow the highlights and get a cool effect. Finally, I added a small amount of sharpening with Jack's Davis-Portrait Sharpen effect set to Small. The result...

I really like this final result and when I printed it on my Epson R2400, I liked it even better. I can't wait to get the print home and put it up in my office.

Now if you would like to get this same type of look, you can either repeat those steps in PhotoTools Professional Edition - which will save you about 15 steps in Photoshop, or you can download this preset and import it into PhotoTools Professional Edition and get it with a simple double-click. Hope you enjoy it.

All images copyright Mike Wong 2007.

Posted by Mike Wong at 3:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Time sure flies by. I apologize for not posting recently, seems like I hit Thanksgiving and just didn't come back up! The truth is I've been incredibly busy on several different projects this past month and am just now coming up for air but only because I'm procrastinating on working on something else.

Anyway, I wanted to let everybody know that we're running a big holiday promotion sale where you can get 20 percent off of any single onOne Software plug-in for Photoshop using the coupon code HLDY7 in the checkout process. No mail-in rebate forms, just an electronic coupon and you'll get your discount. Pretty cool.

Also, if you've ever considered getting more than one of our products, check out the Everything Bundle that we're offering. You get Genuine Fractals Print Pro, PhotoFrame Professional Edition, PhotoTools Professional Edition, Mask Pro, Intellihance Pro and PhotoTune all for only $499.95 or $399.95 if you already own any version of any onOne product. It's a pretty good deal if you ask me. :-)

I've got a couple of pictures I'll be posting shortly so be sure to look for those as well.

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)