Mike Wong is the VP of Marketing at onOne Software, located in Portland, Oregon.
I got an email this morning from Keith Roland in Atlanta. Keith works with Jim DiVitale from time to time in Jim's studio, but is a very good photographer and skilled Photoshop user in his own right. Keith has updated his member gallery over at the NAPP Member Gallery and has some great photos in there.
Here's an example of Keith's work, but be sure to follow the link below to see more.
Image copyright Keith Roland.
I've been asked several times lately how to use the Layer Mask Mode in PhotoFrame that I figured it was time for me to do a post about it here.
Layer Masks are a great way to selectively edit, show or hide part of a layer in Photoshop in a non-destructive manner. I love layer masks and PhotoFrame (both the Professional Edition and the Standard Edition) have a feature called Layer Mask Mode that allow you to apply a PhotoFrame frame/edge to the layer mask as opposed to a new layer of its own. If you're wondering why you would want to do this, one reason is if you want an edge to a photo that you're going to post to the web. Maybe you'll put the photo on your site which has a black background and you also want to post the finished photo to your flickr account which has a white background. Adding a layer mask with a frame in it allows you to save the file as a transparent PNG file so that one image can be placed on multiple site and no matter what the background color of the site's page, the edge will look the same as if it blends seamlessly into the page background.
Now that you know what a layer mask is and why you might want do to it, here's how you actually do it.
One of my favorite airports to fly out of is Seattle. Whatever it is about the location of the airport - and maybe it is just because it is in Northwest where they get a ton of rain - they have some of the most amazing clouds that I've ever seen. You can fly through layers upon layers of clouds when going into or out of SeaTac which is why I always ask for a window seat for the times I'm going through Seattle.
Just last week I missed my 11:00 pm flight from Seattle to Portland and caught one of the many flights down to Portland the next morning. I got my seat on the Western side of the airplane so I wouldn't be looking east directly into the sunrise and this is the picture that I got. This makes flying worth it to me every time.
The frame that I dropped on the photo is one of the new frames from Kevin Kubota that is included in PhotoFrame Professional Edition or as part of the individual pack you get as an add-on for PhotoFrame.
For those of you moving to Leopard, please note that we are still testing our plug-ins with the final, shipping version of this new OS from Apple. For more information, you can click here to go to the onOne Software Knowledge Base.
We'll let everybody know when updates are available.
The podcast for the interview I did on Photo Talk Radio last weekend is now live. If you're interested, please visit their site and have a listen.
I just finished up with my first LIVE radio interview with Howard Lipin and Mike Garcia over at Photo Talk Radio.
In the past, internet radio interviews that I've done were always recorded and turned into podcasts, but this was my first one that was live. I'm glad I didn't tell the guys in the office or my family as I'm sure they would have called in and heckled me.
Thanks again to Howard and Mike for having me on this morning!
Okay, so I'm from the West Coast. Oregon to be precise. Portland to be even more precise and let's be honest, Portland is a relatively small city in the grand scheme of cities in the U.S.A. Growing up here, life has always moved along at a relatively easy pace. Not too fast, not too slow.
Now, I've been to New York many times over the years, but it never seems to fail that at least for the first day or two that I'm here, everything seems to move at a very fast pace, faster than I'm used to anyway especially when it comes to crossing streets and watching out for the crazy cab drivers who drive from one intersection to the next as if they are in a qualifying event for the Indy 500 or some other speed event.
So I thought I would try to capture that feeling in the first day or two before it wears off - usually just in time for me to fly home, get in my car and drive home from the airport like a NYC cabbie only to realize that...I'm not a cabbie, I have no fare and I'm definitely not in NYC anymore. Sorry. Here's the photo.
Canon 20D, 24-105 mm f/4 L IS at 1/2 second at f/9, ISO 200
We're both honored and excited to have found out recently that the onOne Plug-In Suite 3 was recently named an American Photo Editors' Choice for 2007 in the category of Top Imaging Software.
This makes two American Photo Editors' Choice awards in a row for onOne. Last year Genuine Fractals received the award!
James Dempsey over at Macworld.com did a nice write up today (or was it yesterday - why am I up so late?) about plug-in updates for the Adobe CS3 apps.
James mentions a handful of plug-ins and their CS3 savvy status for InDesign CS3, Illustrator CS3 and of course, Photoshop CS3. He also mentions the status of some font management apps including Extensis' Suitcase.
Being from onOne, I was especially happy to read James' comments on our plug-ins.
"I consider all four of OnOne’s Photoshop plug-ins to be the best on the market for what they do."
Thanks James! It's always nice to hear those kind of words. We work hard to deliver great products to users and we appreciate the mention!
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed on The Podcast Network's The Digital Photography Show (check out the podcast) with the host Scott Sherman. Scott is a great guy and very good interviewer as well. The show started off where we realized that we both had kids the same age (6 and 3) and that both of our oldest boys were finishing up Kindergarten. It's always fun talking to other parents who have kids the same age. Anyway, we talked mostly about plug-ins (what are they and why you need them) and then more specifically about Genuine Fractals, Mask Pro, PhotoFrame Pro and Intellihance Pro.
If you haven't already, you should head over to the Digital Photography Show website and check out all of their podcasts. There are lots of great interviews in the archives with people such as Scott Kelby, Kevin Kubota and Rick Sammon.
I got an email today from a Lightroom user asking how to rotate some of the frames we've made for Lightroom. The frames will by default be applied in a landscape orientation - this may work fine for some of your images, but not at all for those portrait oriented images. So how do you rotate them?
Just to the right of the words "Identity Plate" look for a circular arrow - it starts off with dots and then becomes an arrow pointing in a clockwise fashion. After you've selected a frame/identity plate, just click this circular arrow once and your frame will be rotated clockwise 90 degrees. Click again, another 90 degrees.
Default Setting
Rotate Button
After rotating frame and setting size to 100%
Image copyright Mike Wong 2007
Ever since we released our PhotoPresets with One-Click WOW! with Jack Davis, we have started getting more and more requests for taking some of our other plug-ins for Photoshop® over to Photoshop Lightroom™ - specifically Genuine Fractals and PhotoFrame Pro. That makes sense as you might think (or have already been telling us), but right now, there's no official support within Lightroom for plug-ins. But there is a way to get frames around your images when using the Print module within Lightroom.
To get a border or edge effect on your image when printing from Lightroom, you need to add a graphical identity plate. Once you add one (or two or three) you can access them from the Identity Plate section in the Print Module. Here's how to do it.
Step 1
Within Lightroom, go to the Lightroom menu and choose Identity Plate Setup...
Step 2
Make sure the checkbox to Enable the Identity Plate is checked and then choose the radio button to "Use a graphical identity plate".
Click the Locate File button and navigate through the dialog box to find the file you want to use. It's important that you use a PNG file that you have saved with transparency. This is the important part. I've found that a 600 pixel by 400 pixel file works pretty good. If you make the file too big, Lightroom slows down considerably when you try to access the frame in the Print module and can take a while to remove it using the Identity Plate Setup dialog. I've printed several different frames that started out as 600 x 400 pixels on images up to 13 x 19 inches on my Epson R2400 and they look good.
After you've chosen your file, go up to the pop-up menu next to the Enable check box, and choose Save As... at the bottom. Give it a name that will help you remember what it is and then click OK.
Step 3
After you've added the frames you want, select the image you want to print and then go to the Print module. Make any necessary adjustments for print size, sharpening, etc and then click on the checkbox (if it's not already checked) for the Identity Plate.
Look closely in the rectangle below the checkbox and in the lower right hand corner, you'll see an arrow pointing down. Click on it and a menu will appear with all of your custom Identity Plates.
Now, just choose the Identity Plate you want to use and it will show up on your image in the center of the Lightroom window. Use the Scale slider to adjust the size or you can grab a corner or side of the frame and adjust the size directly over the image to be printed. You can position the frame however you want.
I've created a bunch (20 to be precise) of frames using PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 in Photoshop CS3 and saved them out in the Identity Plate-friendly PNG format. You can download them here for free. Feel free to use them however you want within Lightroom.
If you download them and use them, please send me an email and let me know how you like them. I used a combination of frames from the Brush, Camera, Marker, Emulsion, Instant Film (aka Pola frames) and some traditional Vignette frames as well as a couple of simple 2 pixel stroke frames. I hope you enjoy them.
One more thing, if you install them and then want to remove them, that's simple. Go to the Identity Plate Setup dialog, click on the pop-up menu next to the Enable checkbox and click the Remove option. Lightroom will walk you through it from there.
[ Update 05-08-2007 ] See an earlier post from Sean McCormack on this technique with credit given to Andreas Noren as the first person (even before the Adobe engineers!) who discovered this technique.
Yesterday was the first day of the 2007 Photoshop World Boston Conference & Expo and what a great day it was. It all started off with Johnny L from Adobe mentioning onOne Software in the Keynote, which was unexpected from us, but tremendously appreciated and exciting.
When the Expo opened, there was a rush of people who at first flew right past our booth and flocked to the Lynda.com booth (I still need to find out what that was all about), but shortly thereafter, we were busy talking to people and it never let up. A big thank you to all of you who stopped by our booth to say hello, ask questions and purchase products. I really enjoy these shows and seeing people get excited about our products and that's what keeps us going and dedicated to building great products.
One of the highlights of my day yesterday was spending about 20 minutes with Vincent Versace before the Expo opened. He showed me aboug 15 prints that he had done for his Black and White Conversion class. Vincent recently converted one of his 5 mega pixel DSLR cameras to a dedicated Infrared camera. If you know Vincent, you know that he likes Genuine Fractals to increase the size of his 5 mega pixel files large enough to be printed at 36" x 44". The prints were amazing. He said he'll give me some of them, so we'll see what happens later today...
The second highlight came when Judy Morse, an attendee & photographer stopped by our booth and rightfully shared with me that earlier in the day she received the Vincent Versace Award for her photo titled "Molokai Infrared". You can see the photo on the Photoshop World Guru Awards page. The thing that Judy wanted to tell me was that she used one of the frames from PhotoFrame Pro to finish off the picture. Looks to me like one of the vignette frames. Nice job Judy! Congratulations!
I am happy to share with you that we've partnered with Dave Cross (Senior Developer, Education & Curriculum for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals) to create another Digital Frame Collection add-on for PhotoFrame Pro 3. The Dave Cross Digital Frame Collection is now available for immediate purchase (requires PhotoFrame Pro 3 or PhotoFrame 3 Elements) for $39.95.
Dave has created 20 great new frames that I think you're really going to love. Here's a sample of a few of his frames on his own images. All photos copyright Dave Cross.
Be sure to check out these frames. They're really good. You can learn more about Dave at his website at http://www.dcross.com.
If you're going to be upgrading to Photoshop CS3 this Spring and are wondering what onOne Software has planned in terms of updates and compatibility and such, here's a recap of what we plan on doing and how it will affect you.
Back in December 2006 (which seems like forever ago already) we announced our plans for Photoshop CS3 compatibility which included making free (via download) updates available for PhotoFrame Pro 3, Intellihance Pro 4 and Mask Pro 4. If you are a registered user of any of those products, you should be receiving an email from us alerting you to the availability along with a download link to get the update installers. If you are not registered, you can so at our online registration page. If you don't get the email for some reason, just give us a call at 888-968-1468 and we'll get you the download links.
For Genuine Fractals, it's a little different. We announced Genuine Fractals 5 in December as well and have stated that anyone who purchases Genuine Fractals 4.1 (standard or Print Pro) as a new purchase or as an upgrade, will get Genuine Fractals 5.0 for free via download when it ships this Spring. Upgrade pricing will be available for those who do not qualify for the free upgrade.
For those of you participating in the Photoshop CS3 public beta, you can download beta versions of Genuine Fractals 5, Mask Pro 4.1 and PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 to use. Please note Mask Pro 4.1 and PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 will require that you have full versions (not demo versions) of Mask Pro 4.0 and PhotoFrame Pro 3.0 installed already. The Genuine Fractals 5 beta does not have this same requirement but does have a timeout date.
It's been a very busy start to 2007 for us here at onOne, so busy that it dawned on me last night that I have been a bit remiss about posting to the blog! So I'll try to make up for that today.
On the heels of the Genuine Fractals 5.0 public beta, we're happy to share with you a preview release of PhotoFrame Pro 3.1. The new update (free to all registered users of PhotoFrame Pro 3) sports a couple of new features as well as compatibility with Photoshop CS3 running natively on Intel-Macs (also referred to as a Universal Binary).
New features in PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 include 16-bit support so you no longer have to convert files to 8-bit and a new Auto-Rotate feature that will automatically adjust the orientation of a frame to best fit your image. Some of the frame content was developed and set by default to be applied in a portrait orientation, some was done for landscape. At the time we developed, we essentially had to flip a coin as to which one we did (rather than developing two of everything). The problem was if you wanted a landscape oriented frame on your portrait oriented image. Sometimes you couldn't see a difference but other times you could - it all depended on the frame.
But PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 fixes that. The plug-in will automatically detect the orientation of your image and compare it to the frame you are applying and make the necessary rotation so the frame looks good the first time and gives you a better user experience.
The beta will only work if you have a licensed version (meaning you bought it, not just downloaded a demo) of PhotoFrame Pro 3 on your computer. Full install instructions are available on the beta site so make sure you read through the release notes. This version is sooooo much faster on an Intel-Mac under Photoshop CS3 than it was running in Photoshop CS2 running under Rosetta.
Enjoy!
We just finished up the Imaging USA Expo and after a one day delay due to the crazy ice storm, I'm on my way home, only to get stuck (again) in Dallas. Oh well, I'll use this extra time on the ground - with Internet access - to share my method of creating the ever-popular Sloppy Border look using PhotoFrame Pro 3. I did a lot of this at the Imaging USA Expo this week and lots of people asked me how I did it, so here it is...we'll work with this original image.
Step 1 - In Photoshop, open your image and then go into PhotoFrame Pro 3. To get the sloppy border look, I think that some of the Brush edges from Volume 1 work best, but you should feel free to experiment with other frames.
Step 2 - To start, apply your frame by double clicking on the frame you like in the Frame Browser and set the color to black using the Background palette. Adjust the frame so the inside edge is where you want it.
You can use the Size slider in the Background palette or you can adjust each side individually using the "handles" on the frame. When you do, it will look something like this:
Step 3 - After you've added your first frame, next add one of the Vignette frames (look in Volume 1 > Vignette or do a search for Vignette).
Leave the background color setting to white, but - and this is the most important part - change the Blend mode to Multiply. When you do this, the white Vignette frame will hide any part of the underlying frame that has a background color set to black. So for a moment, it may appear that you do not have any frame applied at all.
To start to reveal the underlying Brush frame, increase the size of the Vignette frame using either the Size slider in the Background palette or grab the handles and move them independently.
You can get even more creative by adding multiple frames below the Vignette layer and setting the background color to black and adjusting the size to reveal or hide more or less of the frame.
In this case, I've added another frame layer with the same brush frame (brush_08) and then in the Background palette, I clicked the Flip Horizontal button. This gave me the look I was going for.
Here's a screenshot of the Flip Horizontal button and what my PhotoFrame layer stack looks like.
Step 4 - I then sent this frame to my Photoshop layers palette by clicking the Apply to New Layer button. This is how I always apply new frames and recommend how you apply them to as it gives you the most flexibility as you'll see in a moment.
You might notice that in our almost-final image, the frame looks identical (or nearly so) on the left and right sides. This isn't what we want. So let's add a layer mask to our PhotoFrame layer and we'll paint away part of the frame.
Click the Add Layer Mask button in the Layers palette.
Set your foreground color to Black and select the brush tool. Adjust the brush settings to have a softer edge. I always adjust the brush opacity to about 50% and the brush flow to about 60% because this allows me to "build" up or down the desired effect. If these values were at 100% it would result in a very harsh look.
With the settings in place, brush over the part of the edge you would like to hide.
The key to this is to have fun, experiment and think about how you can use multiple frames together with the blend modes to truly create, one of a kind edge effects.
All images copyright Mike Wong 2007
Another day, another announcement. Earlier today, we announced our plans for updating Mask Pro 4, Intellihance Pro 4 and PhotoFrame Pro 3 to be compatible with Photoshop CS3. Yesterday, we talked about our plans for Genuine Fractals.
If you're using Photoshop CS3 in it's public beta form on Mac OS X and want/need to use any of our plug-ins you'll have to run Photoshop CS3 under Rosetta (which pretty much defeats the purpose of the CS3 public beta) for the time being. Rest assured we're hard at work on making the Mac versions of our plug-ins Universal Binaries and plan to share more on that in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
Another inspired shot from Julianne Kost's book, Window Seat. I shot this one with my compact Canon SD550 on the way from PDX to ATL. After a bit of Photoshop work, here's what I ended up with. The frame you see on the picture is from the Jack Davis Collection of add-on frames for PhotoFrame Pro.
I'll post a short tutorial on how I ended up with this final picture in the next few days.
Before PhotoFrame Pro:
After PhotoFrame Pro:
Images copyright Mike Wong
If you missed the review of PhotoFrame Pro 3 in either Layers Magazine or in Photoshop User, you can read it online over at Macsimum news. We're quite proud that they still feel that PhotoFrame Pro 3 is still a must have plug-in for Adobe Photoshop.
In the spirit of the season, here's a quick way to turn that (boring) Haloween snapshot into something a little more interesting using PhotoFrame Pro 3. Here's a picture of the pumpkin I carved with my (then 3 year old) son a couple of years ago.
Nothing too exciting or unique about this picture. But let's take a second and add some frames from the Paranormal collection in PhotoFrame Pro 3 and it becomes a little spookier and more in the spirit of the holiday. The first thing I did was to increase my canvas size by 1 inch on all sides.
All I did was experiment with several different versions of the Paranormal frames. I layered several on top of each other and adjusted the size and blur of each just a little bit. There's no right or wrong here just have some fun.
One of best things to do before you use PhotoFrame Pro is give yourself a little extra room to play with. To do that, increase your canvas size first. This will allow you to adust the size of the frame or frames that you're going to add to your photo.
You can do this yourself by going to Image > Canvas Size and then enter the amount you want to increase your canvas size by. Or you can download this Photoshop Action to increase your canvas size that we've got on our site. Just load the action and then run it before you use PhotoFrame.
It's been a while since I've posted anything as I've been busy creating some new tutorials for PhotoFrame Pro that show off some of the new features and how to take advantage of them. You can see them here.
If you have any suggestions for future tutorials, leave a comment and I'll do my best to get something posted.
If you haven't already heard, we announced a couple of weeks ago that we're coming out with a new version of PhotoFrame called PhotoFrame Pro 3. Check out this Flash-based movie that provides an overview of the new features.
