It’s official, Adobe today made the official Lightroom 1.0 announcement. You can see all of the final official details here including the introductory pricing of $199 which seems like a very reasonable price.
Genuine Fractals 5.0 Public Beta
We are very excited today to announce the availability of Genuine Fractals 5.0 Public Beta. This is a great new release and we’re happy to share it with you before it is actually 100% complete. Keep in mind that this is not the final release candidate, things will change (including a lot of further refinement to the user interface) between now and the final release date.
That being said, go over to our main beta site to login and download the beta. You’ll need to create an account to login, so be sure to do that as well if you haven’t already.
Reuters Issues New Photoshop Rules for Photographers
Source: Reuters
January 23, 2007 – After a torrent whirlwind of events following Reuters’s release of doctored photos of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in the summer, the global news agency’s Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger released new Photoshop guidelines for its photojournalists. Reinforcing Reuters’s values for accuracy, independence, freedom from bias, and integrity, according to their Trust Principles, the new Photoshop rules include specific limits to altering images with particular editing tools.
Reuters does not permit auto levels, selective area sharpening, in-camera sharpening, or in-camera saturation. In addition to the eraser tool, photographers are not allowed to use the airbrush, brush, or paint tools. External Photoshop plug-ins for sharpening is prohibited and use of third-party noise reduction plug-ins is limited.
The Reuters rules also mentioned caption guidelines. Photo captions should include mention of the type of specialty lens used such as tilt-shift lenses or Lensbabies. Photographers should also spell out if visits are escorted, organized tours.
The Art of Photography 2007
Attention all photographers! The Art of Photography show is back again!
The Art of Photography Show 2007 is a world-class international exhibition featuring all forms of photographic art — images shot on film, shot digitally, unaltered shots, alternative process, mixed media, digital manipulations, montages, etc. The Art Of Photography Show will be exhibited at the two-level Lyceum Theatre Gallery, a perfect venue for exhibiting a large showcase of awesome photographic art.
The online entry process is very easy, simply filling out a short registration form and then uploading your digital files. Entry deadline is February 11th at 11:59 pm (California Time).
If you live in the San Diego area (or maybe you’ll be vacationing there) be sure to check out the exhibit which runs April 14 – May 28, 2007.
Create Sloppy Borders with PhotoFrame Pro
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
