Mike Wong is the VP of Marketing at onOne Software, located in Portland, Oregon.
I was looking through a couple of our video tutorials for our Photoshop plugins the other day and it dawned on my just how many there are up there. We have 79 videos (in Flash and QuickTime format) that cover all of our plugins for Photoshop. Seventy-nine! Wow. I knew we had a lot, but I must admit, I didn't realize there were that many.
So be sure to head over to our Tutorials page and check them out! They're all free of course!
I just got an email from Jim DiVitale and Helene Glassman announcing a hands-on digital imaging workshop in their Atlanta studio coming up in July. Specifically, July 28-30. I've been to Jim's studio before and it's a really nice, big, open space so you'll be learning in a nice environment. Plus, getting to spend a few days learning from both Jim and Helene is a treat in and of itself. Both are wonderful teachers so I highly recommend going to this workshop if you are in or plan to be in the Atlanta area at the end of July.
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.
I was reading Scott Kelby's blog this morning and saw the news that Photoshop User TV will be going on "Real TV" starting next Tuesday night on the Fox Business News Channel.
(Photo from Scott's Blog)
Congratulations Scott, Matt and Dave!
My favorite part of Scott's blog entry is this:
"I don't want you to think for one moment that just because we're on real TV now, that the show will get any better..."
Here's a link to the whole entry which includes a link to the Fox Business Channel site.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If I was better organized, I probably would have put the last three posts into one. But alas, here is my third Leopard related post today.
Curious to know if your Adobe Creative Suite 3 products are Leopard compatible? Adobe has a nice PDF that you can download that lists their products and the associated compatibility status with Mac OS X Leopard.
Good news for Photoshop CS3 users, it looks like from the document that all is well and happy between Photoshop CS3 and Leopard.
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.
One of the best new features that came out in Adobe Photoshop CS3 was the addition of Smart Filters. The new Smart Filters feature allows you to have an editable filter. You can apply a Smart Filter and then you can go back later and edit the effect as opposed to having the effect be completely destructive on a layer. What's more, you can change the opacity of the filter, the blend mode and you can edit it with a layer mask that is added automatically.
Not all filters can be Smart Filters though. PhotoTune 2.2 for color correction, one of our latest plug-ins for Photoshop, can be used as a Smart Filter though. Here's how.
Step 1: Open your file and if necessary double click on the background layer to convert it to a non-backgroud layer. Next go to the Filter menu and choose Convert for Smart Filters.
Step 2: Launch PhotoTune and make your adjustments using the six step color correction wizard. Click Apply.
I'm only showing the final step of PhotoTune here in this tutorial.
When you apply the filter, you'll go back to Photoshop and you'll see that your layers palette now has two indented items under the primary layer that we started working on.
The Smart Filters layer has a white layer mask so that all of the filter effect is visible. Remember with layer masks that White reveals and Black conceals. You will also see the ColorTune 2 filter under the layer mask. The white layer mask is revealing all of the ColorTune/PhotoTune filter. You could select a brush, set the color to black and paint on the layer mask to hide portions of the PhotoTune effect.
Step 3: Edit Your Smart Filter (Optional)
This step is optional and may not be needed, but let's do it for the sake of the tutorial. Let's say you're not quite happy with some of the fine-tune settings you added after the PhotoTune six-step color correction wizard. You can easily make an adjustment without having to go through the color correction process again. To do this simplly double-click on the ColorTune 2 layer and you'll be sent back into the PhotoTune ColorTune filter. Under the image on the right, click on the word Current and then selection Last Filter.
This will load up the previous settings so it is identical to what you saw before you double-clicked on the ColorTune 2 layer. Now, make any adjustments you want and click Apply.
That's all there is to it. Give it a try and also be sure to try this with any other Smart Filter compatible filter. I think you'll find it's a great new way to work!
I was reading Scott Kelby's blog this morning (I really like the design of his blog, check it out) and he's got some great new posts including a link back to Adobe's site where they have posted a page that discusses which version of Photoshop is right for you.
I get a lot of emails from customers who have purchased our software or are running a trial of our software and they invariably ask me which version of Photoshop they should upgrade to. I think this quick read from Adobe pretty much sums it up best.
Earlier this month at Photoshop World in Las Vegas, a new training company made their debut. The company is Xtrain (www.xtrain.com). They have some great trainers that they are working with including Rick Sammon, Ben Willmore, Jack Davis, Rob Sheppard, Taz Tally and the one and only Dr. Russell Brown. There are many more of course - click here to see the entire list of quality trainers.
If you haven't heard of Xtrain before or if you have and haven't seen any of their lessons, you owe it to yourself to head over to their site and do so. The quality of the video is higher than anything I've ever seen online in a training video. Also, the lessons are streaming QuickTime so if you have QuickTime Pro, you can actually save the movies to your computer and watch them when you are offline. I love this feature alone.
The training is good too. I recently watched Ben Willmore's class on HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography and learned a ton about it and can't wait to start playing with HDR.
Now, here's the discount. Xtrain is offering all onOne Software users (I'm assuming you are if you're reading this) a 15% discount on the subscription fee. Classes are $29.00 a month and with your onOne discount, it's only $24.65. A bargain for what you get in my opinion. To get your 15% discount, just type in the promo code onone in the shopping cart and you'll be all set.
If you want to see some free videos first before you sign up, I highly recommend the classes from Dr. Brown. They are hilarious and you'll learn a lot too. Those classes in particular show Xtrain's commitment to their pledge of providing Edutainment.
For those of you who attended the keynote at Photoshop World in Las Vegas last week, you will have seen this video - which is hilarious by the way. For those of you who didn't, check out the big announcement from Adobe...Photoshop CS3 Extended for iPhone!
Click the picture above or go to the Layers Magazine website to see the video.
I posted earlier about sessions at Photoshop World Fall 2007 that you don't want to miss on Day 1 of the conference and now here are my Day 2 selections for sessions you won't want to miss.
If you enjoy still life photography or if you make a living at it, you won't want to miss Jim DiVitale's session at 9:30 in the Digital Photography Live Studio Track. The session is called "Still Life Photography Shoot Live" and I can guarantee you that Jim will teach and show you something you didn't know before. I was in Atlanta once last year and stopped by Jim's studio and he gave me an improptu Photoshop class and taught me a ton...but I digress.
If Still Life isn't your thing, go over to the Creativity Track and catch Joe McNally's session on "Shooting for Major Magazines". Joe has a resume second to none and the portfolio to back it up so I'm sure he'll be showing a bunch of his work so this will be a hard one to miss.
At the 11:00 am session block, I would do anything I could to be in Helene Glassman's "Lighting for Digital Portraiture" class. Few things will improve your photography like proper lighting and Helene is one of the best on the subject. To prove it, Helene has been living minutes away from The Brooks Institute of Photography for over 20 years since she graduated from there and has maintained a successful studio even with hundreds of new graduates to compete with each year.
You get a 2 hour break for lunch, so if I were you - here comes a shameless plug, sorry - I'd stop by the onOne Software booth (#515) at 1:00 after you eat. We're giving away an iPhone to one lucky attendee. Stop by our booth on day 1 for details on how to win.
At 2:30pm, I'd make my way over to a new session this year called "Lightroom Power Session" with Chris Orwig. Chris is a new Photoshop World instructor this year and is an amazing photographer - so you'll get to see some great stuff in his demo I'm sure - and a wonderful teacher, not to mention a great guy. Be sure to see him there if you can. If you miss him there, he's got several sessions on the Tech Expo theatre and in the Peach Pit booth.
In the 4pm session, you'll have to choose between Jay Maisel's new "Light, Gesture and Color" and Rick Sammon's "Working Hard at Having Fun in Digital Photography". Jay and Rick have opposite teaching styles so you'll most likely want to pick the session that you think you'll enjoy the most. I suspect Rick will be full of energy and will get the class invovled while Jay tends to be a little more subdued and presents in more of a lecture style. Both sessions will be great I'm sure, just pick the one you think you'll like best.
At 5:15 I'd either go back to the Lightroom track and see Tim Grey's session on "Photographic Workflow in Lightroom" - though if you saw Matt Kloskowski's session at 9:00 on workflow you might be covered. I think I might have to go see Joe Glyda's session on "How to Light for Shooting Food". I'm not a food photographer and I don't plan on becoming one, but Joe is an amazing presenter who is hilarious as well so I would go to this for the sheer entertainment value. Joe has been the top guy at Kraft foods in the creative department for something like 15 years (or more) so you know he's had to figure out some cool and creative ways to stay fresh there.
At 7:00 pm, you will not, I repeat, will not want to miss the "The Art of Digital Photography" presentation. There's no instruction, just a bunch of great slideshows by Jay Maisel, Vincent Versace, John Paul Caponigro, Jim DiVitale, Joe McNally, Moose Peterson and Joe Glyda. Don't miss it.
That's a very busy day 2 but well worth it. I'll post my day 3 recommendations next.
Like many of you, I've been to quite a few Photoshop World conferences and have had a chance to see some great instructors and learn an incredible amount in a very short period of time (have you ever wanted a one hour session to keep on going? I have. Anyway...)
Here's my list of sessions that I've seen before (some of them under different names) that I would highly recommend you go to. For a full class schedule, visit the Photoshop World site.
Day 1 - September 6, 2007
First go see "The Art of Photoshop" with Bert Monroy at 10:45 am. Bert is truly a master and has no equal. He'll show you things you never knew were possible in Photoshop.
Now if re-creating reality with Photoshop isn't your thing (which is what Bert will show you how to do), I highly recommend Jim DiVitale's session on "Creating Photographic Fine Art Montages". Jim will take photos that you might think would never work well together and through a series of selection techniques and blend mode changes, he'll create a piece of fine art that is nothing short of stunning. Get there early if you go to this one as it typically fills up and is standing room only. This session is also at 10:45 am.
Next, go see Dave Cross in his session "Photoshop Finishing Touches". Dave will show you some great ways to manually add border and edge effects to your photos.
You'll have to choose between Dave Cross and Scott Kelby for the 12:00 to 1:00 pm slot. Scott has his "Photoshop Killer Tips for Photographers" which is always a crowd-pleaser and filled with great tips and tricks delivered like only Scott can. This is a tough one for me, but I'd suggest you go to Scott's class if you're newer to Photoshop and looking to learn more of the "make your photos look better" and I'd say go to Dave's session if you've already got a handle on that and are looking for ways to better show off your work.
I'll talk about my Day 2 picks in my next post.
Photoshop World 2007 Las Vegas is coming up very quickly and we're finalizing our plans for our new and improved booth. We're also firming up some schedules to have some wonderful and truly amazing Photoshop instructors speak in the onOne Software booth (#515). This is going to be a great opportunity to see some of the Photoshop World Dream Team instructors in a small and intimate setting as opposed to sitting in the back of a room with 2,000 other attendees. So be sure to check back here and stop by our booth to get the final schedule.
For now, here's a list of Photoshop Gurus who are scheduled to appear in the onOne Software booth at Photoshop World 2007 Las Vegas.
Jack Davis
Jim DiVitale
Laurie Excell
Helene Glassman
Vincent Versace
I've always liked the idea of creating panorama photographs. About 10 years ago, I bought a small travel (film) camera that had a "panorama" feature that essentially was a switch that you would slide to one side or the other and when you looked through the viewfinder, voila! You had a pano shot. Well, not really, two pieces of black plastic just came in and cropped your viewfinder and then the developer at the foto-mat would just cut the film differently as it rolled down through the processor.
Well, things have changed significantly in the past 10 years and we no longer need to resort to trying to fake a pano shot. While there are a wide variety of hardware-based accessories you can buy including specialized ball heads and slide rails for a tripod setup there are also some great software solutions as well including two new and improved ways to stitch together photos to create a panorama from within Photoshop CS3.
The Photomerge (found under File > Automate > Photomerge) feature was a great addition in Photoshop CS2 (I think it first came in CS2) but the problem I had (at least with my photos) was that I could never get it to blend the sky very well even with the Advanced Blending options. It was a dead give away that it had been stitched (poorly) together. The new Photomerge in CS3 now does a tremendous job of blending images together even if they had different exposure, shutter or aperture settings (which is what usually throws it off in the first place).
There's also another way to do this (isn't there always ANOTHER way to do something in Photoshop?) without using Photomerge. You can use the Auto-Align Layers and Auto-Blend Layers features in Photoshop CS3 and get great results (probably identical but I'll get to that in a moment).
You can download my demo file if you want to follow along (Manhattan-COMBO.psd.zip - 2.7 MB). This file has 5 layers that we'll align together using the Edit > Auto Align Layers feature. You can separate them out later if you want to use the Photomerge method. Here we go...
Step 1: Open the demo file and select all of the layers in the Layers palette by selecting the layer on the top and then hold the Shift key and then click on the layer on the bottom of the stack.
Step 2: In Photoshop CS3, go to the Edit Menu and choose Auto-Align Layers...
In the next dialog box, the default is set to Auto. You can try it but I've already played with this image and to me, I think the Cylindrical option works the best on this sample photo. Your mileage may vary depending on your photos including the lens you used, the subject matter, the distance and angle you were compared to the subject matter etc).
Click OK and Photoshop CS3 will do it's Auto-Align magic. The result will be something that looks like this.
Notice that you'll need to blend the image so the sky doesn't have those bad overlaps and the individual layers look like this in the layers palette:
Step 4: Make sure you have all of the layers selected and then choose Edit > Auto-Blend Layers.
There are no options here so just choose it and be prepared to be amazed at what Photoshop CS3 does. The engineers on this performed some pretty cool math. When it's all done, first, look at your image. Chances are, it looks great and the cool thing is that you didn't have to create any layer masks or do anything tricky to make it happen. However, Photoshop CS3 (and their engineers) did! Take a look at the layers palette and the layer masks it created. I'm stunned every time I see this on a different pano I create.
I created the pano using Photomerge and got an almost identical image. The layer masks were different because of the order in which Photomerge stacked the layers, but the end result was nearly, if not identical to the method above. So depending on which way you prefer, you have choices on how you want to make your pano.
Finally, I cropped my image and then added an effect or two to give the buildings a glow and then a Curves adjustment layer with a layer mask to darken the clouds a bit to make them a little more dramatic.
Click on the photo above to see a larger version.
Again, try this method as well as the Photomerge method. Photomerge is more automated and doesn't require you to have all of the desired images as their own layer in a single document to start (though it ends up doing that). The method outlined above is fun to do because you get to see it all come together easier. So maybe after you learn and see what's happening you can go for the faster more automated method. Either way, I hope you enjoy the new/improved feature in Photoshop CS3 and create some cool panoramas!
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
More on Lightroom today...I was over at the CreativePro.com site today and saw this story by Julieanne Kost on getting the most out of importing your photos into Lightroom. Threre's a 17-minute video you can watch that is hosted by Software Cinema. Here's the direct link to the movie - http://www.workshopsondemand.com/lightroom/s04/
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.
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!
Regarding the new Quick Selection tool in Photoshop CS3, Digit Magazine out of the U.K. had this to say...
"The new Quick Selection tool enables you to create an selection area by 'painting' areas to keep and ignore, with Photoshop selecting surrounding blocks of similar colours automatically. It’s a massive improvement on the old Magic Wand, but it’s not as accurate as plug-ins such as OnOne Mask Pro or Vertus Fluid Mask - and lacks those tools fine-tuning controls for dealing with tricky areas such as hair."
Like anything else, there are always different ways to tackle the challenge of making a good selection. Sometimes the best way is with a standard Photoshop tool or technique and I agree with Digit that the new Quick Selection tool is a nice improvement over the Magic Wand - and I'm sure I'll use it from time to time - but again, every image is different and as such there are times when you'll want more control over your selection and you'll find that a plug-in like Mask Pro is better suited for your needs.
Adobe has officially announced their biggest product launch in company history today with their Creative Suite 3 announcement. You can read their official press release here. For a PDF specifically outlining the Photoshop® CS3 family, including Photoshop® Lightroom, you can read this PDF.
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.
More news from onOne Software last week...we announced the immediate availability of 85 presets for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom that we're calling PhotoPresets with One-Click Wow! that everybody can download for free.
We worked directly with Photoshop Guru and Hall-of-Famer Jack Davis. The presets are unique from others in that they do not try to be everything to everybody or a one-size fits all. Presets that were developed by someone with some image may not necessarily work on your image (were the white balance corrections the same, what about HSL settings? the list goes on). This doesn't mean that we won't come out with other presets that help you recreate a specific look, but in general for color correction, the feedback we've gotten from most users out there who are over-whelmed and somewhat intimidated by the numerous sliders and curve adjustments available in the Develop module, welcome these kinds of presets with open arms.
As such, the PhotoPresets that Jack developed for us help walk you through the process of fixing and properly adjusting your photos. Start with a White Balance correction, then move into Tone Curve adjustements. Next, HSL (hue, saturation & luminosity) where you can push everything to grayscale except a color (i.e. blue eyes). Next, you can change to black and white, add a custom hand-tint and finally a variety of vignettes can be added. It's really quite simple when you go through the presets. The cool thing is that once you find a look that you like by combining these presets, you can save that preset as your own and in one-click, you're there!
So if you're using Photoshop Lightroom, go download a copy of our PhotoPresets for Lightoom. They're free! In the next few days, we'll be posting several video tutorials that Jack Davis created specifically for these presets.
If you're not a Lightroom expert and don't know where the presets go, don't worry, we've created an installer that puts the presets in the right place. Just run the installer and relaunch Lightroom.
This is a few days late (last week was pretty busy) but I wanted to post a quick note that we posted the first beta of Mask Pro 4.1 for Adobe Photoshop CS3 last week on our labs site.
This new version (which, by the way is free to all existing, registered owners of Mask Pro 4.0) adds native support for Photoshop CS3 (it is a Universal Binary for Mac OS X) as well as 16-bit support. We've been asked for 16-bit support for a while now, so we're happy to be offering this to Mask Pro 4 users at no charge.
Go to the onOne Software labs site now and download your copy today. Again, you must have a licensed copy of Mask Pro 4.0 installed in order for the beta to run.
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 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.
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 fram
