Some image editing habits become so ingrained that it is hard to unlearn them when newer ways come along and make the old favorite methods redundant. An example of this is the subject of setting the output Levels in Photoshop for the print output. For many years Photoshop users were taught to set the output levels for the shadows at a slightly higher value than 0,0,0, even though (as you will read here) it has not been necessary to do so for quite some years now. Then came along Camera Raw and Lightroom and some photographers have been agonizing over how to set the output levels for an image when there is no output levels control in Camera Raw or Lightroom. Hopefully the following article will help shed some light on how Photoshop is still able to manage the output levels for you and why the solution is really a lot simpler than you would think.

This tutorial is all about the relationship between Photoshop Curves and how all non-dissolve, per-channel Photoshop blend modes are equivalent to some kind of curve.
It has often been said that there is always more than one way to achieve an identical result in Photoshop. The trick of course is to work out which method is best for you or which is the most efficient.

Source: John Nack on Adobe
Author: John Nack

Certain feature requests come up over and over, and customers wonder why Adobe doesn’t address them. In many cases it’s a matter of time, resources, and priorities (i.e. good idea, we just haven’t gotten there yet). In other cases, however, there are conceptual issues that make addressing the request impractical or impossible.

One of those cases concerns something that seems simple: letting Photoshop users apply copyright & other info, then lock it so that it can’t be removed. Photographers in particular request this capability year in and year out. Unfortunately there are good reasons why things don’t work as desired. If you’re interested in the details, read on for an explanation from Photoshop architect Russell Williams.

Source: WIRED
Written by Joseph Rose
(originally posted on WIRED 01-19-1999)

YAKIMA, Washington — The scratchy movie footage shows a big, brown, hairy creature retreating over a stream bed into dense forest. But wait. Is that the glint of a belt buckle on Bigfoot? Or have skeptics gotten carried away with Photoshop?

Loyal Bigfootologists and some computer-imaging experts are giving disapproving grunts to two researchers who claim that a computer analysis of a famous 1967 film shows a man in a monkey suit, not the legendary giant of the Northwest woods.

Source: Adobe Support TechNote 401088

The performance of Adobe Photoshop CS3 is affected by available random-access memory (RAM) and computer processor speed. Other factors can also affect performance, such as the options you select, system configuration, and the built-in limitations of Photoshop. Photoshop CS3 supports new maximum image dimensions, and file sizes requiring increased system requirements.

Read entire technote

Source: Adobe Support TechNote 401089

The performance of Adobe Photoshop CS3 is affected most by available random-access memory (RAM) and computer processor speed. Other factors can also affect performance, such as the options you select, your workflow, and your operating system and hardware configuration. Optimizing your operating system and hardware configuration also improves performance of other applications.

Read entire technote

May, 2007 will be the ten year anniversary of the unveiling of Lenna at the 1997 Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) conference in Boston.

Who is Lenna? Lenna (or Lena Soderberg) was a Playboy centerfold from November 1972. So how did her shot end up as the object of desire for so many “geeks”? (see Lenna’s Playmate page-warning, contains nudity)

According to Jamie Hutchinson in a May 2001 article in the Newsletter of the IEEE Professional Communication Society, it was pure happenstance.

Even before the premier of my photo essay, A Visit to Adobe a couple of weeks ago, it seems Seetha, or more accurately, Seetharaman Narayanan had a fan club.

Back in December of 2004, on CONCEPTART.ORG, messages were posted about Seetha’s name.

Jetpack42 said: “Every time I open up photoshop I am mezmorized by this guy’s name. It’s all I can look at. Don’t know why…”

I’ve updated the The Evolution of the Photoshop Splash Screen PhotoshopNews feature story to include all of the shipping dates for all Mac versions of Photoshop since version 1.0.

The update was prompted by visiting Andrei Michael Herasimchuk’s web site Design by Fire and Andrei’s Photoshop Quiz answers from last year. I’m working on getting the shipping dates for the Windows versions to add to the list.

At the Northwest corner of Park Avenue and South Almaden Boulevard stand three rather tall buildings-by San Jose, California standards. They are the Adobe Towers, the buildings that PostScript and Photoshop built. On 10 West (10th floor, West Tower), the majority of the Photoshop engineers work and play.

Over the last few months, PhotoshopNews has posted a number of articles regarding Photoshop CS and CS2 ram allocation and performance. Here is a summary of the articles.

Even Sherman and Mr. Peabody would be impressed!

In this day and age where digital cameras are under $1K and Photoshop is at CS2–version 9, but actually the 11th if you count both 2.5 and 5.5–the year 1994 and Photoshop 2.5 is just so last millennium!

I’ve heard various complaints about the limited range of output sizes offered by Camera Raw. It’s true that the Size menu in Camera Raw’s workflow options only offers six or seven output sizes, but Camera Raw also has a hidden feature that lets you choose any output size up to 10,000 pixels on the long dimension. It’s hidden in the Crop tool.

Ever wonder about the web sites that offer a full version of Photoshop for $99.99? Is it legit or is it a scam? Well, do you really even need to ask?

Metamerism – or Things That Go Weird in the Light

Macromedia, was formed through the merger of three small software companies: Macromind, Paracomp, and Authorware. Macromind was most well known for Director (see the “Unofficial Brief History of Director“). Many Director customers created 3D renderings and animations using Paracomp’s Swivel3D, designed for photorealistic 3D graphics and true color output for illustration, product design, graphic design and animation. The two companies saw a synergy in their products and formed Macromind Paracomp in late 1990. Soon thereafter, Macromind Paracomp merged with Authorware to form Macromedia in 1991.

Macromedia aquired Aldus Freehand from Altsys, as a required divestiture returned Freehand rights to Altsys as a result of the merger of Aldus and Adobe in 1995.

In the “good old days” of Photoshop lore, back before Photoshop 3 and layers made everything so darn easy, there was a fellow by the name of Kai Krause who was a magician with Photoshop. For some reason, call it brilliance or an intuitive mind, Kai was able to “Think Photoshop” in his mind to come up with some amazing methods of creating interesting (sometimes not so interesting) effects. In late 1992 and 1993, he posted these “Tips” on the AOL Photoshop forum. At the time, they were amazing–and to a certain extent, they still are. To learn and understand Kai’s tips is to glean a better fundamental understanding of Photoshop itself.

Interview: John Nack

So John, how’s life as a Photoshop Product Manager?

Hey Jeff. Life is good, thanks! Announcing a new version is easily the most exciting time to be on the team.

BTW, can you tell us your –EXACT– title?

My title is “Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop.”

One of the big new features of Photoshop CS2 is Adobe Bridge, can you tell us why you guys decided to rip the File Browser out of Photoshop and make it a stand-alone application?

Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 will be able to go beyond the previous 2gig/process barrier that pervious versions of Photoshop were limited to. The answer of “How Much Beyond” varies. . .

I would be tempted to file this under “people with way too much time on their hands” except that I’ve been to all of the sites, and well, ok–I will admit to being intrigued. It seems that Photoshop has fostered a subculture of Photoshop contest junkies on the web. And they sure seem to have fun–even though when they win, they don’t win anything (except higher rankings and the respect of their peers).

Source: White Country News & Telegraph
Article by Carolyn Mathews

From a story about The TV show Extreme Makeover – Home Edition, it seems show host Ty Pennington had an emergency appendectomy during taping and his chest X-rays were turned into some Photoshop art.

Source: DPReview

In a forum thread that started on Monday, March 28th, 2005 (see original thread) a forum member stated he was a beta tester and appeared to violate his NDA by discussing aspects of Photoshop CS2 that were not revealed in the original leak of the Photoshop CS2 press release.

File this one under “oops”. . .

On Sunday, March 27th, 2005 Adobe accidently exposed a press release regarding Adobe Photoshop CS2 dated April 4th 2005. Several threads were posted on the Adobe User to User forums at around 2:00PM Pacific and threads made it out to other web sites such as DPReview and RobGalbraith.

Sources at Adobe marketing reached by cell phone on Sunday afternoon were informed of the leak but had no comment.

Want to be a part of the development of Photoshop? You can by posting in the Adobe User to User Forums.

While not as “way–cool” as being a Photoshop alpha or beta tester, the ideas expressed by users in the Forum’s Feature Requests sections do get the attention of the Photoshop engineers. You CAN have an impact!

While at one point it -WAS- true that Photoshop needed 3 times to 5 times the file size in ram, that is no longer the case.