Adobe Photoshop Hits Twenty
Community Celebrates Software that Changed the Way We View the World

SAN JOSE, Calif., – Feb. 18, 2010 – Adobe® Photoshop®, the software product that redefined creativity in the digital age, turns 20 on Feb. 19, 2010.

Around the world, Photoshop fans are celebrating the impact their favorite software has had across photography, art, design, publishing and commerce.

In the United States, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) will be hosting a special Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration for over a thousand attendees in San Francisco at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theater today.

The event will feature Adobe’s senior vice president of Creative Solutions, John Loiacono, as well as vice president of Photoshop Product Management, Kevin Connor, Photoshop co-creator Thomas Knoll and famed Adobe creative director and Photoshop evangelist, Russell Brown. To be a part of this celebration and view the live Webcast, visit: www.photoshopuser.com/photoshop20th.

The festivities continue overseas in Japan, Southeast Asia and throughout Europe.

In honor of the 20th anniversary, Adobe Germany will host a special 20-hour online marathon, featuring over 15 local Photoshop “gurus” demonstrating their favorite tips and tricks live for Photoshop fans. In India and France, digital imaging contests will be held to showcase the work of Photoshop users.

A special Adobe TV broadcast will also air on the anniversary date at http://tv.adobe.com/go/photoshop-20th-anniversary, reuniting the original “Photoshop team” for the first time in 18 years, to discuss their early work on the software and demonstrate Photoshop 1.0 on a rebuilt Macintosh computer.

The Photoshop community is also sharing their favorite stories online, with the product and its over 400,000 fan-strong Facebook page, the hub for a worldwide look at the product’s impact. A new “Celebrate” tab directs users to a 20th anniversary logo, which many have already personalized with Photoshop and used as a replacement for their profile image. Connect with the Photoshop team at www.facebook.com/Photoshop or http://twitter.com/photoshop, and add the tag #PS20 to tweets about the anniversary.

“For 20 years Photoshop has played many different roles – it has given creative people the power to deliver amazing images that impact every part of our visual culture and challenged the eye with its ability to transform photographs,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe. “It’s no exaggeration to say that, thanks to millions of creative customers, Photoshop has changed the way the world looks at itself.”

The impact of Photoshop is everywhere – billboard signs, magazine covers, major motion pictures, even the logo on the coffee cup you drink out of every morning. All have likely been touched by the software. Over 90 percent of creative professionals have Photoshop on their desktops and today Photoshop is used by professional photographers, graphic designers and advertisers, as well as architects, engineers and even doctors. Whether it’s bringing visual effects to life in the blockbuster film Avatar, helping save lives in partnership with forensics departments and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or challenging the human eye to determine if an image is real or fake, Photoshop continues to find new uses and advocates.

How It All Began
In 1987, Thomas Knoll developed a pixel imaging program called Display. It was a simple program to showcase grayscale images on a black-and-white monitor. However, after collaborating with his brother John Knoll, the two began adding features that made it possible to process digital image files. The program eventually caught the attention of industry influencers, and in 1988, Adobe made the decision to license the software, naming it Photoshop, and shipping the first version in 1990.

“Twenty years ago, Adobe predicted that it would sell 500 copies of Photoshop per month,” said Thomas Knoll, co-creator of Photoshop at Adobe. “I guess you could say, we beat those projections! It’s amazing to think that millions of people use this software today. We knew we had a groundbreaking technology on our hands, but we never anticipated how much it would impact the images we see all around us. The ability to seamlessly place someone within an image was just the beginning of Photoshop’s magic.”

Over its 20-year history, Photoshop has evolved significantly from a simple original display program to a wildly popular application that has over 10 million users worldwide. With each release, Adobe has introduced technological innovations that defy the impossible. Layers, introduced in Photoshop 3.0, gave designers the ability to create complex compositions easier than ever before. The Healing Brush, another groundbreaking feature introduced in Photoshop 7.0, allowed users to magically retouch images by seamlessly removing blemishes and wrinkles, while preserving lighting and texture. Photoshop tools like crop, eraser, blur and dodge and burn have become part of the creative vernacular worldwide.

The Photoshop team thrives off its rich beta tester program, with active and vocal users who have submitted requests and helped shape the development of features throughout the years. Adobe has maintained a strong connection with its customer base through blogs, user research, customer support, forums and feedback from Adobe “evangelists” who travel the world to engage with Photoshop users.

Helpful Links
National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration: www.photoshopuser.com/photoshop20th

Adobe TV Photoshop 20th Anniversary Broadcast: http://tv.adobe.com/go/photoshop-20th-anniversary

Photoshop Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/Photoshop

Photoshop Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/Photoshop

Photoshop Twitter: http://twitter.com/photoshop

Photoshop Family Page: www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family

Adobe Photoshop Family
Building upon Photoshop’s history of innovation and leadership, Adobe offers a line of Photoshop desktop and Web-hosted solutions for every level of user. Each product in the Photoshop family gives users across the spectrum of digital expertise the power to manage, edit, create and showcase images.

Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended software are at the heart of the Photoshop family, providing unrivaled power and editing freedom. Photoshop Lightroom(r) addresses the workflow needs of serious amateur and professional photographers, helping them find, manage, enhance and showcase images in powerful ways. Photoshop Elements software provides accessible tools and sharing options for photo enthusiasts. Snap-shooters can quickly and easily share and edit photos with simple gestures on their iPhone or Android devices. Photoshop.com completes the Photoshop line providing an online photo sharing, editing and hosting resource for all.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

John Nack, the Senior Photoshop Product Manager at Adobe has been invited by Scott Kelby to post on Scott’s Photoshop-Insider blog.

John’s post talks about the relative difficulties of determining what features and functionality to add to new versions of Photoshop. It’s a little something I know a bit about having coined the phrase; careful what you wish for, the Photoshop engineers may (or may not) give you what you said you wanted.

Check out John’s post here.

T0 the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as “the Mexican suitcase.” And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922.

The suitcase — actually three flimsy cardboard valises — contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom.

Capa assumed that the work had been lost during the Nazi invasion, and he died in 1954 on assignment in Vietnam still thinking so. But in 1995 word began to spread that the negatives had somehow survived, after taking a journey worthy of a John le Carré novel: Paris to Marseille and then, in the hands of a Mexican general and diplomat who had served under Pancho Villa, to Mexico City.

And that is where they remained hidden for more than half a century until last month, when they made what will most likely be their final trip, to the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan, founded by Robert Capa’s brother, Cornell.

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As we approach the end of 2007 we wanted to ask some of the leading figures in the Photoshop community which books they had found most inspiring and in the case of authors, which books they had written were they most proud of. We got some interesting and quite varied responses. So if you are still stuck for ideas about what to get a Photoshop geek for Christmas, here are some reading tips from the experts.

To keep this article seasonal we didn’t want it to be entirely about Photoshop and digital imaging. We did also ask people to nominate a book for recreational reading. After all, the holiday season is a time for relaxing and leaving work to one side! To help you find out more about the books recommended here we have created links to Amazon.com for all the books featured here.

Ben Willmore

I wrote Photoshop CS3: Up to Speed because it was the book that I personally would look for when a new version of Photoshop is released. As a seasoned Photoshop user, when a new version is released, all I really need to know about is the new stuff and that’s all that the Up to Speed book covers. I wish I could find similar titles for all the other programs I use (like Mac OSX Leopard for instance). I don’t have the patience to search through hundreds upon hundreds of pages to find the new stuff in a bible-sized book or deal with the limited coverage in the more cookbook style books, so I decided to write the book that I thought was missing from the shelf. This short, low priced guide is the fastest way to get “up to speed” when a new version is released.

I enjoy writing the book because if forces me to search through every nook and cranny in Photoshop and discover all the small changes that I would have never noticed if I was working on a book that covered both the old and new features. It also gets me to explore features in much more depth than I have in the past.

Readers seem to love the book and the only complaints I’ve heard relate to the binding on the first printing. Peachpit Press (my publisher) really screwed up on the first batch and they were falling apart in readers hands. Peachpit will replace any of the early copies that fell apart.

I started the book with Photoshop CS2 because that was simply the time when I realized the need for such a book. I wish I would have thought of it much earlier.

I don’t think I’ve made it through any other Photoshop books this year, but here is a recommendation for a non-Photoshop book: The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. This is the best book I’ve read in about a decade and has been a deep influence in how I’ve changed the structure of my life over the last year or so.

John Nack

I read quite a bit online, but I don’t read too many printed books—at least not cover to cover. So, I’d suggest the following based on what I’ve nibbled this year:

Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations, by Simon Rich
Bite-sized chunks of mordant hilarity, which of course makes it right up my alley. The book is so slight that you can almost read it all while waiting in line to buy it.

I Am America (And So Can You!), by Stephen Colbert
Nobody else makes being asinine so funny. Colbert manages to poke fun without being shrill, and without condescending.

Music for Chameleons, by Truman Capote
I don’t know Capote very well & thus can’t compare the short stories in this collection to his other work, but I found them consistently engrossing.

My American Century, by Studs Terkel
Terkel brings to life the voices of Americans from every walk of life in the last hundred years, putting real texture on the bones of historical events. The narratives (such as they are) can get a little haphazard and pedantic from time to time, but I welcome the insights into so many real lives.

Andrew Rodney

I have not read as many books as I should. But one book I can highly recommend and quite new to the market is The HDRI Handbook: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers and CG Artists by Christian Bloch (published by Rockynook). I’ve had a passing interest in HDR but didn’t know much about it. Chapter 1 of the book is worth the price of admission as it’s an excellent primer covering the fundamentals of HDR, image encoding and the somewhat controversial concepts of dynamic range versus bit depth. I didn’t fully grasp the potential of really high-bit (32 bit encoding), and HDR until I read this well written chapter. I was equally naïve about the various file formats that support HDRI until reading chapter 2. The two chapters greatly aid in supporting the rest of the book which covers both best practices for capturing images for HDR and the various software products available for processing bracketed data. The discussion of true HDR camera systems we may see in the future was fascinating! Bloch does an excellent job of using various analogies to clearly explain some rather complex concepts and his style is humorous and never dry. An entire chapter is devoted to the important task of tone mapping. I thought the images provided throughout the book showed great care in this important process of tone mapping; the images don’t have that odd, HDR look I’ve seen in the past. The examples actually make you excited about the prospect of shooting and processing HDR images. One chapter covered HDR and Panoramic photography. I really hated that chapter. I got so excited about the prospect of trying this out I ended up spending $1500 for a new Carbon Fiber tripod and the entire Really Right Stuff Pano head! Seriously, I’m really looking forward to trying some of the techniques illustrated in this book. The HDRI Handbook is quite up to date (it was just released) so it covered the HDR features in Photoshop CS3 as well as a number of Mac and Windows software products that handle HDR processing. Print quality, illustrations all the images is top notch. At 341 pages, there’s no fluff to be found and I think this was a great primer on a subject I only knew about in passing. An added bonus is a CD-Rom containing tutorials files, many used within the book that I could test until I was savvy enough to produce my own images to play with. There’s a lot of demo software as well. The companion website, http://www.hdrlabs.com/news/index.php should give you an idea of what to expect both from this excellent book and from the exiting new field of HDR digital imaging. The web site like the book has a ton of content and is beautifully designed. Highly recommend.

Julieanne Kost

Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking is a complete view of a creative project from the artist’s perspective. I took my own experience of shooting images out of airplane windows to create a unique seminar in three parts: a manifesto of ways to stay creatively alive; a portfolio of stunning photographs, with commentaries describing my experiences and thought process; and a technical appendix that includes the details of the images were shot, manipulated, and prepared for printing.

In the midst of an experience as inorganic as business travel, this collection of photographs came into existence by a completely organic process. They came about not because I first had the idea to do a whole portfolio of photographs shot out of airplane windows. Instead, I was moved to shoot one photograph, and then another, and then 3,000 more over the course of five or six years.

Here are some of the books that Julieanne also recommends from her website:

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book – Martin Evening
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers - Scott Kelby
Photoshop Lightroom Adventure - Mikkel Aaland
Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers - Martin Evening
The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers - Scott Kelby
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques - Ben Willmore
Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One - Deke McClelland
Real World Adobe Photoshop CS3 - David Blatner, Conrad Chavez and Bruce Fraser
Photoshop Masking and Compositing - Katrin Eismann
Real World Color Management - Bruce Fraser
Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy - Bert Monroy
Photoshop Restoration and Retouching, Third Edition – Katrin Eismann

I will also tell you that I just read Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyevsky. I don’t know if people will want to put it on their Christmas list, but here was a quote that I thought was appropriate:
“On the whole, there are extremely few people with new ideas, or who are even the merest bit capable of saying something new – so few that it’s almost strange”.
– Dostoyevsky

Seth Resnick

Without a doubt the two best so far would have to be The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening and Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3 by Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser. That said, there is also Martin’s Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers and Andrew Rodney’s Color Management for Photographers. I also really enjoyed reading Eric Meola’s books: Last Places on EarthBorn to Run: The Unseen Photos on Bruce Springsteen. There was also Stephen Wilkes’s Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom book. and his book called

And then there was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It gave me a very clear, and vivid sense of the life in Afghanistan without feeling like I was being lectured to by a politician. It was sort of a wake up and open your eyes kind of book. I did know what was coming next but still enjoyed the book.

Martin Evening

I had an extremely busy start to the year. I was in the midst of finishing off first of all The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book, which was followed soon after by the publication of Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers. Of the two, I was particularly proud of the Lightroom book since I had spent so much time preparing and revising it over a 15 month period. I was pleased when it was finished, but of course not long after I had to write the Lightroom 1.1 update!

In between working on my books I did find time to read all the way through Peter Krogh’s The DAM book, which proved incredibly useful, offering professional insights into the art of image management. I certainly learned a lot from it and recommend to others as the book on this subject.

I have always been interested in space exploration and NASA photography. One of my favourite photography books is Full Moon by Michael Lightman. So I am hoping Santa will be kind enough to get me Postcards from Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet by Jim Bell. If you think email communication is a phenomenon of the late 20th century, well think again. The Victorians had their own Internet, in the form of ‘The Telegraph’. I did first read Tom Standage’s book The Victorian Internet some years ago, but it cropped up in discussion recently and thought it worth highlighting because it is a fascinating book that reveals many interesting parallels with the way we use and regard the Internet today.

For light reading I would recommend Restless by William Boyd as my favorite novel of the year. It is an ideal book to read over the holidays or if you are on a long journey. Set in England in the seventies, it is a story of a young woman who comes to learn the truth about her mother, Sally and her secret wartime identity. I would rate this as one of William Boyd’s best, alongside Stars and Bars, The Blue Afternoon and Armadillo.

Russell Brown

I actually have not looked a very many books this year. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but it just happened. My only recommendations would have to be Ben Wilmore’s book called Photoshop CS3 Up-To-Speed. Mikel Aaland’s book on the Iceland Photoshop Lightroom Adventure. Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, by Martin Evening. Finally, Jeff Schewe’s new book: Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Mac Holbert

As a self-taught digital printmaker I am always looking out for new books that explore the subject. I started my company in 1989 – a time when there was no Internet and there were no books on digital anything! I struggled with the new tools and made many mistakes but I eventually learned what I needed to create a successful printmaking studio. I can only imagine the hours I could have saved in the early days if I had had access to in-depth, real-world information on how to scan, process, print, and curate an image! I see many “How To” books but find most of them too general and most often aimed at the neophyte. Although these books serve a purpose for the casual “hobbyist” I tend to seek out books that delve a little deeper into the “business” of printmaking. I have chosen two books that were published in 2007 that fall into this category.

301 Inkjet Tips and Techniques – Andrew Darlow is an encyclopedia of valuable information gleaned not only from his own vast experience but also from many of his friends and fellow digital printmakers. Darlow doles out task specific tips and techniques as he generally covers the creation of a print. He makes you stop and consider your choices and often presents you with possible solutions that you may not have ever considered. This book is best suited for the intermediate to advanced user as much of the information presented may not be meaningful to the uninitiated.

The real value of the information presented in this book is that it is culled from actual users. When a specific substrate or device is discussed it is usually a first person experience. Because of this it more accurately reflects the real concerns and issues of the larger printmaking community not just one individual’s view of the subject. Like any book that covers such a broad subject not all the information is appropriate for every reader. Regardless, I find this to be an invaluable addition to any digital printmakers library. This is time-tested information. It is a resource that I think you’ll find yourself referring to for years to come.

Fine Art Printing for Photographers by Uwe Steinmueller & Juergen Gulbins is a true manual for fine art printmaking. It is aimed at those users who are ready to take their output to the next step. Creating a fine art digital print requires a level of expertise far above that required to create “snapshot” prints on one’s home computer. This book clearly outlines the process and provides invaluable information for the fledgling fine art printmaker. In addition to an overview of different printing technologies, the book covers what I consider to be the most important aspects of fine art digital making: Color Management; Fine Art Digital Workflow; Substrate choices and handling; Specific fine art printers; Printer drivers and RIPs; Print Presentation.

One thing I particularly liked about this book was its length, 226 pages. It’s not the “typical” digital bible that attempts to cover every possibility in 500-600 pages. Fine Art Printing for Photographers is concise and well organized focusing just on the needs of the fine art printer. It provides a solid but flexible foundation that allows it to be customized for the individual needs of the end user. The hidden value in this book is in how it breaks down the steps necessary to improve printmaking skills. It leaves many of the decisions to the individual. It points out in its introduction that experimentation is crucial and is, in most cases, the only way one can truly determine whether or not a particular product or technique is appropriate for one’s unique set of needs. The authors present their approach but never assume that their way is the only way. This book provides an excellent structure for learning how to improve one’s printmaking skills. I highly recommend this book!

Jeff Schewe

Well, I’m very pleased that Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3 by Bruce Fraser and I is shipping and being well received. But it’s a bittersweet pleasure because I wish Bruce could have seen it. However, I’m very sure that he’s pleased with the results, wherever he’s at. I’m also rather tickled with the cover! It’s my favorite “15 foot mutant penguin” shot. (much better than the unknown soccer shot they were going to use).

As for other books, although not new (it was published last year) I’ve found a new appreciation for Bruce’s Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop book. The reason I’ve spent so much time reading it was that earlier this year, I helped fulfill a consulting contract for Bruce working on the sharpening in Camera Raw 4.1 and Lightroom 1.1. Thomas Knoll had wanted to work with Bruce to substantially improve the capture sharpening and while we didn’t get it done for the launch of Lightroom nor Camera Raw 4.0, we did get it done. I must say that my copy of Bruce’s book is well thumbed over and I know for a fact it had a major impact on both Thomas and Mark Hamburg (Lightroom founding engineer) because I saw Mark reading the book while he was coding the sharpening processes. While it’s got Photoshop CS2 in the title, pretty much everything regarding sharpening is the same in Photoshop CS3 with the exception that now, I use Camera Raw 4.3.1 (current) to do all my capture sharpening.

As for other books, well, everybody else has already posted my favs for the Photoshop genre so I’ll add my favorite recreational reading authors. I’m a long time fan of John D. MacDonald, the author of the Travis McGee mysteries. And yes, I re-read them a lot whenever I need my McGee fix. I’m also a fan of Robert B. Parker (primarily the Spenser series). Fortunately, there’s a new one out as of October (so I’m sure to get the hardcover for X-Mas). Anybody who knows me knows that I’m an odd blend of part McGee and part Spencer in my world view.

Katrin Eismann

Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Real World) by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe
To the point, invaluable information, gets into the essential details and controls every photographer needs to get the most out of ACR.

The HDRI Handbook: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers and CG Artists by Christian Bloch. An excellent book on HDR that has enough technical info for the geek and inspiration for the artist. Excellent illustrations and examples.

Adobe Photoshop CS3: Up to Speed by Ben Willmore. To the point information, excellent overview of all things new in CS3.

Nash Editions: Photography and the Art of Digital Printing by Garrett White. Don’t look for step by steps in this book – look for inspiration and a tremendous overview of excellent art.

Other books:

Rock and Roll by Lynn Goldsmith. Fantastic photography and insights into the music that shaped a generation…or the generation that shaped the music! Makes a great gift for the secret rocker in your life!

Perception and Imaging, Third Edition: Photography–A Way of Seeing by Richard D. Zakia. Photography is about seeing – not moving sliders around. Dr Z’s book is the book on perception – both visual and psychological.

Doode…U gotta Cee LOLCat.com

The recent discovery that a Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated pictures he took for Reuters has raised questions about the standards of photojournalism at a time of widespread digital photography.

The incident also increased pressure on news photo editors, who select and edit thousands of photographs under deadline each day, to detect digital alterations.

“The Soviets had to have a whole department to doctor pictures,” said David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair and a former director of photography for Life magazine. “Now all it takes is a swipe of a mouse, and the kid down the street can add smoke and mirrors to everything.”

Detecting the smoke and mirrors is a challenge. While editors for print publications commonly rely on editing systems that track each change made to an article, photo editors have fewer tools at their disposal and often rely simply on experience and instinct. As a result, the most skilled manipulations can be difficult to catch.

Careless digital alterations, like Mr. Hajj’s, are easier to spot. He used a computer program like Adobe Photoshop to darken and duplicate the smoke from an Israeli air strike on Beirut and to add extra flares to a picture of an Israeli jet.

Charles Johnson, who disclosed the story about Mr. Hajj’s photos on his Little Green Footballs blog, was alerted to the manipulation by Mike Thorson, a Wisconsin-based artist who also works in graphic design.

Mr. Thorson said that while browsing the Yahoo News Web site, he noticed the smoke patterns in Mr. Hajj’s picture because the sloppy effect was familiar from his own fumbles with Photoshop.

“Regular smoke just isn’t going to have a pattern like that,” Mr. Thorson said. “I immediately recognized some of the bad things I do.”

Photo editors said that such patterns, which result from using Photoshop’s cloning tool, are one of a few indications of deliberate digital manipulation. They also look for differences in graininess or pixilation, which could indicate that a person or object has been added to the photo.

Variations in color or shadows on different parts of a manipulated photo are another sign, as lighting conditions are difficult to match exactly. The edges of people or objects grafted onto images can be either blurry or too sharp, yielding an outline or halo effect around the figure added.

Photoshop also allows editors to view levels of an image, which are indicated by line graph with shading underneath. If a photo is relatively untouched, the graph is smooth and solid; but a heavily modified image creates sharp spikes on the graph. These levels graphs allow editors to see whether or not a photographer has made changes to an image, but not what exact changes have been made.

The problem with relying on these graphs is that many photographers use Photoshop or other programs within the standards allowed by newspapers to clean and clarify their work. Correcting the lighting or color saturation of their pictures is generally considered the digital equivalent of darkroom emphasis or de-emphasis made on photos taken with film.

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After a recent Epson Print Academy event in St. Paul, Minnesota I had the chance to hook up with some of the Lightroom engineers at Adobe’s offices in Arden Hills just outside of Minneapolis.

As you might know, I rode my motorcycle to Minneapolis. On the left, George Jardine (another bike rider) and Tom Hogarty (Lightroom product manager) admire my bike parked outside the hotel. On the right, George engages in one of his famous yawns. He travels a lot and his body is never sure what time zone it’s in.

We were driving to Troy and Melissa Gaul’s house for Sunday night dinner. Here’s Melissa out front picking flowers as we drive up.

This is Melissa’s electronic cello, I’ve never heard her play but Troy says she’s “not bad”.

Ah, here’s Maggie the growling attack dog. Troy just kept telling us to ignore her and she would forget about us. She did eventually but she sure sounded vicious.

Sitting around the kitchen left to right is; Troy Gaul, Mark Hamburg and Tom Hogarty. I believe there was wine. Right George?

Sitting down to a spaghetti dinner.

George seems to have over eaten (he loves spaghetti). I don’t know who he was talking to. On the right, what do geeks do after dinner? Gather around in the computer room of course.

George wanted Troy to check on a bug…

Nice screen Troy, Lightroom looks really good on a 30″ Cinema, huh? Not sure why it wasn’t full screen though.

The next morning, I parked my bike out front of Adobe’s offices.

Adobe MN doesn’t have a real receptionist. Somebody (usually with the least tenure) must man the call button to let people without badges in. Hey, this is a high security area…it’s protected by Pinkerton!

Troy comes to let me in.

Typical “walking down the hall” shot.

Here’s Troy in his office. Pretty clean by engineering standards.

Here’s Troy’s SPAM Award of Excellence (left), and no, I don’t know what it means. On the right is Troy’s first computer.

Typical engineering requirement-goofy toys (left) and on the right, the tangled result of a recent computer upgrade.

The MN folks stuck us in an empty office to drop computers, check email and otherwise kill some time before meetings.

Here’s George editing some shots in Lightroom. The shoot was of extreme sports in Moab, Utah that George art directed…can’t remember who the shooter was.

Left, Mark takes in caffeine, right, Tom hangs at the white board. Yes, I’ve obscured what’s on the white board. And yes, I also had my morning 4 shot grande mocha from Starbucks-there was one just down the street.

Then it was off to the meeting in Frostbite Falls, a conference room with high tech communication gear that can connect the engineers in San Jose and Minnesota for weekly video teleconferences.

Mark always keeps his eyes on me cause he knows I shoot from the hip (left). On the right I get a close up of Bob Pappas.

Melissa apparently didn’t get Mark’s memo warning about the way I shoot – she made a funny face and I got it!

So, the meeting was pretty important.. I was dis-invited (meaning they had to talk about stuff I shouldn’t hear, but of course, I found out anyway but I’m sworn to secrecy).

Then I was out in the hall again stalking the offices for photo-prey.

I actually found a map of the floor-which was really useful since I kept getting lost.

You might wonder about calling a conference room “Frostbite Falls”. Well, Adobe has a tradition of naming their conference rooms. I think in San Jose, it’s type faces. In Seattle I think it’s state parks and in Minnesota, they all voted to come up with frozen tundra of the North type names.

My fav? Ice Palace. Of course, I was there on a really nice sunny day in May. I can just imagine how dreary it can get in January.

I had to do the obligatory kitchen shot. I am fixated on the fact that Adobe always has nice, (well pretty nice) well stocked kitchens with free soft drinks. All the diet Coke you can drink! But everybody is expected to clean up after themselves, otherwise the Curmudgeon will tell on ya.

Oh, photo-prey. It’s Tim Gogolin, one of the Lightroom engineers. I snuck up on him.

I promised that I wouldn’t show what was on his computer screen – he was writing code. See Tim, you can’t see what’s on your screen in this shot, right?

Here’s Julie Kmoch, one of the Photoshop engineering managers. Nice office Julie-very clean…nice toys.

Here’s Dave Polaschek who’s actually on Photoshop development working on printing from Photoshop. No toys Dave?

I didn’t get a shot of Jeff Tranberry who works on Photoshop QE. Every time I went by his office he was out. Sorry Jeff, but here’s a plug for Jeff’s Adobe Blog, check out Jeff Tranberry’s Photoshop Crawlspace

It’s pretty cool really, software engineering can really take place anywhere-there are Photoshop and/or Lightroom people in San Jose, Seattle, Minnesota, Michigan, San Francisco, Toyko and even India. The software builds churn out 24/7/365 (although I’ve been warned to stay away from Sunday nite/Monday morning builds-not sure why).

There’s an unwritten rule that software engineers simply must have “playtime”. So, here’s the pingpong table (left) and some engineer types actually playing. So, do banks off the walls count?

They also have Foosball…but I really must say their gamestation on the bigscreen TV needs some work. It’s currently just a tangled mess of cables.

White board humor-One Adobe (to rule them all) obviously a reference to Lord of the Rings.

Yeah, if I lived in Minnesota, I guess I would wish to be in Hawaii too. Not sure what the 2/20/2020 date is, maybe it’s the ship date of the Windows build of Beta 3 of Lightroom?

After the morning meeting we all hooked up in the lobby to try to decide what to do for lunch. We didn’t go to Lindy’s in Arden Hills this time. The menu is steak, steak or chopped steak. Take your pick-it’s VERY Minnesotan…

A lot of Lightroom engineering talent in one single elevator – there should be a rule about that. Mark says there’s a rule that he and Thomas Knoll can’t take the same commercial flight together.

We made the tough decision – where to eat, but the decision regarding how to get there was still up in the air.

Once they decided, the boys of Lightroom take off.

Think of the theme, Hey Hey, we’re the Monkees, and people say we’re monkeeing around. Ok, don’t.

Mark and Tom got to ride in Troy’s convertible…

Pretty snazzy ride Troy, I got to sit in the back seat of Melissa’s stationwagon.

Lunch? Fuddruckers-a burger chain with pretty darn good burgers – goofy name though.

Unfortunately, there are -ALOT- of menu choices.

Ok, another roadblock – what to eat.

And they are still deciding.

George got a chicken salad (sorry about the light hair shot George, maybe some shoe polish?) but Tom got a burger.

Quick as a bunny, Tom grabbed my camera and shot off some images of me. Hey Tom, that’s really not allowed dude.

A pleasant lunch in the dappled shade – primary topic of discussion? At my table it was game development and programing in Lua. Oh joy, geek talk….yeah of course we also talked about Lightroom.

Back in Frostbite Falls, the team members gather for the afternoon meeting. I was dis-invited to this one too (but I still found out what they were talking about-still top secret!).

But make no mistake about how many people both in Minnesota, San Jose and elsewhere are toiling on the product now called Adobe Lightroom. It’s a big crew and growing. Jeesh, even Bruce, Shantanu and Johnny have their names on the B3 splash screen. I guess Mark forgot to put my name in yet…

For further information about the Lightroom story, check out my PSN story The Shadowland/Lightroom Development Story which was posted on January 9th-the day that Lightroom was publicly announced.

Left to right: Chris Sanderson, Michael Reichmann, Charles Cramer, Bill Atkinson
Bill is blurred because he was running around to get into the shot

Written by Michael Reichmann

In March of 2006 I purchased a Phase One P45 medium format back in Hasselblad H mount. This was an upgrade from a P25 back – 22 Megapixels to 39 Megapixels, among other improvements. My friend Bill Atkinson also upgraded from a P25 to a P45 at the same time, and Charles Cramer simultaniously purchased his own P45, his first digital back, after shooting 4X5″ film for the past 30 years.

The three of us decided to inaugurate our new gear with a shoot together in the redwoods of Northern California, but not before adding my friend and frequent shooting companion Kevin Raber, who happens to be the VP of Marketing for Phase One in the US. A description of that shoot, and some photographs from it can be found in Counting Ants, an essay on shooting with a view camera and the P45 back.

Of course when you put four photographers and a bunch of new equipment together you’re inevitably going to get their collective testing juices going. We’d hoped to do some on-location equipment tests, but variable weather and other time pressures meant that we had to put this off until after our shoot in Redwoods National Park.

What We Tested
A couple of days later, after taking care of some other matters in the Bay area, I returned to Bill’s studio, along with Charlie, and videographer Chris Sanderson. Kevin wasn’t with us, because he had other commitments, but also because we felt that his presence would be inappropriate during testing of his company’s products. But, before leaving Kevin left us with a P25 and a P30 back for testing.

We tallied up what equipment we had available that day and found that we had the following for testing….

Phase One P45 back(s): 39 Megapixel
Phase One P30 back: 31 Megapixel
Phase One P25 back: 22 Megapixel
Canon 1Ds MKII with Canon Macro 100mm f/2.8: 16.6 Megapixel
Canon 5D with with Canon Macro 100mm f/2.8 : 12.7 Megapixel
Canon 1Ds with with Canon Macro 100mm f/2.8 : 11 Megapixels
Linhof 679cs camera with Rodenstock HR digital lenses: Various backs
Linhof 4X5 camera with Sironar HM lenses: Drum scanned film
Linhof 4X5 camera with Sironar N lenses and BetterLight Super 6K scanning back
Hasselblad H1 with Hasselblad H lenses: Various backs
Mamiya 645 with Mamiya lenses: P45 39 Megapixel and drum scanned Velvia

The Testers
As for the testers – all three of us are middle aged and have each been doing photography for some 30 years or more. We all have worked with film formats from 35mm to 4×5″, and have done extensive colour as well as B&W darkroom work. We all have been working within the digital environment since the mid-1990’s. All three of us teach photographic workshops and seminars, and write regularly for major photographic magazines in the US and abroad.

Bill Atkinson is a scientist by profession and one of the original developers of the Apple Macintosh computer and its software. He is also one of the world’s leading experts on colour profiles and printing. His printer profiles need no introduction to anyone familiar with the world of inkjet printing. Charlie Cramer is a highly regarded large format landscape photographer and photographic educator. Both Bill’s and Charlie’s work can be found in galleries and print collections worldwide, and they frequently teach seminars and workshops together.

Michael Reichmann, the primary author and publisher of this web site, teaches photographic workshops and seminars around the world, and is a contributing editor to Photo Techniques Magazine as well as a regular columnist for American Photo magazine. He is a consultant to the photographic industry and a frequent speaker at international conferences. His books, prints and portfolios are found in museums and galleries as well as private collections.

Chris Sanderson, director of The Video Journal was also in attendance. Chris filmed some of our testing activities as well as our prior shooting trip to Redwoods National Park. Some of that footage is also found on our available test disk. Chris has been an award winning commercial film and video producer as well as a still photographer for some 30 years.

So, with some 100+ years of photographic experience between us, and with Bill wearing his Dr. Science hat, we set out to do some testing.

The Tests, The Conclusions, and The Disk
Below are some web-sized crops and samples from our comparisons. We also have a short essay from Bill on the testing methodology, along with comments from each of us on what we see.

But, for what may be the first time anywhere, we are providing readers not only with these scaled down samples and our observations, but the raw files as well, so that you can do your own comparisons and draw your own conclusions.

The Luminous Landscape is making available a DVD disk containing almost 4GB of raw files taken with each of these cameras, medium format backs, and lenses. Files from the film drum scans are also provided. Included as well are 30 day free trial copies of Capture One software for both OSX and Windows. With this C1 raw conversion software you are able to process all of the raw files provided, including those from the three Canon cameras.

Bill, Charlie and Michael have also included sample raw files from Redwoods National Park taken with their P45 backs. Bills were with a Hasselblad H1. Charlie’s with a Mamiya AFD, and Michael’s with a Linhof 679cs and Rodenstock lenses.

The disk is a DVD-ROM, which can be used on an PC or Mac computer with a DVD drive, anywhere in the world. This is a data disk, not a video DVD. But, we have also included a Quicktime video produced by Chris, showing a bit of our location shoot in the Redwoods as well as our test session at Bill’s studio.

The disk is currently in preparation (video editing, artwork, printing, duplication, packaging, fulfillment) and will be available for shipping on or before June, 15. This disk is available through this site’s online store. It is priced at US $9.95, plus S&H, until June 15th, after which time it will be priced at $14.95 + S&H. It is also available free until June 15th, 2006, as part of new subscriptions to The Luminous Landscape Video Journal, or with renewals by current subscribers.

Read the entire article

Source: Newsweek via MSNBC
Written By J. D. Jordan-Newsweek

Sept. 19, 2005 issue – “I could get an art student to do it for $35 and a six-pack.” I remember the first time a prospective client said that to try to intimidate me into accepting dramatically reduced fees for Website design services. I was newly self-employed and hungry for work, so I conceded. I delivered a great Web site, but I hated my client for making me work for so little—and myself for not knowing how to get what I deserved.

It was 2002, and I had just opened my own graphic-design studio in my basement, where I was working with two old friends. Back then, I thought I had to compete with local students—to accept it as just another part of doing business. Now I find myself at one of Atlanta’s premier art colleges, standing at a podium and teaching those very same students.

In my small, windowless classroom, in front of a baker’s dozen of powerful G5 computers that line the walls, sit tomorrow’s crop of great graphic designers, illustrators, filmmakers and animators. But despite their skills, their burgeoning individual styles and their unlimited creativity, they are crippled by the narrow focus of their education.

It took me a couple of years out of college to realize that my own B.A. in history was an asset. I landed my first salaried job during the heady days of unstoppable Internet growth, when the fact that I hadn’t gone to art school was no impediment to getting hired as a senior Web specialist at a studio. Then the World Trade Center was attacked, and suddenly, I was answering questions about Islam, oil policy and our government’s struggle against a new enemy for my colleagues—degreed artists all—who didn’t understand the basic issues of the day.

Read entire article

Who knows what suddenly possessed the Vicomte de Renneville in 1859, when he and a friend visited the Paris studio of the society photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, but, bless his heart, we can be grateful that the spirit moved him as it did.

Posing for a carte de visite, the vicomte, after Disdéri had snapped several dour shots of him in the de rigueur black frock coat and top hat, decided he would remove his clothes, all except socks and shoes, don what looks very much like a hot water bottle on his head but was in fact some sort of helmet, hold a shield and pretend to be a ghost.

His friend (raised eyebrows, forefinger scratching forehead) acts as if the apparition startles him. (He doesn’t look half startled enough.) Disdéri also sloshed around some chemical on the exposed negative of the naked vicomte to make the image look less corporeal.

What results, while slightly obscuring the body (about which the vicomte was either peculiarly proud or, like a good comic, heroically shameless in the service of a joke), is, alas, still not quite suited for a morning newspaper.

Fortunately, you may find the picture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hereafter known as the Swingin’ Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a show titled “The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult.” Hands down, it’s the most hilarious, not to mention the most charming, exhibition the museum has done in years. Like all examples of great humor, it is, at heart, also a sneakily serious affair. Its subjects include the depths of human gullibility and the conjuring power of photography, whose technology, we may forget in the cynical day of digital manipulation and Photoshop, seemed unfathomable to so many people a century and more ago.

Read entire article
(Free registration required to read article)

“The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult” is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through Dec. 31.

Source: The Boston Phoenix Written By Christopher Millis

“Maggie Taylor: Then Again” + “John Chervinsky: CaCO3″
Griffin Museum of Photography | 67 Shore Road, Winchester | Through September 10

“A New Kind of Historical Evidence: Photographs from the Carpenter Center Collection”
Fogg Art Museum | Harvard University, 32 Quincy St, Cambridge | Through October 30

Magical realism in the tradition of Maxfield Parrish’s book illustrations and Robert Parke-Harrison’s photography is the domain of Maggie Taylor’s imagery in “Then Again,” her quirky and often satisfying exhibit at the Griffin Museum. Headless rocking-horse riders, women who sprout bouquets from their scalps, ballerinas in full costume in an open field surrounded by rats — these charge Taylor’s pictures with a hard-to-pinpoint emotional energy. Her muted colors and antiquated forms recall the early years of hand-colored photographs.

In Turning (2001), we see the back of a handsomely coiffed woman in a splendid, gold-colored Victorian dress. Her face in profile turns stiffly to the right; her lips clench so tight, it’s as though she’d just been slapped. From two dark vertical incisions on the back of her dress, giant moth wings emerge in a complementary gold hue. The grafting of insect body onto human body makes a funny sort of sense: given her garb and her withdrawn, injured attitude, is it any wonder that she’s mutated into something unreal? Fragile (2003) shows us a red-cheeked boy pulling at a little black string that neatly unhinges the top of his head. Where blood and bone ought to spill out, clouds rise up from his exposed cranium, whose interior reveals a perfect sky-blue disk. The merciless intensity of the boy’s gaze makes the mechanical self-scalping feel downright reasonable. His face tells us that his mind is ready to explode.

It’s to the credit of the Griffin Museum, whose mission is the showcasing of historic and contemporary photography, that it would host Maggie Taylor at all, since her works are actually digital collages. And in part that’s how she achieves her realism: she places directly onto a flatbed scanner the objects that occupy her frames — birds, moth wings, bees, daguerreotypes — and then manipulates them in Photoshop. Whether that places her at the frontier of photography or at the center of an emerging medium hardly matters.

Read the entire review

About Maggie Taylor (from her web site)
Maggie Taylor was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1961, and graduated from Yale University in 1983 with a BA in philosophy. In 1987 she received an MFA in photography from the University of Florida. During this time her work evolved from black-and-white suburban landscapes to more personal and narrative color still-life imagery. Using an old 4×5 view camera and natural light, she photographed bits and pieces of the everyday: old toys, broken bottles, and animals from the garden. Since 1987 her still-life photographs have been exhibited in more that 60 one-person exhibitions throughout the U.S. In 1996 and 2001 she received State of Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowships. Her current images explore the use of a computer and a flatbed scanner in place of a camera. By placing objects directly on the glass top of the scanner she is able to create a unique type of digital image which has some photographic qualities.

Taylor’s work is in the collections of The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL; Musee de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; Museet For Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; NationsBank, Charlotte, NC; and the Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ, among others.

Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams
By Amy Standen.
Published by Adobe Press.

Book Description
Maggie Taylor’s digital photo collages have been described as a contemporary exploration of the Surrealist world view. In Taylor’s strange, parallel universe, birds ride bicycles, ideas materialize in the shape of clouds, and wings sprout from the backs of prim Victorian women. Starting with objects that she finds on eBay, in flea markets, and in her own surroundings, Taylor then uses her flatbed scanner, Adobe Photoshop, and an Iris printer, to produce images of surprising beauty and emotional impact.

Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams offers a close and richly illustrated examination of Taylor’s practice, tracing her images from inspiration through execution. Taylor explains her influences, both in art and in her own life, and takes the reader inside the making of some of her intriguing, painterly work. Along the way, we hear from respected artists and critics familiar with Taylor’s work, and from the artist herself, in conversation with the author.

Illustrated with more than 65 color plates, Landscape of Dreams is essential reading (and viewing) for all those interested in applying technology to a creative personal vision.

She seems to think this is a deliberate attempt at poking fun at her.

Harris was the Florida Secretary of State whose visibility bloomed during the Florida vote recount in the 2000 national elections. She oversaw the disputed ballot count that gave George W. Bush a 537 vote victory in Florida. She was elected to Congress in 2002 and re-elected last year. Currently she’s running for the Senate.

From this CNN report, she is quoted as saying “I’m actually very sensitive about those things, and it’s personally painful,” she said. “But they’re outrageously false. … Whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph.”

She has made similar allegations in newspaper articles since the recount and in January told The Associated Press, “The jokes about my appearance — it’s the computer-enhanced photos.”

Harris joins other celebrities such as Kate Winslet (see the PSN article Kate doesn’t like Photoshop – Digital Ethics) who seem to think that digital manipulation is either going too far or not being done well enough.

From the CNN article, Kenneth F. Irby, visual journalism group leader at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said “the development of digital photography in recent years has made it easier to manipulate photos. As a result, he said, newspapers have tightened their ethics policies prohibiting such practices and have fired people for making even minor changes in news images.”

Personally, knowing the deadlines of newspapers (no time for lengthy retouching) and the fact that most of the printing industry is STILL struggling with color management, I suspect what Congresswoman Katherine Harris is actually seeing is the limitation of printing color on newsprint. Yes, sometimes the colors are off or garish, but that hardly constitutes a conspiracy to make her makeup look bad. Perhaps her handlers would be better off doing some color tests and designing a color palette that would reproduce better in print? That or hire her own Photoshop artist.

In 1944 Nine Outstanding Personalities in the Field Express Their Views and Expectations of Postwar Photography

WILLARD D. MORGAN, ELLOT ELISOFON, BERNICE ABBOTT, C. B. NEBLETTE, PAUL STRAND, L. MOHOLY-NAGY, H.A. SCHUMACHER, JOHN S. ROWAN, Sgt. ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN

Photography spent its first hundred years slowly developing its mechanics, its lenses, cameras, emulsions, and lights. But war speeded progress will place the camera in the forefront of man’s technical devices when victory comes. To determine the new uses, new methods, new viewpoints that will give camera work its direction in the postwar period, POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY has asked a trusted photographic editor, a war correspondent, documentary photographer; teachers of photography, manufacturers, and a soldier to contribute to this symposium. Their opinions differ. Yet somehow all seem to feel that the second hundred years will see the camera put to use as never before with the amateur often leading the way. THE EDITORS

Read the entire article hosted by Rochester Institute of Technology

In particular, the view of L. Moholy-Nagy is telling:

INSOFAR AS our eyes are concerned photography imparts a heightened or increased power of sight in terms of time and space. It is a plain, matter-of-fact enumeration of specific elements and is purely technical, not artistic in itself. In itself it is not able to divine the power latent in these elements nor prognosticate whence they lead. The photographer of the future, however, will be able to do this of his own skill because he will know for what purpose these elements can be used.

Without culture there is no photographer. Without understanding of man there is no photographer. There is just a clicker shutter snapper.

One wonders what Moholy-Nagy would have thought of Photoshop? It’s a worthy read to find out what these people thought of the future from the view of 1944.

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…”

The original thread started on December 10th, 2004 and continued until December 25th when it fell silent. However, on July 28th, 2005 it picked up again. It seems poster Yiako had found my picture of Seetha and posted it in the dormant thread.

This image prompted a variety of responses.

MoP said: “I think he was credited as “Seetha Narayanan” in Photoshop 6, although it was Seetharaman in PS 4. Maybe they thought his name was taking up an unfair amount of room?

Evidently he didn’t like that very much, because it’s back at Seetharaman now. It’s also the name that sticks most in my head… although Thomas Knoll and Marc Pawliger are also in there.

Who’s Mark Hamburg? I’m sure that name’s been on the startup of PS before, but I don’t see him on CS2…”

Then dfacto posted an altered version. dfacto said: “Silly Yiako, you can’t cover up the truth with your silly photoshop.

Here’s the version he didn’t want you to see:”

Titled Seetharaman is god

Not to be out done, Okelvin went further.

Okelvin’s caption: “It has been said that Seetharaman Narayanan has evolved to the point where he is more Lens Flare than man. He can bevel and emboss through the power of sheer thought. I heard one time he was walking down the street and some gang tried to mug him and he Unsharp Masked his hand and karate chopped one of the thugs in half, and then one of the other thugs attacked him and he Pinched that guy’s head so hard it exploded and then after he Plastic Wrapped the rest of the thugs he disappeared in a burst of Difference Clouds.”

The thread continues…

Read the entire thread

The images run from the abstract, such as electron microscopy to both representational photographic images and simply graphics.

Mooney Faces
Aaron Schurger GS
Department of Psychology
In 1957 Craig Mooney, a cognitive psychologist, published “Age in the development of closure ability in children.” He used images similar to the ones above to test the ability of children to perform “perceptual closure”—that is, to form a coherent perceptual impression on the basis of very little visual detail. Images of this type, often referred to as Mooney faces, have become common in cognitive psychology experiments because they offer a means of inducing variable perception with constant visuo-spatial characteristics (the images are very often not perceived as faces if viewed upside down). I have used such images in an experiment I conducted with a “blindsight” patient, to test for signs of face perception without awareness. I used many of Mooney’s original 40 images, but also created a few hundred of my own (with the help of my wife, Corinne Foy). Along the way, I have come to appreciate many of the images as being very pleasant to look at. It is fascinating to notice how little visual information it takes to experience a face (humans have evolved very effective and efficient mechanisms for the perception of faces), and at the same time to notice the variety of other shapes and contours that emerge.

Dynamic Asset Allocation in Freight Transportation
Warren B. Powell and Belgacem Bouzaiene-Ayari
Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering
This graphic comes from a dynamic asset allocation problem in railroads. The system, which is now in production at Norfolk Southern railroad, is the first production implementation of a stochastic, dynamic programming model in freight transportation. The model is based on the Ph.D. dissertation of Huseyin Topaloglu (now a professor at Cornell University) for stochastic, integer multicommodity flow problems. The original research was modified to handle multidimensional attribute problems, with millions of asset types.

The Average Princetonian
Clay Bavor ‘05 and Jesse Levinson ‘05
Department of Computer Science
The Average Princetonian is composed of about two dozen so-called templates, or average representations of facial features that are used by computer algorithms to identify points on a face. We created these templates by combining photos of 150 Princeton students with a piece of software we wrote as part of our senior thesis.

Wake of a Pitching Plate
James Buchholz GS and Alexander Smits
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
These images contain top and side views of the wake produced by a rigid plate pitching about its leading edge in a uniform flow (flowing left to right). The leading edge of the plate is hinged to the trailing edge of a stationary symmetric airfoil. The wake is visualized using fluorescent dyes that are introduced through a series of holes on each side of the airfoil support. Twice in each flapping cycle, a horseshoe-shaped vortex is shed from the top, bottom, and trailing edges. The vortices become entangled to form the chain-like structure shown here. Studying such wakes is believed to be important for understanding the mechanisms of thrust production in fish-like swimming.

While the images may have been produced for entirely technical reasons, it is clear that they have a life and purpose beyond meeting the needs of technical analysis. They transcend the scientific to the artistic.

The gallery is definitely worth a look.

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.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone down to San Jose to visit 345 Park Avenue, 10th floor. I was there just a few weeks after the first tower, the West Tower, was opened. They had a few, uh, “issues”. I remember something about the elevators and security badges not working as expected. Not unheard of in a new high-tech office building.

My trips to Adobe Systems, Inc. actually started even before Adobe moved to San Jose. I first visited Adobe in their wooded Mountain View “campus”. A cluster of low buildings in a college-like environment. So, the high rise in San Jose was in stark contrast.

But Adobe’s 3 buildings in the heart of San Jose are a testament to both Adobe’s high-tech roots and San Jose’s strong desire to be the center of Silicon Valley. Adobe’s buildings are really due to the vision of Dr. John E. Warnock and Dr. Charles M. Geschke in developing PostScript, type and a little application called Photoshop-which until just recently had a long run as their single largest revenue source.

It should be noted that not all of the Photoshop engineers work in San Jose. There are engineers spread out all over the place including Seattle, Minneapolis and even some in far away places like Tokyo and Noida, a suburb of New Delhi, India. But the 10 West location is where most of them are, day in and day out, working to make Photoshop the best it can be.

I thought it would be interesting for Photoshop users to see what it’s like to visit the Photoshop engineers. Before a recent class that I taught on the West Coast, I took a couple of days to go down to San Jose and visit Adobe. This was in late June, 2005 and many of the engineers were just starting to work the kinks out of the post Photoshop CS2 ship trama. But they were in good cheer-particularly because Adobe had just reported a record quarter of earnings (even though the anaylists were a bit dissappointed by conservative future estimates).

So, click on this link to Visit Adobe–it’s a new PhotoshopNews feature story.

This report is a chatty (my style don’t you know) report about the PixelGenius meeting we had in Chicago last week. It has no substantial content of importance other than to document what PG does when we all get together. You might draw some insight into the members of PG. If you know us, the following story will amuse you. But, if you are looking for breaking news about Photoshop, you may wish to skip this story.

The meeting was held in the PixelGenius global headquarters (otherwise know as “The Studio”) located in near-north Chicago, Illinois. While the PG members do get together several times a year, we’ve only been all together in Chicago one other time-when we founded the company in 2001.

The first order of business at any PG meeting is an inventory of the wine supply. It was clear that a field trip to Sam’s Wine was in order. If you don’t know about Sam’s, it’s one of the best international wine merchants anywhere-and it happens to be just down the street a few blocks.

Upon returning from Sam’s, the members of PG assess the success of the buying trip and unpack the wine. You may note that Seth is on the phone.

At the very moment of unpacking, Andrew’s cell phone rang and lo and behold, it was Greg Gorman calling to see what was up. It’s amazing just how keen Greg’s timing is when it comes to wine. Seth of course, had to drop some of the names of the wine we had found.

To see a list of the wine we drank during the meeting, click here.

The tally is a PixelGenius secret, but you should know that between the various members, we have a sharp eye for a good deal–and Sam’s offers some great deals!

In no time at all, the first bottle was decanted and poured and a toast was made.

As is the case with all photographers, we just couldn’t wait to see what was just shot, so we adjourned to the computer imaging area where Martin downloaded his shots to his computer.

Of course, we had to see what the “Receipt” shot looked like.

Then it was off to the first dinner, minus Mike whose kids were due to leave to summer camp the next morning. Mike missed a great dinner-sorry Mike!

One of my famous “upside down and through the legs” shots. Okay, the upside down orientation was corrected in Photoshop.

Martin saw this scene along the way and grabbed my camera to take a snap.

Here’s Seth posing on the steps to Vinci, a great Italian place just down the street. We’ve all eaten there before so it’s a PG tradition (and Greg Gorman’s favorite restaurant in Chicago-he likes it better than Charlie Trotter’s).

We had brought along a bottle of Solaia (see the wine list) that we had decanted and ordered a nice Amarone Classico, a 1996 if I remember (or was it the ‘98 we settled on) that would drink well quickly.

Here’s an early series of shots assembled using Photoshop’s Photomerge.

And here’s an after dinner shot with a way too long shutter speed.

Then it’s back along Willow Street to the studio–still have that long shutter speed thingie going don’t I?

Here we’re pausing to see what sort of trouble the “PixelGenius Gang” can find. We didn’t find any trouble, so, it was off to bed and an early start the next day.

The next day, we invited Tom Fors (left) over for lunch. Tom got a kick out of meeting Bruce Fraser and they talked about Tom’s ACR Calibrator Script

Of course, that called for another toast. A nice chilled Chablis I recall as Martin is partial to whites. A red was also opened.

Martin just had to snap off a shot.

One of the hazards of being around a bunch of guys with cameras–everybody wants to compare equipment and practice that “perfect photographer’s pose” we all work so hard on. Seth was so excited by posing, he forget to put a lens on.

Being concerned that Martin might have forgotten to put his lens on, I wanted to check. Nope, Martin had a lens on and got a real nice shot of me–thanks Martin!

Even though we established a “no smoking zone” in the studio, the smoke from the “smoking section” was still getting to some. So, we ajourned to the PixelGenius Gardens (next door, in the back yard).

Since we had WiFi (pretty good range from next door) we checked out PhotoshopNews and talked about what we all wanted to do with it. More news on that soon.

Then it was back into the meeting room with the laptops and projector to talk about new products that PixelGenius is working on. Sorry, top secret, can’t talk about it! Except to report on the following;

Click on the image to see the full dialog in a new window.

PixelGenius is happy to report that our products run just fine with the new Mac/Intel developer’s machine. Note the About This Mac screen–it’s showing the Mac version of Photoshop CS2 and PhotoKit running under OS X 10.4.1 on an Intel 3.6 Ghz Pentium 4 processor. However, even though our software will run, we are planning on moving to Xcode and producing Universal Binaries of our software well in advance of the release of the Mac/Intel computers next year.

Ironically, our good friend John Nack, Senior Product Manager for Photoshop was getting married on the exact same day as we were holding our PG meeting. We had promised John we would all toast him and his new bride. Here’s to you and your new bride John.

Congratulations on your new wife (and new promotion too)!

Well, that’s about all I can report regarding the PixelGenius meeting. We thought of some cool new tools and we’re hard at work developing new versions of our products.

Founded in 2001, Pixel Genius, LLC. is a unique collaboration of industry leading experts dedicated to creating leading edge products and services for the photographic and digital imaging industries. While PixelGenius is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, our members span eight time zones in five locales on two continents.

PixelGenius is not your typical company. We don’t do things in a particularly corporate manner. While profit is a byproduct of our efforts, we do what we do because we love it. We don’t have offices, we have studios. We create products we find useful and are gratified that others do as well.

PhotoKit
PhotoKit Sharpener
PhotoKit Color
PhotoKit-EL

Since the launch of PhotoKit in November of 2002, PixelGenius has expanded its product line and customer base, quite literally, all over the world. Thousands of customers in over 65 countries, have made PixelGenius an unusual international software boutique. Only on the internet. . .

To all of our customers, we thank you.
Martin, Bruce, Seth, Andrew, Jeff & Mike

Martin Evening

Martin Evening is a London based advertising photographer and noted expert in both photography and digital imaging. As a successful photographer, Martin is well known in London for his fashion and beauty work.

In his recent book Adobe Photoshop CS2 For Photographers from Focal Press, Martin extends his expertise to brilliant writing about difficult technical and artistic subjects. His book has already gained a COOL 2 Award from PEI magazine. The book has also been given an Editor’s Choice Award by The Designer’s Bookshelf (www.design-bookshelf.com).

In addition, Martin is sought after for speaking and lectures and is a regular at PDN’s Photo Expo Plus Conference. He is also active in the Digital Imaging Group, a UK based digital imaging association and is co-host of the popular “Prodig” Mailing list. If you would like to find out how to join this mailing list, please visit the Prodig.org web site .

Martin also works with the Adobe Photoshop engineering team consulting on new feature development and alpha and beta testing.

Bruce Fraser

Bruce Fraser should really need no introduction, but for those from foreign lands or out of touch with current events in the digital imaging industry, here’s a thumbnail of the “always colorful” Bruce Fraser.

Bruce emigrated from Edinburgh, Scotland where he escaped the gray Scottish climes only to discover San Francisco’s equally challenging weather. Rumor has it this was the inspiration of Bruce’s fascination with all things relating to color. Bruce has made a lifelong study of human vision and how it relates to reproducible color in photography and photomechanical reproduction.

Bruce is a noted author having co-authored the perennial Photoshop resource book Real World Photoshop from Peachpit Press (he’s hard at work on the Photoshop CS2 version). He is co-author of Real World Color Management and the author of the best-selling Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS2. Bruce is also a contributing editor for MacWorld and for CreativePro where he pens his “Out Of Gamut” articles.

Bruce first became familiar with Photoshop in its precursor called BarneyScan XP. Since that time in the late 1980’s, he’s been an important contributor in Photoshop’s ongoing development. He is a feature consultant and alpha and beta tester and is noted in the Photoshop credits. Bruce is widely regarded as instrumental in helping refine color management systems and he greatly aided improved color management implementations in Photoshop 6.0

Bruce is an internationally known speaker and presenter at trade shows, conferences, and seminars in locations as far-flung as Helsinki, Finland and Perth, Western Australia (and points in between). He has also consulted for a wide range of major photographic and digital imaging companies.

Seth Resnick

Seth Resnick, one of North America’s most prolific corporate, editorial and stock photographers, as well as business champion, and an entrepreneur of internet technologies and past President of the Editorial Photographers Group (EP) is greatly in demand for his beautiful graphic images in both natural and created light.

Seth has been published in the world’s most prestigious magazines. His credits include over 2500 publications worldwide and his clients constitute a virtual list of Corporate America. He is one of 65 photographers worldwide named as a Canon Explorer of Light. He has given hundreds of lectures to industry organizations such as American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), Advertising Photographers of America (APA), Professional Photographers of America (PPA), Advertising Photographers of New York (APNY), and colleges and universities nationwide. Seth produces workshops specifically designed for photographers through D-65.

Seth is also an alpha and beta tester for the Adobe Photoshop engineering team. He is on the Advisory Board for WorkbookStock.com, technology consultant to Epson and founding member of (CVA) Coalition of Visual Artists.

Andrew Rodney

In early 1990 after graduating from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a BA in Photography, Andrew Rodney purchased his first color Macintosh system in order to run a new and revolutionary product called Adobe Photoshop. Andrew is one of only a handful of Adobe Certified Technical trainers for Adobe Photoshop in the country and has been a beta tester for Photoshop since version 2.5. Andrew specializes in color management solutions and training.

Andrew has been featured in and written for such publications as Photo District News, Publish Magazine, Color Publishing, Computer Artist, Digital Imaging Magazine, Digital Output, Photo Electronic Imaging and Peterson’s Photographic Magazine. Andrew lectures around the country and speaks regularly at such shows as Seybold, Thunder Lizard, PhotoExpo, PMA and DPIX and the DIFP Seminar Series. He also teaches regularly at the Santa Fe Photo Workshops.

Andrew provides custom printer profiles and color management consulting, for more info, visit Andrew’s web site.

Andrew has currently finished a new book due August 10th by Focal Press, Color Management for Photographers : Hands on Techniques for Photoshop Users. This book addresses the difficult subject of color management in a way that can help you get real work accomplished. Complete with what-button-to-push-when explanations, this guide will help you navigate color management and further solidify comprehension of techniques with self-paced tutorials that enable you to practice what Rodney preaches.

Jeff Schewe

Jeff Schewe, a summa cum laude graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, has been an award winning Advertising Photographer in Chicago for over 25 years. Jeff’s photographic specialty has always been problem solving and his move into digital imaging allows even more control over the final photographic image.

He has been doing digital imaging for over 15 years and is widely known and respected in the digital imaging community as a leading pioneer in the field. He speaks regularly at the PDN’s Photo Expo Plus and teaches at the Santa Fe Workshops. A feature consultant and alpha & beta tester for Adobe Photoshop, he has been noted in the Photoshop credits. Jeff has also worked to advance photographic standards and community and is a past President of the Advertising Photographers of America (APA).

Jeff is one of 65 photographers worldwide named as a Canon Explorer of Light. He is also a member of Epson’s Stylus Pro program and consults for a variety of companies. He is a past Apple “Master of the Medium” and has served as a member of Apple’s Customer Advisory Board.

Mike Skurski

As Chief Pixel Technologist of PixelGenius, Mike Skurski is responsible for leading the company to produce software solutions that re-design & re-engineer the digital imaging process. Prior to PixelGenius, Mike held positions as Chief Technology Officer, Senior Production Manager, Assistant Plant Manager, and Director of Digital Imaging. He also contributed to legendary products such as Scitex Visionary and Scitex Visionary Interpreter for PostScript (VIP) software products.

In addition, Mike contributed to over 50 commercial software products including Esko-Graphics PERfection, Wacom PenTools, Extensis PreFlight Pro, Extensis Print Ready, Creo Brisque Export PS DFE Module and Enfocus Pitstop.

Mike is a recipient of the Joseph L. Pedone Award. This award, named for the original founders of the DDAP Association, recognizes outstanding contributions to the adoption of standard accredited workflows. He serves as a member of the CGATS standards committee playing an active role in the review and adoption of the TIFF-IT and PDF/X standards.

Having eleven years of premedia experience and over fifteen years of software development experience, Mike understands the latest trends and the requirements of clients. As Chief Pixel Technologist, Mike incorporates his considerable experience into creating leading-edge software solutions. He graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science in Printing Technology.

Mike also has his first Photoshop SDK, hand written by Thomas Knoll and mailed from Thomas’ apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The version was 1.07 and Mike has worked on Photoshop Plug-ins ever since.

The group shots of the PG members are by Don Scott. The individual portraits are by either Seth Resnick or Martin Evening (however, the metadata says ©2005 by Jeff Schewe because it was my camera). The candids were by either Martin Evening or Jeff Schewe.

©2005 by PhotoshopNews, All rights reserved.

Hi, my name is Becky Schewe and I am an unwitting member of the Photoshop Widows Club. I guess it’s the same old story but now that it’s personal, I have a new respect for those who wait and wonder.

I should have seen it coming years ago when it was foreshadowed, back in 1992. Jeff got an assignment to photograph a huge machine sucking up garbage. In trying to figure out how to make huge amounts of waste look like it was being sucked into this machine, he came up with the idea of using this new tool he had heard of called Photoshop.

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This is the garbage shot. Smelled just like it looks.

After making the photograph of the basic setup and getting them scanned he realized that it would require a lot more computer power than we had. He rented a Mac IIci with a whopping 64MB of ram (that’s what he tells me) and set it up in his office on a Friday afternoon. For the first 15 minutes or so that he began work, I was all excited and watched to see the magic – seeing nothing much happen, I quickly lost interest and went home (luckily we lived close, above our studio).

At dinnertime, Jeff was a no show so I brought down his food and placed it next to the keyboard. The first of many a neglected meal. A few hours later I came back to say goodnight and in the glare of the monitor I saw my future – an unresponsive Jeff clicking with rapt attention and making small dotted lines.

I checked in on him from time to time on Saturday and at times he would gleefully show me what he had done. Bringing food and drink became my primary function. At some point that day he had an epiphany – he could save paths or channels! – or something like that. I’ve actually never seen him happier – not driving home a new car, not opening our first studio, not getting a free mocha (well, this is close). This was a new man I was seeing. This was a Photoshop convert.

He continued to work through that Sunday – after all, the job had to be delivered Monday morning. Late that night I told him it looked done, just like the layout – like it had that morning in my opinion – but he said “Almost, just a few more tweaks” (prophetic).

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This is the finished image. Honestly, it looked the same to me at about 11:00 a.m. Sunday. As a side note, these two garbage images are the original files. This article could have been posted two weeks ago but Jeff wanted to find the original file. He could have reproduced this image from the original film in about 10 minutes but noooo. He had to have the original. Finding the file wasn’t as hard as opening it. He worked all day hooking up old computers and drives and I don’t know what all until sometime in the wee hours, he pulled it up. Way too geeky.

Monday morning I came down to the studio to find him asleep, face down on the keyboard. Only exhaustion had stopped the incessant clicking. He had to relinquish the project to the art director or he would easily have worked on that picture for another week. It wasn’t that the picture needed anything more, he did. He needed to find out how much more was possible, how much faster, how much easier it could be done. He was hooked and our lives took another unexpected turn.

That Monday wasn’t the first time Jeff fell asleep where he sat. Here he is after a sunrise shot “having breakfast” with the art director.

Needing to know all the capabilities of this new tool, Jeff helped organize a class in Camden, Maine at the then, Center for Creative Imaging. He set off for a week-long emersion Photoshop class. This is the first time that Jeff left me for Photoshop. The class was held during the day with the lab available to students throughout the night. Jeff requires little sleep but I think even he became sleep deprived while cramming all the information into his brain.

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These are the images that Jeff brought back from Camden. Hard to see from these how Photoshop was going to change our lives. While Jeff was very proud and excited, I much preferred the work he was already doing.

When he got home, his excitement had only been fanned and he asked if we could afford a computer system capable of running Photoshop at an optimal level. I don’t remember anything about the system except that it would cost almost $30,000. I said no. I am the accountant after all. He spent the next two days explaining how the industry would change, how the computer would pay for itself, how his work would evolve. We ordered the system that week. He was right: it paid for itself before it even arrived. We had to rent another computer to work on two jobs before we got our own system installed.

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Here are the images that paid for our computer with Photoshop and made the accountant in me feel much, much better. I also think they’re kind of cool.

Obsessive and a visionary.

Unfortunately, Photoshop’s need for power meant rearranging our lives a bit. Before Photoshop, we had a lovely sunlit, plant filled, client area complete with comfy sofa oriental rug. The computer didn’t have enough room on Jeff’s original desk, so the desk moved into the client area. As the computer and Photoshop didn’t like light, the blinds were always closed and the plants started to yellow so they have been relocated as well. The clients had to sit in the kitchen (well, to be honest, they always had before). Eventually, the computer room (we don’t even call it Jeff’s office, the computer rules) wasn’t efficient enough so we had custom cabinets and counters put in. I didn’t even get this kind of custom work for my kitchen.

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This first picture (left) is of our client area at the studio, a lovely place for even family to relax (that’s me and our daughter Erica). Next is the makeshift space that the computers started to create. However, you can clearly see how uncomfortable our dog, Max, is working at the second station. Finally, Photoshop paid for its own renovations for this recent computer room setup (right).

Today, as a long time alpha and beta tester of Photoshop, he spends his time on the computer trying to break Photoshop or at trade shows or with other Photoshop gurus. Even though he is brilliant and conversant on many subjects, it is hard to escape his favorite topic (Photoshop) for even an afternoon. I tried to get him interested in a completely different activity to get him back outside – he had traded sunlight for monitor light and was starting to resemble a large white mole. He chose motorcycling. Great. From sitting hours on end in the dark in front of the Mac to sitting hours on end on the road – to Photoshop events – but that’s a story for another day.

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Here you see Jeff with his BMW R1100GS AND his laptop (with Photoshop installed of course). Don’t leave home without it.

In an effort to keep in touch with my husband, I learned how to ride a motorcycle (well, I always wanted to anyway). Now, I rather look forward to Photoshop events across country because we often ride to them together. Each year I ride (solo) down to Santa Fe to hook up with Jeff after he teaches his Photoshop class and we have a wonderful time riding back through the West (making frequent photo stops). Of course, the laptop and an assortment of digital cameras come with us. Packed on his bike, fortunately.

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Here I am after some Photoshop event on my BMW650CS in Glacier National Park. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you Photoshop.

It’s not all negative. Since I’m not needed as much in the studio, I have some free time. I have new friends and interests now. I’ve learned to enjoy watching movies on my own. Aside from motorcycling I’ve taken up singing, pottery and foreign languages. I read more. I’ve learned to adapt – and to look like I’m actually listening to the latest Photoshop news. After all, I don’t need to listen, I don’t use Photoshop. Why should I when I have my own “in-house” Photoshop expert?

To read additional stories, click on the Photoshop Widows Club editorial category.