Camera Raw, the Real History
(Or why Ruth Knoll is still the President of the Photoshop Widows Club.)

At the recent Adobe ideas conference in New York City, photographer Chris Rainier gave a session about a recent book project, ANCIENT MARKS: The Sacred Origins of Tattoos and Body Marking. Part of the session was about the unusual manner in which the book evolved, was produced and finally published.

The ANCIENT MARKS book and Exhibition explore the intrinsic connection between mankind’s culture and the old tradition of marking the human body dating back two thousand years, with tattoos and scarification as a form of initiation, beauty, and highly ritualized ornamentation.

I just hacked George Lucas’s computer and found what looks like the latest script for his follow up to the Star Wars saga.

With the recent Nikon White Balance Encryption debate and the launch of the OpenRAW intiative, there has been a lot of discussion regarding the Adobe DNG Specification. For those interested, PSN has assembled some resources to help readers find out more about DNG.

Source: PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Reported by Terence Smith
Original air date: June 10th, 2004
Video available in Windows Media format.
Transcript Page

“With its imposing name and military-tight security, you might think that the Iron Mountain National Underground Storage Facility is one of those forbidding places where presidents and generals huddled during the Cold War.

But these days there is a much different sort of planning going on.

Here, in an old limestone mine some 200 feet beneath the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, is the Corbis/Bettmann Film Preservation Facility. The goal here is not to destroy but to preserve, not to end time, but to stop it altogether.

Source: Gulf News
By Vinita Bharadwaj

Editor’s note: This story is about the ambitions of a woman journalist–Farzana Wahidy, from Afghanistan and an “experiment” by noted international photographer Reza Deghati, of National Geographic fame. The experiment was to set up an independent non-profit press agency and train both men and women in photojournalism, including writing, photography and Photoshop-which in Afghanistan is a radical new democratic concept, teaching women.

“I wanted to write about the truth,” she told Weekend Review from Kabul, “and I wanted to be a correspondent for one of the international organisations.” A harmless adolescent ambition in most countries, but a potential death sentence in Afghanistan at that time.

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.

Every once in a long while, you see or do something that leaves a mark on you–good or bad. This is one of those really good ones. . .

Like any new Photoshop release, Photoshop CS2 has plenty of new features and enhancements to old ones, but if I have to pick one single feature that has changed the way I use the program, it has to be the addition of a Curve tab in the Camera Raw plug-in. It may seem a small thing, but this feature has completely flipped the balance between the amount of time I spend in Camera Raw and the amount of time I spend in Photoshop. My friend and colleague Jeff Schewe has jokingly referred to Photoshop as a plug-in for Camera Raw. I can only say that never has a truer word been spoken in jest!

Bryan, Adobe just concluded the ideas conference here in New York, it was quite a line up of speakers. Did you design the conference around the launch of the new Creative Suite 2 or did you design the launch around the conference?

Actually, we joke internally that the conference is now bigger than our launch…

Kidding aside, we are very fortunate to have relationships with great photographers, designers and creative professionals that continue to inspire us, drive us to innovate and further develop our Creative Suite products.

Our vision was to bring together the very best, creative minds to help inspire students, photographers, film and video enthusiasts and creative professionals toward idea generation and provide a forum for interactive discussion. What better place to kick off our first-ever Adobe Ideas conference than at the launch of the next-generation Creative Suite. We’re celebrating another launch of the powerhouse design environment that really shook up the print and Web workflow for creative pros and we’re glad that our launch pad is made up of those customers – our most loyal supporters.

PhotoshopNews talks to Kevin Connor, senior director of product management at Adobe Systems.

Kevin, Photoshop CS2 and the entire CS Suite has just been announced, did you really think you would make it?
Of course, I always knew we would make it–I just didn’t necessarily know how! Thankfully, the team has done another remarkable job and delivered a feature-packed release right on schedule.

I know one of the things that you’ve been working hard on is the Digital Negative (DNG) initiative–Adobe’s archival format for digital camera raw files. What are the major advances with DNG in Photoshop CS2? Is there a new DNG rev with CS2?

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?

I do many things, and I learn quickly, but writing has never been a strong suit of mine. I hope you will bear with me while my learning curve grows. Telling tall tales is my strong suit–especially when the tale is true. Given who I am, I know many true tall tales.

This is a test. . .it’s only a test. . .
If, this were a real emergancy, you would be out of luck!

Actually, this is just a placeholder to make sure all the content categories show.

You can quit reading now. . .

Seriously, YOU CAN QUIT READING NOW!