LightroomNews » CS3 Beta

Adobe Updates Bridge CS3 to Beta 2

LRN Editorial Staff — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:42:12 +0000

Adobe has updated Bridge CS3 to address a variety of issues. To install the Beta 2 you must have the original Photoshop CS3 beta installed. You will need to use your Adobe ID to log on in order to download the update. The Mac version is 157MBs while the Windows version is 72MBs.

The download and additional info is available on the Photoshop CS3 product page.

To read more about the Bridge Beta 2 release, check out this post on the Bridge CS3 forum.

PixeGenius Releases UB Beta Versions of Plug-ins For Mac

LRN Editorial Staff — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 20:04:30 +0000

PixelGenius, the makers of PhotoKit, PhotoKit Sharpener and PhotoKit Color 2.0 have released betas of Universal Binary (UB) versions of their products. These UB versions are needed for the Mac version of the Photoshop CS3 public beta whether you are running a PPC or Intel machine. With the release of Photoshop CS3 beta, all developers of plug-ins will need to release Universal Binary versions of their plug-ins in order to work with MacIntel from Apple.

The UB betas are only needed by Macintosh users. The current shipping versions of the plug-ins will install and run properly under Photoshop CS3 for Windows.

These UB versions are considered “beta” in that while PG has tested them and find them to work in the public beta version of Photoshop CS3, there are still certain issues that will be addressed when Photoshop CS3 ships in it’s final form later in 2007 (estimated release date is Q2, 2007 according to Adobe). The downloads page contains additional information regarding known issues as well as installation instructions.

If you are testing Photoshop CS3 on a Macintosh but you’ve previously purchased Windows versions and have switched to Mac, your Windows serial numbers will work in these Mac UB betas. PixelGenius is considering a policy change for all PG customers that would allow purchases that will have cross platform serial numbers. PG should have an announcement regarding cross platform licensing when the final versions of their products are released for CS3.

Click here to go to the downloads page.

Working with the Clone Source palette in CS3

LRN Editorial Staff — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 05:35:01 +0000

Martin Evening’s Favorite Photoshop CS3 Feature?
The new Clone Source palette…

Pubished here is a tutorial extract is taken from Martin Evening’s forthcoming book: Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, published by Focal Press. In this tutorial, Martin demonstrates some of the key new benefits that can be gained from working with the new Clone Source palette in the newly released public beta version of Adobe Photoshop CS3. To find out more about how to use this new feature, read on…

The Clone Source palette is new to Photoshop and useful for photographic retouching mainly because it allows you to see a preview of the alignment of the pixels that you are about to clone with. All the other features, such as the multiple sample points are really of more use for people working in video editing, where it is desirable to store multiple clone sources when you want to clone in exact registration from one frame to another across several images in a sequence.

1. Here is a photograph in which there is a litter bin that I wish to remove. But the tricky thing here is that the bin is just in front of a circular alcove, and this would normally make it less easy to remove. But not so if you use the controls avialable in the Clone Source palette.

2. To start with, I wanted to remove the bottom of the bin. This could be done normally by placing the source point for the clone stamp on the edge of the black line and estimating where to click with the clone stamp so that you can continue painting along the line ‘in register’.

3. By using the Clone Source palette, I can now switch on the Show Overlay option and adjust the opacity, so that with the Auto Hide option turned on as well, when I release the mouse, I get to see a ghost image preview of how the pixels will be painted at the destination point. This takes away all the guess work and makes it much easier to paint with the clone stamp in perfect alignment with the underlying image.

4. I now switched tools and selected the healing brush. And this time I went to the Clone Source palette and set the clone source angle to be 180º relative to the destination. This meant that when I sampled using the pixels from the top right corner of the curve, the preview showed a 180º rotated preview of where the the pixels would be painted at the destination point. Again, the overlay was very important, because I could use it to precisely align the preview with the image below, so that the edge of the circle was precisely aligned.

5. Here is a screenshot showing the healing brush in action.

6. Because I had the Auto Hide option checked still, the overlay was temporarily hidden as I painted.

7. And here is the final result, in which I only had to carry out some minor extra retouching in order to tidy up the remaining parts of the picture.

Overlay blend modes
You can adjust the opacity of the Clone Source overlay and change the blend mode as well. In some instances you may find it useful to work with the Difference blend mode at 100%. The Difference blend mode will show a solid black preview when identical pixels are in register.

About the book
This extract was taken from Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, published by Focal Press. The new edition of this best selling book should be hitting the streets in Spring of 2007, shortly after the official release of Photoshop CS3.

As a special perk for PhotoshopNews readers, Martin has made his Chapter 1: What’s New in Photoshop CS3 available for free download.

The 21 page PDF, outlines all the new features of Photoshop CS3 and Bridge 2, written from a user’s perspective. It offers an honest appraisal of what will be on offer in this new version of the program, if you really want to know what’s NEW!

Click here to download the PDF(3.2MB)

Martin, if you don’t know, 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. Check out Martin’s web site.

Martin also works with the Adobe Photoshop engineering team consulting on new feature development and alpha and beta testing. He worked alpha & beta for Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and was influential with the new Adobe Bridge 2.0 and Camera Raw 4.0.

In addition, Martin is also a principal of PixelGenius where he designed and was product manger for the recently released PhotoKit Color 2. PhotoKit Color 2 applies precise color corrections, automatic color balancing and creative coloring effects. PhotoKit Color offers a comprehensive set of coloring tools for Photoshop 7.0, CS, CS2 (and soon CS3) for both Macintosh and Windows.

Photoshop CS3 Known Issues – UPDATED

LRN Editorial Staff — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 21:20:45 +0000

Culled from the Adobe Photoshop CS3 forum FAQs comes an update on known issues with Photoshop CS3.

KNOWN ISSUES:

————————————————————
#1445585: Mac: Installer fails to run when Home directory on non-boot volume
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) If your Home directory is not on the boot volume, create a “Users”
folder on the boot volume
2) Launch Setup

————————————————————
#1446434: Win: Bonjour fails to start and causes installer to fail
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Turn off any firewall software
2) Launch Setup

————————————————————
#1445655: Win: Unregistered dlls on Vista can cause installer to fail
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Launch the Command Prompt from an account with admin privileges
2) Type in the following command and press Return
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\vbscript.dll
3) Type in the following command and press Return
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\jscript.dll
4) Launch Setup

————————————————————
#1443660: Mac/Win: Uninstalling CS3 removes the photoshop-9.jsx file and breaks CS2 Photoshop/Bridge interactions
————————————————————
Workaround:
a) Re-install CS2
or
b) Recover the photoshop-9.jsx file from a previous backup and place
here:
Mac: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/StartupScripts
Win: \Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\StartupScripts

————————————————————
#n/a: Mac/Win: The Adobe Media Gallery (available in the File > Automate menu) is non-operational
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Move the CS2 Presets from Adobe Photoshop CS2 > Presets > Web Photo Gallery to Adobe Photoshop CS3 > Presets
2) Move the WebContactSheetII.plugin from Adobe Photoshop CS2 > Plug- Ins > Adobe Photoshop Only > Automate to Adobe Photoshop CS3 > Plug- Ins > Automate
3) (Intel-based Macs) Select the Photoshop CS3 app and do Get Info on it and select “Open using Rosetta”
4) Launch Photoshop and choose Web Photo Gallery from the File > Automate menu

————————————————————
#1438317: Mac/Win: CS2 version of Bridge/Photoshop launching CS3 versions
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Quit all versions of Photoshop and Bridge
2) Mac: Delete the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Launch/ photoshop/10.0/ folder on your Desktop
Win: Delete the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Launch \photoshop\10.0 folder on your Desktop
3) Mac: Delete the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Launch/bridge/ 2.0/ folder on your Desktop
Win: Delete the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Launch\bridge \2.0 folder on your Desktop

————————————————————
#1442224: Win: Paper size is not remembered
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) File > Print > check on scale to fit
2) Page setup > Select your paper size > Ok
3) Toggle the orientation buttons to force scale to fit to reflect the new paper size. After scale to fit reflects the proper size for your paper you can uncheck it at this point if needed.
4) Toggle centered checkbox on and off if you want the final output centered.
5) Print > Select preferences > set your page setup again to match the settings you selected in step 2 page setup
6) Print

————————————————————
#1425422: Mac/Win: Fixed height palettes turns blank when dragged to the top of a second monitor
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Move palettes away from top of the monitor

————————————————————
#n/a: Mac: brush size cursors are not displayed on Intel-based Macs
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Select the Photoshop application and choose Get Info
2) Select “Open using Rosetta”
3) Launch Photoshop

————————————————————
#1333687: Mac: The Pattern Maker plug-in is not available on Intel- based Macs
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Use CS2

————————————————————
#1356198: Win: Uninstall causes Acrobat 7 Pro and Reader to be automatically reconfigured on Windows XP
————————————————————
Workaround: None

————————————————————
#1382654: Mac/Win: Quality of Image Size resizing is worse than CS2
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Use CS2

————————————————————
#1436700: Mac: Some plug-Ins are not being loaded on Intel-based Macs (AltiVec, PPCCore, Embed and Read Watermark)
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Select the Photoshop application and choose Get Info
2) Select “Open using Rosetta”
3) Launch Photoshop

————————————————————
#1411022: Photoshop may crash on quit when running on older developer seeds of Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Update to a later seed of Leopard

————————————————————
#1438449: Non-Photoshop Open EXR files fail to open in Photoshop CS3
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Open the files in CS2 and save out and then open in CS3

————————————————————
#n/a: Mac/Win: Saving out as PDF/X results in error
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Install Acrobat 8

————————————————————
#1435697: Mac/Win: Unable to open a JPEG images larger than 10,000 pixels per side if using Adobe Camera Raw for opening JPEGs
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Turn off the “Prefer Adobe Camera Raw for JPEG Files” preference in the File Handling pane of Preferences

————————————————————
#1422743: Mac/Win: Recovery and Fill Light sliders in Adobe Camera Raw don’t respond immediately on first use
————————————————————
Workaround: None

————————————————————
#1436723: Unable to choose Camera Raw as the format when multiple JPEGs are selected
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Turn on the “Prefer Adobe Camera Raw for JPEG Files” preference in the File Handling pane of Preferences

————————————————————
#1447597: Mac/Win: Grayscale Mix settings in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom are not retained in ACR or reflected in Bridge
————————————————————
Workaround: None

————————————————————
#1439805: Mac: TWAINBridge preventing installer from working
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Launch Activity Monitor from the Utilities folder
2) Choose the TWAINBridge process and click Quit Process
3) Launch Setup

————————————————————
#1439851: Mac: Cannot read BMP format files on Intel-based Macs
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Use CS2

————————————————————
#1443332: Camera Raw dialog box cut-off at 1024×768 monitor resolution
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Set your monitor resolution to something higher than 1024×768

————————————————————
#1448493: Mac/Win: There is a color mismatch between files previewed in Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Use CS2

————————————————————
#1448422: Mac/Win: Photomerge is linearing Camera RAW files and ignoring the adjustments made to the file in Adobe Camera Raw
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Use CS2

————————————————————
#1324277: Cancel on progress dialogs does not work
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Do not click Cancel while a progress dialog is displayed

————————————————————
#1422739: Win: Memory leak can cause Adobe Camera Raw to crash
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Use CS2

————————————————————
#1448400: Mac: Crash at launch due to TWAIN conflict
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Remove the TWAIN plug-in from Plug-Ins > Import/Export
2) Launch Photoshop

————————————————————
#1446337: Mac/Win: Photoshop fails to launch if external drive is set as only scratch disc
————————————————————
Workaround:
1) Hold down the Cmd + Opt (Ctrl + Alt on Win) while launching Photoshop and choose a different scratch disk

Photoshop CS3 mini-SDK released

LRN Editorial Staff — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 18:33:44 +0000

Adobe has released a Photoshop CS3 mini-SDK that will aid developers making the transition from regular Mac PPC coded plug-ins to Universal Binary versions compiled in Xcode. The plug-in update is required for all filters and plug-ins in order to load in Photoshop CS3 running on MacIntel machines. The SDK, along with the CS and CS2 versions, is a free download once you fill out a simple form.

All filter plug-in developers will also need to updated their plug-ins in order to have them run as non-destructive Smart Filters in CS3.

Flash runs inside Photoshop CS3!

LRN Editorial Staff — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 18:28:27 +0000

Psst… Wanna watch “PhotoshopTV” clips inside Photoshop itself? How about making a script that can access the network, upload/download data*, and control Photoshop?

John Nack, Photoshop senior product manager posted some pretty interesting info about how to watch Flash movies from inside Photoshop CS3 on his blog, John Nack on Adobe.

Here’s a screenshot provided by John showing Photoshop TV playing.

Read more about is in Flash runs inside Photoshop CS3!

Is Photoshop CS3 a 64 bit app?

LRN Editorial Staff — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 17:56:24 +0000

Another contentious topic to be found on the Photoshop CS3 forum is the question of whether or not Photoshop CS3 will be a real 64 bit application or remain a 32 bit application as it has been for a good long while. The hardware and OS vendors have done a good job of hyping 64 bit OS as the next big new thing, but unfortuately, the hype always precedes the reality.

To counter the cries for a full 64 bit rewrite of Photoshop, Scott Byer (Photoshop co-architect) has posted a story on his Living Photoshop blog entitled 64 bits…when?

Scott says:

I’ve gotten a number of questions on the beta forums as to why Photoshop CS3 won’t have a 64-bit version. It’s definitely a when question, not an if, and there are a lot of factors involved. I though I might collect some of the information together here.

First, let’s check all the 64-bit hype at the door. Being a 64-bit program means, most simply, that pointers in an application are 64 bits wide, not 32 bits. A 32 bit pointer means that an application can address 2 ^ 32 bytes of memory, or 4GB, at the most. The operating system an application runs on slices that application address space up, so that the application can actually only allocate a part of that address space for itself.

Thus, on Windows XP, an application can use 2GB of address space, on Macintosh OS X 10.4, an application gets 3GB, on Windows XP 64-bit edition, a 32-bit application gets nearly 4GB of address space. Applications don’t allocate RAM on most modern operating systems – that’s a common misconception and a gross oversimplification your computer geek friends tell you because they don’t want to explain virtual memory, TLBs and the like.

Read entire post

The New Creative Suite App Icons

Jeff Schewe — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 17:45:54 +0000

Some people love them, some people hate them and most people couldn’t care less. But one of the more controversial and contentious threads at the Photoshop CS3 forum (see: I hope the icon is also “beta”…) has been the appearance of the new Creative Suite 3 application icons.

It’s gotten to the point that John Nack even posted a story on his blog. I think it’s a new record for comments on one of John’s posts.

John had posted a previous story What’s up with the new Photoshop icon & branding? with comments from Ryan Hicks, Sr. Experience Designer at Adobe saying “Taken in isolation, the individual icons are in no way spectacular – that was never their role. Their elegance comes from how the entire desktop brand system works as a whole. The more Adobe apps you have, the better the system works. Adobe’s icons stand out instantly in the visually-dense world of user desktops because of their simplicity; complexity ≠ information.”

John even posted the “Periodic Table” of the new Adobe application icons with the blessing of Michael Gough, Adobe’s VP of Product Experience.

The application folders icons have also changed to reflect the new designs. And the eagle-eyed among you may have noted the new LR icon, presumably for Lightroom.

Lost in all the controversy is the fact that the file format icons have also changed.

No longer the red iris, the new file icons are the same color and initials as the application it comes from.

In the grand scheme of things, the app and folder icons as well as the file format icons are neither earth-shattering nor ugly. They are what they are. Over time I suspect most people will grow accostomed to them and learn to appreciate that it will be easier to figure out what app you wish to launch. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidently launched the wrong app in the Creative Suite 2 lineup merely because I couldn’t really tell, from the small icon, which was which. In this regard, the change is good.

Photoshop CS3 performance tests

LRN Editorial Staff — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:57:12 +0000

Source: Macworld
Written by Rick LePage

Beta is the new black for Adobe, and it fits them well. In the 72 hours after its surprise announcement, Adobe reportedly had more than 100,000 downloads of the Intel-native beta of Photoshop CS3. As a result, the Web has been abuzz with first looks and tutorials (Ben Long wrote a CS3 first look for us last Friday.) I have been playing with the beta for a while now, and it’s been a blast. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning with a new toy.

While I’ve been playing, the guys in the Macworld Lab—Jim Galbraith and Brian Chen—have been busy testing Photoshop CS3 on a few Intel Macs and some of the last generation of PowerPC-based Macs. As you would expect, Photoshop CS3 shows some pretty significant speed increases over the Rosetta-emulated CS2 on the Mac Pro and MacBook Pros.

We ran three basic tests:

Launching Photoshop CS3 with a 50MB file;
Running our standard suite of 14 scripted tasks on that 50MB file; and
Running a batch suite that executed three tasks (rotate, resize and save) on 100 stock photo images.

In all the tests. the Intel Mac (Mac Pro and MacBook Pro) beat its corresponding PowerPC cousin (Power Mac G5 and PowerBook G4), although the four PowerPC cores on the Power Mac G5 kept that machine pretty close in overall speed to the newer Mac Pro.

Read the entire article