The Digital Photography Show #31: Amedeo Rosa from Alien Skin, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta, and Shooting our Kids Performaces in Low Light (24MB, 70mins)
The Digital Photography Show #31: Amedeo Rosa from Alien Skin, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta, and Shooting our Kids Performaces in Low Light (24MB, 70mins)
December 20, 2006: Welcome to the Transcendental Thirty First Episode of The Digital Photography Show.
Today we interview Amadeo Rosa from Alien Skin Software (our sponsor). Alien Skin develops great Photoshop filters, and their new release, Snap Art, is no exception. “Snap Art transforms your images to create artwork with the look of natural media, in a single step. You’ll find filters including oil paint, pencil sketch, pen and ink, comics, and more.
More? Of course there is more! Win a copy of Alien Skin Software’s Snap Art. Listen to the show to hear how to enter the contest. Entries are due on January 5th, 2007.
If you want to be the first one on your block to have Snap Art, you can purchase your very own at their store. Scott and I posted some examples of how Snap Art transformed our images on this DPS.Phanfare.com Album.
Listener Antonino asked us for advice on how to approach photographing his child’s performance at school. It just so happened my child had a performance on the very same day. I had the same exact issues to address. Today, we discussed how to address this photographic challenge.
We are in the midst of our first photo contest. Send us one of your Macro (close-up) shots with a winter holiday theme TheDigitalPhotographyShow@gmail.com. Please try to keep the images on the small size (around 800 pixels maximum height/width, or around 1MB file size). You must state in your email that you give us permission to show the image on our Phanfare site. We will pick a winner on January, 2, 2007 and post the images on our site. The prize is a copy of Alien Skin’s Image Doctor or Rick Sammon’s DVD Rick Sammon Live. If you want to see some of the photos we received so far, visit our DPS Phanfare site.
We continued a discussion from last week about the Yahoo news service which solicits photographs and video from the public (citizen journalists) but does not offer any compensation. We hear comments on this matter from the guys at the The Global Geek Podcast.
The big news: Adobe released Photoshop CS3 Beta. Will you be giving it a try? If so, please share with us your experiences with this beta product from Adobe.
As always, a special thank you to our sponsor, Alien Skin, and to our advertiser, Phanfare. These are companies we are incredibly proud to feature on the show. Check out their free trial downloads today!
As always, thanks for listening to our show and for your comments on the blog. . Now please, go out there and make some great photos!
Michael
December 21st, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Wow!! I love Chris Rogers’ picture is awesome! Doug Allen’s picture is very nice too! I am no photography expert (I just starting shooting) but how do you achieve the efect in Jorge Moro’s picture? Do you shoot with a very low speed and then zoom in?
Great show! I love it!
December 21st, 2006 at 9:50 pm
There seems to be a problem with your feed today guys - iTunes is reporting that your existing feed has a “bad url”. This happened a couple of weeks ago as well. Just thought you might want to know,
December 22nd, 2006 at 12:23 am
Hi Guys,
Great Show! Photoshop CS3 is great fun. Check out labs.adobe.com for features. Check out photoshopusers.com for video tutorials on the new features.
Sue
December 22nd, 2006 at 1:10 am
About Photoshop CS3 beta:
I have had absolutely NO problems with it, so far. One the cool things about it for a photographer is in Adobe Camera RAW import - there are new sliders for Fill Light, Blacks, and Vibrance. Plus a very nice Convert to Grayscale check box that seems to do a great job. I’ll send more comments as I discover new features for photographers. Great show guys!
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:04 am
I want to say that this is one of the best shows on the subject on the net today. Scott and Michael are entertaining and knowledgable. I want to wish you both the best and success with the show in the New Year. I just finished listening to the latest podcast and loved it.
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:46 am
Regarding the sports photography issue, monopods are the way to go.
Tripods are a royal pain in the backside when shooting sports and can’t be used when sitting or standing in the grandstands. Not to mention that many sports venues will not allow tripods as they belive them to be a safety hazard to both participants and spectators. I use a Manfrotto 679B monopod with a Manfrotto 3229 head. B&H even offer these two components as a combo.
If you have heavy glass (like the Canon 100-400mm IS L) your back will be hurting after a few hours if you don’t have a monopod.
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:10 am
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Regarding the issue of installing the CS3 beta and not being able to use CS2, that is not the case… at least in the Mac OS. I have CS2 and CS3 both installed on my Macs. The CS3 beta is WAAAAAY faster than CS2 on the new Intel Macs. I also found that my plugins do not work in CS3 and that’s a big bummer.
Michael, if you want to install CS3 and still have your JPGs open with CS2 by default all you need to do is right-click (or Ctl-Click) on any JPG and select “Get Info” and then use the drop down menu under “Open With” and select Photoshop CS2 and press the “Change All…” button.
Here’s a screen cap (not sure if this will work of not, lets see)
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:12 am
Looks like embedding images hosted on my server in the posts does not work. Paste this link into your browser to see the “Get Info” dialog box:
http://www.allenrockwellphoto.com/images/screencap.jpg
December 22nd, 2006 at 7:44 am
I am glad to hear all the positive feedback regarding CS3. Allen, I did not realize how easy it was to change file associations on the Mac. So far, it has not been a problem so I never needed to learn how, but now I know. Thanks.
Besides the running faster on the Intel chip, what are all your favorite new features? The added features to ACR sound nice. It is getting more obvious that the more we can get out of our RAW conversion, the less processing we need to do afterwards. It is all good news.
–Michael
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:06 am
Who won the WACOM tablet.
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:47 am
I get the show through ITunes but no download was available when I tried this morning. Hope nothing is wrong. If you have an Ipod, is there another way to download the episodes and get them onto your Ipod other than through ITunes?
December 22nd, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Sorry about the troubles with iTunes first thing this morning. I made the fatal mistake of putting an ampersand in the show notes. For some reason that kills the iTunes feed. My bad. Scott picked up on it before 6am and resolved it. Thanks Scott!
–Michael
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Another great show guys - keep up the good work. You’ve finally persuaded me to start looking at the Alienskin plug-ins (proof that the sponsorship is working for them).
iTunes problems seem to be fixed now.
Have a great Christmas.
December 23rd, 2006 at 2:00 am
Thanks for another great show!! I expand my knowledge and love for photography after each one. Look forward to the next one.
Enjoy your holidays!!
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:55 am
Loved the show, guys. I really enjoyed viewing your pictures on Phanfare as you discussed them with Mr. Rosa. I’ve also enjoyed seeing all the entries in the Holiday Macro Contest. Some very nice work. I’m tempted to shell out for a macro lens.
Wishing everyone beautiful and safe holidays…and exciting photo gifts!
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I downloaded the trial version of Snap Art tonight, less than 5 minutes after I finished listening to the show.
I played with it quickly and found lots to like. I have one complaint. Every single change (even a slight movement of a slider) requires processing time where you simply wait and watch the blue line scroll as the filter progresses. I have 1 gig of RAM, and could probably make it run faster with 2 Gigs, but I would be interested to know if that would make a difference in the speed of processing.
I posted 4 quick examples to my website (and put notes in the photo captions for you). I have NO sophistication or understanding beyond the podcast. I spent less than 30 minutes with it:
http://marieboyer.smugmug.com/gallery/2266615/1/118368233
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:59 pm
I just noticed that Alien Skin has new settings for Snap Art that provide more detail in every filter category. If you have Snap Art on your computer, you simply need to download the new settings and, viola, they become available to you next time you bring up Snap Art in your photoshop.
Here’s the link:
http://www.alienskin.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=620&PN=1&TPN=1
December 24th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
[...] The Digital Photography Show #31: Amedeo Rosa from Alien Skin, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta, and Shooting our Kids Performaces in Low Light (24MB, 70mins) [...]
December 25th, 2006 at 1:59 am
Great show again guys.
I’m so excited to have caught up on the back issues and am now up to date and able to enter the contests. I am hoping to get some really good macros to send in for the contest. I’ve really enjoyed looking at other people’s entries.
December 25th, 2006 at 10:29 am
I have taken some photos for the Macro contest, and can’t decide which one to send in as my contest pic. Check out my gallery of attempts here: http://sprongb.phanfare.com/album/170808/224503
December 26th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Hi guys. Need a backup Nikon camera? Great deal on the Nikon D50 with kit lens. $404 at Staples until December 31. Go to this link (which I learned about from this podcast) and scroll to the last item on the page, which is the Nikon D50 and the Staples link:
http://www.cameratown.com/deals/
I paid $640 for mine (which was a decent deal at the time).
December 27th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Love the shopping tip, Landya!
And thanks, Bianca!
December 28th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Hi gents. Just heard my first DPS (this one) and enjoyed it. I heard you discussing PS/Bridge CS3 and thought I’d post my early impressions.
My take is that other than a few new goodies, mostly in Bridge, this was Adobe’s solution for the Intel-based Macs rather than a real, feature rich, upgrade. This isn’t 7->CS or CS->CS2 but closer to what I’d call an update. GUI tweakability and a couple of layer additions and changes. Still, well worth the effort to move to.
From looking over Adobe’s PS CS3 Release Notes, here’s what I see:
- Smart Filters - There were a couple of good filters/layer effects that were destructive in CS2, the most useful to me being Shadows/Highlights. You had to copy a layer and apply to that, then mask off if needed, rather than applying it as a layer like Curves, Levels, etc. that could be endlessly tweaked. This will be handy.
- Quick Select: I never was able to get Extract to do what I wanted. This sounds similar but more straightforward.
- Refine Edge: Changes a series of value boxes to sliders for selection control (expand/contract/feather/etc.). May be useful, may be a toy, but edge control is crucial for good PS’ing.
- Automatic layer alignment and blending: Probably good for folks doing a lot of compositing. A boon for the National Enquirer. Bat Boy is in for an update! Put your wife’s head on Pam Anderson’s body! Fun for the whole family!
- Vanishing Point with multiple, adjustable angle perspective planes: Again, good for folks doing compositing or adding elements to shots. Useful for product or stock photo work.
- Black and White conversion: Pretty slick. B+W conversions were best done using the Channel Mixer, and this just pulls multiple tricks that have been around for awhile into a large set of sliders. Also has tinting options. Looks great for artistic work and punching up dull images.
- Camera Raw: More controls and tweaks, but if you’re using other RAW conversion routines (I use Nikon CaptureNX) these won’t be new. If you’ve been using ACR only this will either be a breath of fresh air or horrifyingly complicated. If you use Lightroom this is probably DOA. A quick look showed some new highlight/shadow-type controls in addition to the old Exposure slider–may be interesting for recovery of blown-out and blocked-out areas without lots of dinking with curves and levels. Lots of new presets in Curves dialog to simply that too, including fancy-dancy parametric curves. This level of control leads to an interesting choice. Changes made in ACR 4 are saved in Metadata XMP Sidecar files, while changes made in PS are layers or permanent file changes. Quick fixes may be best done in ACR. It apparently will also work with jpgs and tifs now.
Bridge is also in for an update in this release, and those changes were more obvious to me. The GUI and some of the features look more like Aperture or Lightroom than the old Bridge. So far I really, really like these. From their release notes:
- Faster Thumbnails: This took a bit of getting used to. Instead of showing an icon, they show a low res version and update as the cache is built, like a progressive jpg. Freaked me out when I loaded an entire folder of pixelated crap shots only to see their beauty revealed a few minutes later. ; ) Probably useful, but be reeeeeeeal careful about making any image decisions based on their nasty preview. Of course I was looking at RAW files so JPGs, TIFs, DNGs, etc. may not have as rough a preview. They say there are some settings that control thumbnail quality that I haven’t gotten around to trying.
- Enhanced Preview Panel: Rewarding. Very, very rewarding. Select more than one image in the filmstrip and the group opens up in the Content window. They now have a floating Loupe (zoom region) for inspection. This alone is worth upgrading for if you are looking to choose the best of a few related shots. Do you bracket? You’ll love this feature.
- Improved Slideshow: Looks like they’ve made it a bit easier to move around and zoom images for inspection.
- Stacks: Beats me what this is. Sounds like a glorified folder that doesn’t change the disk directory structure. Or their start on a Catalog app. Hmmmm….
- New Filter Panel: Looks like they’ve simplified filtering based on, I assume, Stars and Labels. Maybe acts on XMP Meta data as well, which would be an improvement over V1.0 filtering if you could use shot data and keywords. Probably good if you don’t use iView or other catalog s/w.
- Metadata: Speaking of which, there is a nice new summary panel for XMP info. I assume it can be customized to provide whatever data is actually important to you rather than just what they think is important to you. Layout is in that crowded, back-of-camera-display style which is either cute and efficient or irritating, depending on your style. They added a Reject label, which those devotees of “The DAM Book” know is, uh, pretty DAM useful.
- Organizing Files: Handy, since their actual file handling was lacking. Will cure lots of D-ooh moments where I’d right click expecting to delete, copy, rename, etc. I assume File copy/rename just pulls in the old “Import From Camera” (IFC) script.
- Improved Searching: Uh oh. Watch out iView and other catalog apps! Adobe is coming! “Note that in this build relative collections are not supported yet.” Yet, huh? Of course with iView being part of the evil empire now, I guess it is just as well that Adobe moves to a full-featured catalog app.
- Faster Cache: Good. Their V1.0 caching stunk. I’d been having lots of problems with Bridge not updating caches when new RAW files were added to my main archive container folders. Gotta get used to the progressive display, tho. Seeing that in action the first time was a real panic moment.
- Adobe Photo Downloader (APD): Again, looks like they included IFC, which used to be a separate download. Dunno how this will compare to dedicated ones like Downloader Pro.
- Customizing Bridge: Yeah, yeah. Gotta get me that 24inch Apple Monitor!!!
So that’s my take. YMMV. I’m looking foward to the full release in about 6 months, tho unless I either find some crash problems or my fave plug-ins don’t work with it I’ll likely be using CS3 when I can.
Again, I enjoyed your show and I’ll be listening to your ‘back catalog’ over time.
December 30th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Hi Scott & Michael - Great show and thanks for the holiday macro contest, how fun! And, I definitely agree that Photoshop CS3 did seem faster on my MAC as compared to Photoshop CS2.
I was also persuaded to download some of the Alien Skin demos especially Snap Art & Exposure.
I’ve been listening for about 6 months and love the show, especially the “banter”!! And, Scott I used to live in Silver Spring, Maryland before moving to California, the majority of my family is still there and I go back at least once a year.
January 9th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Eduardo.
The picture that I (Jorge Moro) took was shot with a Fuji Finepix S1 Pro DSLR. This, and the S2 (which I also own) are the only DSLRS’ that allow multiple exposures in-camera. There is no trickery, or photoshop here. I first shot one image with the camera set to it’s multiple exposure setting, then zoomed in a little bit and took the second shot. I also stopped down the aperture 1 stop to allow for the extra light.
Good Luck in Photography!
Jorge
October 14th, 2007 at 11:18 am
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article The Digital Photography Show #31: Amedeo Rosa from Alien Skin, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta, and Shooting our Kids Performaces in Low Light (24MB, 70mins), but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.