New Photoshop Hall of Fame Inductees

John Nack, senior product manager for Photoshop, and Martin Evening, photographer/instructor/author, will both be inducted into the NAPP's Photoshop Hall of Fame. More from Scott Kelby:

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/1773

I don't know Martin at all, and have only met John once in person (though I've known him for a couple of years via email). However, I am familiar with work from both of these gentlemen and am very happy for them. John especially has been instrumental in bringing Photoshop into a new frame of mind, and has pushed not only the capabilities of the application, but by proxy the capabilities of the communities who use Photoshop.

Photoshop users around the world have John and his team to thank for some very exciting changes in a very exciting piece of software.

Lightroom updated

Lots of folks have already blogged this, but Adobe updated Lightroom to version 2, and added support for the Nikon D700 (unofficially, though). If anyone wants to send me a D700 for testing, just drop me a note and I'll make time in my schedule to accommodate you.

John Nack (linked above) lists some of the highlights in this release, so I'm going to ramble a bit about why I'm finally going to add LR to my imaging lineup.

First off, I'm doing more and more actual photography, where I want the image to be done right in the camera. And while I am writing a book on composite photographs using Photoshop, I want to keep my photography at the highest quality I can on its own. Yes, Photoshop has most everything I need, but I want to keep my brain on the images themselves for some projects, and LR has more flexibility in tweaking photographic images.

As a user group manager, I have been obligated to point out that Adobe has always meant for LR and PS to be used together, though either can stand alone for their own particular target audiences. Indeed, you can survive quite nicely as a photographer using only PS (the converse is not true for designers and LR). However, I never figured I needed to make the kinds of adjustments LR is capable of. That is changing, and it is mostly due to my changing perspective on photography alongside the availability of a more powerful image tool, LR.

If you are a PS user and a photographer, join me in adding LR to your lineup. It may take some getting used to, but I think it will be worth it to keep focused on a photography work flow that is distinct from an imaging or designing work flow.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your opinions on this.

AllExperts Answers - Photography Basics

I am just posting a couple of TinURL links to answers I've given recently. Mostly, I just want to keep track of them, but some folks might find them useful for explaining a couple of basic photography concepts to their neophyte friends:

Explaining Depth of Field and Aperture

Explaining "accuracy" misconception in photographic images

As I get more, I'll create a little library of TinyURLs for quick reference  :)

Complexity in Art (via Scott Kelby)

Scott Kelby recently hosted guest blogger Stephen Johnson to talk about complexity in creating art:

Art seems rarely achieved through complex techniques, hidden features or secret workflows. This is particularly true in the digital era where the distraction of the software itself can make the creative process become stymied in menus and self-doubt regarding using the program to its fullest potential. Add to this a steep learning curve inherent in the current transition to digital photography and you have a situation where “tricks” can effect results more than vision.

This is a pretty good read, worth the few minutes and 1/2 cup of coffee to get through. Johnson speaks to some of the topics my partner and I will be writing about in our upcoming book, specifically about 'getting it right' in the camera.

Mac Pro setup?

So, I recently bought a refurb Mac Pro. I am moving from Windows, and would like to get started the right way. And I'm asking for your help despite my better judgment.

I have heard that it's possible/recommended to partition the OS onto its own drive for easy reinstalls. Is it possible to do this across the board for other applications? Is it possible to mirror just the application drive so that I can clean out the entire OS if necessary?

Also, how would I go about having a distinct install (virtual?) drive for beta applications? You know... not that I currently do any beta testing... ahem. But, if I did, what would be the best way to set up a Mac Pro for this hypothetical arrangement?

Experimenting with Photoshop

It sounds odd, but one of the most entertaining things I do with Photoshop is to improvise on a theme. That theme can be a compositional style, an effect, a genre, etc. Part of this experimentation relies on anchoring around some idea or look. For example, I recently posted a challenge on PhotoshopTechniques to come up with different ways to use noise in an image. Most folks use noise to simulate film grain, and this is where I started. The specific challenge was to get noise to behave in unusual ways.

Since I like to have the image do much of the work itself, I try to build effects that rely on color or brightness information. This allows for some custom looks, but also helps when building film simulations since much of the look of film is tied to how it handles tonal variations and exposure. Noise in film is actually grains of photosensitive material, with grain size being related to the sensitivity of the film.

Without getting into the technical details, here's the summary of film, and why it's important to this discussion... Color film is made up of layers, each sensitive to a different spectrum of light. Sometimes these layers react differently, or have different sensitivity to various frequencies of light. Noise in these layers comes from "improper" exposure, typically underexposure. So, to get good (or realistic) simulations of film grain, you have to apply noise in a way that mimics how the film reacts to being underexposed.

The best way to do this is to use channel information and blending modes. There are several approaches, some requiring more finesse than others. Here some things to try: create various noise layers and adjust the color with hue/saturation, then apply different blend modes and opacity changes; add noise to special selections, like highlights or mid tones; warp your noise layers using displacement maps created from edge masks.

These are fairly advanced techniques, so if you are not sure how to get started, check the links on the right and send me a question!

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog!!

What do you get when you mix Joss Whedon, Doogie Howser, and That Guy From Waitress in with a slumped Hollywood economy?

You get more awesome awesomness than has ever previously been awesome on this blog. And that, my friend, is an awful lot of awesomeness.

If you have a myspace account, go get Dr. Horrible to add you as a friend. If you don't have myspace, go get an account and go get Dr. Horrible to add you as a friend.

But first, watch this.

What does this have to do with Photoshop? Not a gorram thing. But it's good, and you should support it. You should at least be aware of it.