The folks organizing Adobe’s presence at Photoshop World (just two weeks away) would like to pass along the following heads-up:
Birds of a Feather Meeting – Medical & Scientific Research Professionals
April 4, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Hosted by Adobe – Open to Conference Attendees and Medical Professionals and Research Professionals
Attend this session to see the newest features in Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended developed specifically for customers who use Photoshop for image analysis, visualization and communication. You’ll get to meet the team from Adobe that is charged with developing new features for the medical and research communities and hear from some leading customers in the field and how they use Photoshop in their work.
Attendees will be eligible to win Photoshop CS3 plus other great prizes.
Special Guests: Stephen R. Snow, DDS – with Snow Dental Care & Cosmetic Dentistry; Eric Wexler, MBA – Research Scientist with Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging; Joseph M. Bailey, MD – Montgomery Radiology Associates; and Robert Hurt – Visualization Scientist – Spitzer Science Center.
Track: Special Event — Room: 207 in the Convention Center
A registration form, plus more info on these guests, is on the Photoshop World site.
It used to be that users of Photoshop knew they were using the best there was. However, in recent years more of the innovations have been in the automatic/consumer-based direction. Take AutoAlign, healing brush, or limited smart-object transformations, for instance. As an artist, there just isn’t the level of control that is necessary.
[Please be more specific so that we can do something about it. –J.]
Many artist and computer science colleagues chalked this up to a 20 year-old code base where adding things like 16-bit functionality had become a huge undertaking.
The announcement of Photoshop CS3 Extended is discouraging for a number of reasons. First, it confirms that Photoshop’s role as a pro-sumer – rather than pro – application. Those of us still using the regular version are no longer using “the best there is.”
[No, it doesn’t. It’s not a question of amateur/pro or good/better. It’s a question of trying, within reason, to deliver the right set of tools to varying customer groups. –J.]
At the same time, Extended proves that Adobe has been innovating but has decided to make more money off of users rather than keep Photoshop on the cutting edge like it did in the past. These innovations should have been included with Photoshop as they were created, not rolled into a “special” addition.
[Of course, then we’d catch hell from people who say, “What is feature X doing in my copy of Photoshop? I’m a photographer and don’t need or want to pay for 3D, etc.” –J.]
Unfortunately for Adobe, this decision will give competitors the most substantial foothold into the market they’ve had in probably a decade.
[How? –J.]
People didn’t mind Photoshop’s virtual monopoly in the past because it, unlike some of Microsoft’s products, delivered a professional, state-of-the-art features. This is no longer true.
Smart objects should be able to handle full free transforms, not just the affine subset.
AutoAlign should allow prioritizing of regions for SIFTs point correspondence and therefor autoalign result. Also, locking a layer should mean it will stay in place and other layers will align to it
The clone-stamp improvements in CS3 are great. The healing brush may be quick, but it often – if not usually – has some visible defects.
You can argue Lightroom vs Photoshop isn’t an “ameteur/pro or good/better” comparison, and I’d agree. Photoshop regular is a subset of Photoshop Extended, and is therefor no longer the best.
As long as your still adding features for photographers, they won’t complain about added potential to the product. Yes, if you presuppose Adobe has to jack the price up for such features, then there’s a point here.
As I said above, Photoshop Regular will no longer be the best. Unless Adobe has figured out a perfect divide between science and art – something impossible to do – people will be less satisfied with the product. If a company like Apple came out with a compelling feature first, people would hope it’d eventually make it to Photoshop. If a compelling feature comes out for Photoshop CS3 Extended, everyone will know Adobe already has the capability but is holding out for an extra cut. This WILL lead to dissatisfaction and associates Adobe with Microsoft practices.
It’s also slightly insulting. Unless all these features came out between CS2 and now, Adobe has been holding back features thinking that mere photographers wouldn’t know what to do with them. Artists are pushing the envelope of Adobe’s technology no less than scientists.
I have to take issue here to some extent, even though the other comments have valid points, when it comes down to the actual tools of photoshop they are just that. I can do things with certain tools that no one else can- and that is the way it should be. The tools are only the beginning it is what we do with them, and how much precise control we have over them that separates the men from the boys so to speak. After careful thought I am pro adobe at the end of the day. Science is art. Art is science. I taught chemistry at college level for 7 years and many of my colleagues in medicine use photoshop now to further expand on their medical software that comes with their 10 million dollar machines. Here is where we can all meet in one plane of harmony.
I hold this ideal as well. This is why it’s a bad idea to separate this “one plane.”
Agreed, they are just tools. But claiming you “can do things with certain tools that no one else can” is a bit misleading. Tools offer potential to accomplish certain goals. It is your artistic vision combined with your creativity and understanding of the common tools that let you arrive at something unique. Technically everyone has the potential to do what you can do, unless you’re somehow extending Photoshop through custom scripts/plugins.
The issue is that some tools are more flexible than others. A Staple’s label printer might be perfect for certain tasks, but it offers far less creative potential than a color wide-format printer. Many of Photoshop’s recent additions are more like the constricted label printer than the wide-format printer.