Camera Raw 4.6 and the DNG Converter 4.6 has been posted to Adobe.com for Mac and Windows. This release adds support for raw formats from the following 15 camera models:
- Canon 1000D (Digital Rebel XS/EOS Kiss F)
- Canon 50D
- Fuji FinePix IS Pro
- Kodak EasyShare Kodak Z1015 IS
- Leaf AFi II 6
- Leaf AFi II 7
- Leaf Aptus II 6
- Leaf Aptus II 7
- Nikon D700
- Nikon D90
- Nikon Coolpix P6000
- Olympus SP-565 UZ
- Pentax K2000 (K-m)
- Sigma DP1
- Sony A900
Lightroom/Camera Raw PM Tom Hogarty notes, "You won’t find this update listed on our traditional Camera Raw page as we are moving quickly towards updates specific to the Camera Raw 5 and the CS4 release. For our Lightroom customers, similar camera support can also be found in Lightroom 2.1 currently available on Adobe Labs as a Release Candidate."
Note that if you’re not using CS3, the free DNG Converter can make your files compatible with other DNG-savvy software (not to mention smaller and more portable as well).
Hello Jack,
Some new stuff via the New York Times (The sum of your facial parts)http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/fashion/09skin.html?8dpc.
Looks like this company wants a slice of the photoshop business.
But I am sure you guys have already hired them or bought their facial “goodness”.
Like those MIT guys from Israel you added to CS4 new feature set.
Just love adobe.
Remember, buy all the adobe stocky you can get……somebody gonna cash in when the cloned stock market hits and your new son will have his education all paid in spades..
Have a good weekend.
Ken in KY
John, a quick technical question if you’re willing. Buying a new system, and wondering which would be better for a Photoshop scratch disk for enormous Photoshop files, something like one of the new OCZ SSDs or like a WD VelociRaptor HDD? Not entirely understanding the details of how each would interact with PS, I don’t know which route to go. I suppose in general, do you see any big advantages or disadvantages to SSDs with Adobe programs? Thanks for any thoughts!
I apologize in advance for posting my Photoshop rant here, but I really want you to see it.
Again and again, you write that Adobe does listen to Mac customers, does try to create Mac-like applications and will only introduce non-Mac-like features if they really offer an advantage over the Mac-like way. The latter was the reason you gave for the new MDI interface in Photoshop CS4.
Now I just saw that the “Close Tab” buttons in Photoshop CS4 are on the right (i.e. wrong) side of the tab and look like Windows close buttons, not like the close buttons Mac users expect (i.e. the ones from Safari tabs).
[Of course, that presumes that if something comes from Apple, it must be correct, and everything else is wrong. Thus Firefox (which puts the close boxes on the right) must be wrong. So must Transmit, because although it puts the close boxes on the left, it uses an Aqua highlight color (which Safari doesn’t).
What functional difference does this make? John Gruber (whose mention of the close box placement is likely what inspired you to visit and write this) has previously commented that “‘[C]onsistency’ is essential only when it actually affects usability, and that consistency for its own sake is not important.”
Things like the existence of an app frame have an obvious functional impact. Does the left/right placement of the close boxes have one? No. In the course of many hundred prerelease forum messages discussing the new interface changes in CS4, no one ever mentioned the tab close boxes being problematic (and believe me, the feedback overall was extremely thorough). –J.]
Why on earth are you doing that? It certainly doesn’t have any advantage to put them on the wrong side and to use the wrong graphics, and again it leaves the impression that Adobe simply doesn’t care about Mac-like interfaces.
[It has the advantage of making Adobe applications more consistent across platforms. A rather large percentage of Adobe customers use the apps on both major OSes. –J.]
It totally looks like you’re designing the application to look and feel correctly on Windows and then do not even spend the (at most) 30 man-minutes needed to change the button’s graphics and location because you simply don’t care.
[I care deeply about UI issues that affect the usability of the product. I put a lot less emphasis on trying to do a pixel-for-pixel match of every design that comes out of Cupertino. (I suppose that during Apple’s brushed metal era, Adobe apps were “wrong” for not all being brushed metal on the Mac. Of course, as soon as that fad ended at Apple, brushed-metal apps would all be “wrong.” See why that game sucks?) –J.]
Instead of finally fixing the palettes where you already used the Windows graphics and location for the close/minimize buttons in CS3, you create more problems.
[You’re mistaken about the palette/panel tabs: In CS4 the close box is on the left-hand side on the Mac (screenshot) and on the right-hand side on Windows (screenshot) –J.]
I’m really frustrated. If only there was decent competition…
[That, or maybe people could focus on functionality instead of ideological purity. –J.]
gosh, why niggle about something of no significance? True, the first time someone uses PS it might take them an instant to find out where to click something, almost no one uses it only one time 🙂
[It has the advantage of making Adobe applications more consistent across platforms. A rather large percentage of Adobe customers use the apps on both major OSes. –J.]
As someone who falls into this category, your efforts are greatly appreciated!
Thank you very much for your prompt and detailed answer! I really appreciate that.
I’m also really happy to hear that the panel close boxes have been fixed.
Please be fair, however: I didn’t say that everything Apple does is correct. I also don’t believe that putting the close box on the left side has any advantage.
But I strongly believe that on a platform where close boxes have been on the left side for 24 years, it has a usability advantage and it would make sense to leave them there.
Photoshop on Windows and Photoshop on the Mac still have a different look and feel. You have a slightly different menu layout (application menu on Mac OS X), different shortcuts (Cmd instead of Ctrl), the window title bar is different etc. All these things are probably more important differences than the position of the close box.
If you really had the goal of making Adobe applications consistent across platforms, you would have to unify all these things, too. It would be a lot of work and I’m not sure people would like the result.
On the other hand, if you tried to make the Adobe applications consistent with other applications on the respective platform, this would actually be possible with a few minor changes.
Transmit’s use of a different highlight color is only a cosmetic difference, and there’s even a really good reason for this: Transmit’s current interface was created for Mac OS X 10.4, i.e. it had a complete Aqua interface (neither a brushed metal interface like Tiger’s Safari nor a Leopard unified interface). That’s why they created their own Aqua tabs and I have no reason to believe they will not change this with their next interface overhaul (even though this cosmetic “problem” really isn’t important at all).
For Firefox the wrong placement of the tab has its own bugzilla bug (#349108) since 2006, but noone is working on it, because you can simply switch your Firefox theme (e.g. to one of the great GrApple themes) to get rid of this bug.
You say it doesn’t make a functional difference if the close button is on the right side. Then you certainly believe it doesn’t make a functional difference to put the Quit menu command at the end of the File menu, either.
But still, as a Mac user you would probably want it to be in the “correct” location, even if you’re not focusing on “ideological purity”.
I absolutely agree with you that usability issues are important and cosmetic issues are not. I should have made it clearer that for me, the fact that the close box is on the wrong side IS a usability issue (I already know that because it immediately annoyed me in both Firefox and CS3). The “wrong” design is not nearly as important (although I still see no reason why the design at least 95% of all Mac apps use shouldn’t be used in Adobe’s apps).
Again, thank you very much for your answer. I hope I could make my point a little bit clearer and I also hope I’m not sounding offensive, that would only be the result of my bad English.
I recently bought the Canon G10 camera and cant seem to open the CR2 files in Photoshop CS3 or Lightroom, I would like to convert the CR2 to DNG. Do you have any ideas on how to do so? thanks.
Hi,
I was wondering what your thoughts were about open-sourcing small Adobe tools like the DNG Converter. I checked http://opensource.adobe.com and it seems pretty quiet lately. While I’m not talking OpenSourcing massive IP like Photoshop or Illustrator of course, I figured small tools and utilities could benefit from the community.
DNG Converter for example, albeit small in purpose, takes a significant portion of my workflow time converting 21MP Canon5DMII CR2 files to DNG. I could see a few people willing to try make it run faster; 64 bits maybe? Multi Core support? CUDA or GPU acceleration?
Is there a forum or another Adobe blog I could forward this suggestion to?
Thanks for the great work.