The Web Font Plug-in for Photoshop supports CS5-6:
Extensis announced today it has updated its Web Font Plug-in with support for Adobe Creative Suite 6, providing web designers access to more than 5,000 WebINK and Google Web Fonts directly within Adobe Photoshop. These fonts can be used free-of-charge to mock-up any website.
Check it out. [Via]
From the CS6 FAQ:
Adobe and Apple have worked closely together to test Adobe® Creative Suite® 5, 5.5 and CS6 editions and individual products for reliability, performance and user experience when installed on Intel® based systems running Mac OS X Mountain Lion (v10.8). Earlier versions of Adobe Photoshop® (CS3 and CS4) software were also tested with Mountain Lion and there are currently no known issues.
As with any new release of an operating system, there may be unexpected issues that arise that were not discovered during testing. If you encounter any issues, please report them on our bug reporting form.
Video team member Todd Kopriva notes,
Mountain Lion (Mac OS v10.8) upgrade improves performance and stability with Premiere Pro. Be sure to check for drivers for third-party I/O hardware and such, which may not yet be available for your accessories.”
I think it was Scott Kelby who used to jokingly refer to Photoshop as “a video game for grown-ups.” Truth can be stranger than fiction, though, and now you can “play” Photoshop to improve your skills, learn new features, and actually win prizes.
LevelUp for Photoshop encourages people to explore the app, using features they may not know in order to complete various missions. The first mission starts with removing redeye, and they get progressively more elaborate from there. By accumulating points you get entered into drawings to win Creative Cloud membership and Amazon.com gift certificates. You also earn points by sharing your progress on Facebook and Twitter, passing quizzes, and more. The game runs until July 15th.
My colleague Bruce reports that his 13-year-old son Noel is addicted to the game & now passes challenges with a Team America-style cry of “Photoshop, [Heck] Yeah!” So, we’ve got that going for us. 🙂
Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Photoshop CS5 & CS5.1 for Mac & Windows. This update addresses vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system. For an attacker to exploit these vulnerabilities, a user must open a malicious TIF or DAE file inPhotoshop CS5.1, Photoshop CS5, and earlier. Adobe is not aware of any attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities.
You can grab it here. [Update: You can get the Illustrator update here.]
Camera Raw 6.7 [Win|Mac] and DNG Convertor 6.7 [Win|Mac] are now available as a final releases on Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms available in Photoshop CS5. This release includes bug fixes, new lens profiles, and new camera support:
For more details about lens profiles supported & bugs fixed, please see the Lightroom Journal. [Via Dave Howe]
Camera Raw 6.7 (required for full compatibility between Lightroom 4.0 and Photoshop CS5) & the free DNG Converter (which can make your raw files readable by any DNG-capable app, including older versions of Photoshop & Lightroom) are available as release candidates from Adobe Labs. New cameras supported:
See the Lightroom Journal for a full list of camera profiles added.
This is very cool. Skala Preview says it offers “The fastest way to send pixel perfect, color-perfect design previews from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad.” Here’s the neat bit:
If you’re using Photoshop CS5 12.0.4 or newer, Skala Preview can preview your canvas as you edit. No saving, no keyboard shortcuts, just lossless previews in realtime. It is the absolute fastest way to preview a design mock up on an iOS device.
I’ve just given it a try, and dang if it doesn’t work like a champ. Nice going, guys!
This strikes me as a bit like jamming a V8 into a Miata, but it’s impressive: Adobe’s Dave Helmly beefs up a wee MacBook Air via the power of its Thunderbolt connection, using it to edit full-res RED video footage in Premiere Pro:
If you install panels or extensions for Photoshop or other CS5 products (e.g. stuff from Russell Brown; panels created with Configurator) and you run Mac OS X 10.7, you should update the Extension Manager utility to avoid installation errors.
Dealing with grids in Photoshop is a pain.
With GuideGuide, it doesn’t have to be. Pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines can be created based on your document or marquee with the click of a button. Frequently used guide sets can be saved for repeat use. Grids can use multiple types of measurements. Best of all it’s free. Honestly, if you haven’t started downloading it by now, you’re probably a masochist. Weirdo…
[Via Gary Greenwald]
Browse visually from within Photoshop (and InDesign), run batch actions, start full-screen slideshows, and more; Hughes explains:
Here’s a one-minute tour from PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes:
He provides a deeper overview with examples (including iPhone shots automatically improved via this technology) on the Photoshop.com blog.
14 million photos & vectors right inside InDesign, Illustrator & Photoshop!
Search stock images, save to lightboxes, create galleries, insert comps & automatically update to high res versions making stock image integration what it was always meant to be!
To build your own panels like this, grab the Creative Suite Extension Builder.
Check out this hour-long session from Photoshop pro Jack Davis:
Learn techniques for making images look their best, fast, including everything from instant optimizing and enhancing of images to making Smart Filter recipes, custom actions, and tool presets.
At Adobe MAX, Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes presented a 1-hour deep dive into the hidden gems of Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended:
Discover how to go places creatively that were impossible in Photoshop before CS5. Hughes will reveal many new techniques and enhancements to help keep your skills sharp and current.
Bryan has also posted a recap of MAX, thoughts on the new Adobe Touch apps, and more over on the Photoshop.com blog.
You can do watercolor-style painting on your iPad, then shoot the results right into Photoshop and combine them with other imagery. PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes shows how it’s done in this 3-minute video:
My neighbor is an industrial designer & can’t stop raving about perspective drawing in Illustrator CS5. If that’s up your 3-point alley, check out this session Friday at noon Pacific:
Whether you are drawing street scenes, architecture, product concepts, packaging, or even infographics, being able to craft art in perspective consistently, and accurately, is a must-have skill. In this session we’ll learn how Illustrator CS5 makes this possible with the new Perspective Drawing tools. Learn how to map 2D vector art to existing perspectives, draw in perspective, and get the skinny on some tricks to help you work.
Extensis has released a free beta of their Web Font Plug-in for Photoshop CS5+. The plug-in (a panel) allows you to use fonts from WebINK (a web font rental service from Extensis) in the creation of website mock-ups in Photoshop. Using the plug-in requires downloading a trial version of the Suitcase Fusion 3 font manager, though it’ll keep running even after the trial period expires.
I haven’t yet gotten to try out the panel, but I’m intrigued. If you have feedback on it or just general thoughts on Web fonts & design tools, please chime in.
Update: Here’s an in-depth overview & demo video.
Lightroom 3.5 (Mac|Win) and Camera Raw 6.5 (Mac|Win) are now available as final releases on Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms available in Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3. These updates include bug fixes, new camera support and new lens profiles. New camera support:
For a list of lens profiles added & bugs fixed, please see the Lightroom Journal post.
Way back when–before you learned never to be caught dead near Photoshop’s Dodge, Burn, Sharpen, or Brightness/Contrast tools, as no Real User™ would ever give them a second look–didn’t those tools seem nicely simple & straightforward? Trouble is, over time better (if usually more complicated) alternatives emerged, so folk wisdom dictated that these tools be treated as obsolete.
We liked how direct the tools were, though, so in Photoshop CS4 and CS5 we updated the underlying algorithms. In the 1-minute video below, Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes shows how effective it can be to apply sharpening via painting:
A customer asked me today for Photoshop performance-tuning guidance, so I took a minute to track down the latest & greatest, most canonical guide from Adobe: it’s “How to tune Photoshop CS5 for peak performance” over on Photoshop PM Jeff Tranberry’s blog. Hope you find it useful.
Acquire for iOS (see previous) has been drawing lots of interest, so here’s a 3-minute demo of how it works:
(Remember, if you’re using Photoshop CS5 (and not 5.5), you’ll need to make sure you’ve updated to 12.0.4.)
Check out this beautifully simple app:
Acquire is a simple, powerful utility for instantly ingesting images from your camera-equipped iOS device into Adobe Photoshop CS5. Using Adobe’s Remote Connect feature, an image shot with your device’s camera is instantly, wirelessly transmitted into Photoshop so you can work with it without delay.
Two bucks well spent!
Bryan O’Neil Hughes steps up to the mic with another pair of 1-minute tutorials. Puppet Warp can be more subtle than you might think.
Use Puppet to straighten images
Puppet and Content-Aware Fill
Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes has posted a pair of 1-minute tips on how to work with Photoshop CS5’s new technology:
Using the Pen to guide the Spot Healing Brush:
Using smaller selections to improve results:
Maliciously coded GIF files could cause Photoshop to crash, so the team has posted an update. If you open GIFs in Photoshop, please download the update for Mac, Win64, and/or Win32. They recommend making certain that you’re running the most recent version of Photoshop. To check/update, choose Help->Updates inside Photoshop CS5 and apply all of the updates listed under Adobe Photoshop CS5.
Adobe has posted a tech note, “Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion,” detailing incompatibilities discovered to date. The only Photoshop-specific issue noted is that droplets don’t work. Please see the document for other product details.
Update: Here’s the Creative Suite FAQ on the subject.
Update 2: I’ve seen mentions of “Licensing has stopped working” errors. These appeared in Snow Leopard as well. Please see this tech doc for details.
Get half off Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium or Premiere Pro CS5.5 when you move from Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer. As the press release notes,
Professional video editors can also utilize all the system resources on modern Macs with Thunderbolt, 64-bit, and multicore CPUs for increased performance. Adobe is continuing to lead in truly native editing solutions with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 as it saves users time and eliminates the need to transcode or rewrap file based and DSLR footage…
Premiere Pro CS5.5 includes Final Cut Pro project import and export so projects can be shared between both applications without conversion or re-rendering. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 also includes many Final Cut Pro and Avid keyboard shortcuts to help users get up and running fast.
Game on.
Related:
In April 2010 Adobe shipped new, 64-bit, Cocoa-based versions of Premiere Pro & After Effects (along with, of course, 64-bit Photoshop). Premiere Pro notably included the new Mercury Engine, offering breakthrough performance by tapping into customers’ graphics hardware (GPUs).
How has the market–especially the Mac market–responded? Here’s what I gleaned from a presentation by Adobe VP Jim Guerard:
If you’re interested in making the switch, check out these videos.
New After Effects PM Steve Forde is candid in writing about how he didn’t like Premiere & ignored it before coming to Adobe. Adobe’s commitment shown in the CS5 rewrite, however, and the results it yielded were part of what drew him to join the company.
“To all those asking me for comment on the launch of [Final Cut Pro X],” Steve writes, “I have none. What right do I have to publicly comment on the hard work any vendor does in creating software and bringing it to market?” I’d simply add that moving a large, powerful application to a completely different foundation is a major challenge. While moving Photoshop from Carbon to Cocoa, we always figured that if anyone could empathize, it was the Final Cut team. Hats off to anyone who scales that mountain, wherever they happen to work.
Printers & production artists, this one’s for you:
The CS5 / CS5.5 Printing Guide (PDF) is an in-depth technical reference guide designed especially for printers and production artists to help them learn the best ways of handling and preparing CS5 and CS5.5 files for print.
Now *this* you don’t see every day: Check out Scott Valentine’s quick use of a 3D preset in Photoshop Extended to create a novel text effect:
Well-known cinematographer Vincent Laforet has some kind words for the new tool in AE CS5.5:
What truly inspired me was the ability to shoot handheld footage at a high resolution, knowing full well that I could later stabilize it with technology such as Adobe CS 5.5′s Warp Stabilizer… Warp Stabilizer is truly AMAZING – and I’m not exaggerating here. This technology has the potential to change the way many of us shoot – allowing us to rely less on complex stabilization devices – and more on smaller less complex camera support platforms. This will allow filmmakers to shoot with a bit more freedom – which is exciting.
Vincent promises to share more details soon. In the meantime, enjoy the work he’s been capturing with the RED Epic 5K camera, bits of which were stabilized in AE:
The three companion apps have been enhanced, and for a limited time the price of Adobe Eazel has been reduced to $2.99. Details:
Please let us know what you think.
The title pretty well says it all: check out this list, especially the first few (new in CS4/5).
Having written a version of a book covering just Photoshop shortcuts, I pride myself on my knowledge here, and even I picked up a few good tips from this list.
Philip Andrews & co. have again created iPad-based training content that not only describes Photoshop techniques, but that actually performs them:
DI Direct ProSharp contains everything you need to know about sharpening your digital images, from the Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen filters to a non-filter-based technique the professionals have been keeping a secret for years.
As usual, you’ll be able to tap the step entry on the iPad and see the technqiue performed instantly in Photoshop – it’s all part of our Read It–Tap It–Do It approach.
What’s the difference between Photoshop CS5 and 5.5? Nothing besides subscription support. Here’s some concise clarification from Jeff Tranberry:
Photoshop CS5 (Version 12.1 – which comes as part of Creative Suite 5.5) and Photoshop CS5 (Version 12.0.4 – a free update for the version of Photoshop which came as a part of Creative Suite 5) are exactly the same in terms of functionality except that 12.1 will support a subscription license.
Both contain the same updates to fix issues, both have the same camera support with Camera Raw 6.x, and both work with the Photoshop Touch Apps.
DI Direct, the publication that can link with Photoshop CS5* and drive it via interactive tutorials, is now available as a free download. In case you missed it previously, here’s a demo:
I find the concept very intriguing, but I’d really like your feedback.
Thanks,
J.
* If you’re using CS5, don’t forget to update to 12.0.4 (via Help->Updates). If you’ve installed CS 5.5, you’re all set already.
This session (noon Pacific on Friday) with illustrator Russell Viers might be up your alley. The point I’ve bolded sounds particularly interesting:
Watercolor on a tablet becomes a Photoshop layer as Russell puts the proverbial chocolate in the peanut butter:
Check out the Eazel product page for more info.
Time is money, and storage is cheap. If you use large Photoshop docs & don’t mind them becoming much bigger, you may be able to save them much faster.
You’ll want to update CS5 to 12.0.4 (via Help->Updates), then grab this plug-in (Mac)/registry key (Win). Photoshop PM Jeff Tranberry writes, “Saving the file can be much faster (20x in some cases), if you have a fast hard disk and enough disk space to hold the larger file size,” and performance expert Lloyd Chambers goes into detail on his site.
If you’re interested in Creative Suite subscriptions (new as of CS 5.5), check out this session Friday at noon Pacific:
Group PM Yashodhan Gokhale will be talking about Adobe’s Creative Suite subscriptions. In this session you’ll be shown how subscriptions give you the latest features and functionality of Creative Suite 5.5 software for an affordable monthly cost. Yashodhan will walk you through the process and give you a better feel for the benefits, when you may need a subscription, and how easy it is to purchase, use, and manage.
Photographer Uwe Steinmueller has posted a set of samples made using AE CS 5.5. They’re not crazy-dramatic, but that may well be the point: the new feature improves even what was already decent footage.
In the accompanying article Uwe write, “This may be a situation where a new tool is really up to its hype and exceeded our expectations. Hard to describe how excited we are.”
Our friend Deke McClelland has posted half a dozen quick videos that cover setting up & using the new Photoshop CS5 touch apps. The videos are available free of charge from Lynda.com.
I’m happy to report that the three recently announced Photoshop companion apps are now available for download:
Please note that to use them together with Photoshop, you’ll need to apply the Photoshop 12.0.4 update. We encourage developers to make their own Photoshop-savvy apps by downloading the Photoshop Touch SDK and optionally ActionScript source code.
I’ve written previously about how the TypeDNA panel lets Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign select fonts by similarity, choose complementary fonts, etc. I’m pleased to see that the $49 tool is now available for Windows (as it was previously Mac-only). As a refresher, here’s a quick demo:
Other developments are in the offing. Founder Darren Glenister is speaking at Google I/O this week, promising to show “some new features that extend Google web fonts direct inside of Adobe CS5.” Check out the TypeDNA site for details about attending in person or online.
If you’re an ActionScripter who’d like to develop apps (tablet or desktop) that drive Photoshop CS5, check out Daniel Koestler’s post, “Want to create Photoshop apps with AIR, Flash, and AS3?” [Via]
If you batch-process images in Photoshop, particularly via the Image Processor command or Russell Brown’s 1-2-3 Process, you’ll want to check out what Russell has been up to. He’s looking for beta testers and writes,
Just like the earlier versions, this script (download, see demo video) will batch process hundreds of images into any file type, or format, that you need.
It’s the ultimate time saver and will eliminate the need for multiple exports from other Adobe applications.
Here are some of the new features:
- Improved interface.
- Support for any number of conversions during a processing run.
- Batch renaming.
- Expanded support for almost all file formats known to man.
Photoshop engineer Tom Ruark & PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes talk about how the new Photoshop Touch SDK came to be & some of what it enables:
You can read more about the project & see some real-world examples of its use on the Photoshop.com blog. You’ll need to grab the latest CS5 update to enable connectivity, and the three iPad apps that rely on it should be available for download soon. (If you’d like we can notify you when they’re ready.)
This update (choose Window->Updates from within Photoshop) enables remote connections between Photoshop CS5 and other apps, including the new Adobe Nav, Eazel, and Color Lava for iPad. According to the release notes,
The 12.0.4 update also fixes Liquify performance, type-related crashes, and other top customer issues. The most significant fixes include the following:
- A number of potential security vulnerabilities have been addressed.
- Liquify save mesh now works as expected.
- An issue with Sharpen crashing has been fixed.
- An issue with Quick Selection crashing has been fixed.
- The Orphea Studio File Info issue has been resolved.