Ah–here’s a great example of a non-traditional use of Photoshop that I’ve been wanting to share for a while. Researchers at USC’s West Semitic Research Project have been using Photoshop to aid in analyzing the Dead Sea Scrolls and other historic texts. Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, director of the WSRP, writes, “Adobe Photoshop CS2 is the single most important enabler in the WSRP’s work. It is pivotal to our ability to unlock the history of the ancient past.” We’ve put together a 4-page article (PDF) that talks more about the work:

Frequently, Photoshop CS2 is used to combine parchment or papyrus fragments of texts that are often physically separated in different museums and libraries in what amounts to digital jigsaw puzzles. Some writing is so tiny that researchers use a fiber-optic “light brush” to direct a very narrow beam of light onto a small area. In such cases, Photoshop CS2 allows scholars to combine images to build composites out of the smaller images. Some writing cannot be seen at all because the background is too dark or the ink itself is too faded. In this case, researchers use infrared and ultraviolet imaging to reclaim the ink traces. Because infrared and ultraviolet images sometimes hide as well as reveal data, scholars use Photoshop CS2 to combine various images in order to have all the visual information available for viewing.

Related:

• The WSRP maintains online guides for scholars using Photoshop in their research.
• John Dowdell mentions Adobe’s growing focus on imaging science and outreach to scientists–for example, the image authentication work on which Adobe’s been collaborating with Dr. Hani Farid & his team.
• The Photoshop product pages cover ways in which the application’s capabilities have grown for these users in the most recent releases.
  

Ah–here’s a great example of a non-traditional use of Photoshop that I’ve been wanting to share for a while. Researchers at USC’s West Semitic Research Project have been using Photoshop to aid in analyzing the Dead Sea Scrolls and other historic texts. Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, director of the WSRP, writes, “Adobe Photoshop CS2 is the single most important enabler in the WSRP’s work. It is pivotal to our ability to unlock the history of the ancient past.” We’ve put together a 4-page article (PDF) that talks more about the work:

Frequently, Photoshop CS2 is used to combine parchment or papyrus fragments of texts that are often physically separated in different museums and libraries in what amounts to digital jigsaw puzzles. Some writing is so tiny that researchers use a fiber-optic “light brush” to direct a very narrow beam of light onto a small area. In such cases, Photoshop CS2 allows scholars to combine images to build composites out of the smaller images. Some writing cannot be seen at all because the background is too dark or the ink itself is too faded. In this case, researchers use infrared and ultraviolet imaging to reclaim the ink traces. Because infrared and ultraviolet images sometimes hide as well as reveal data, scholars use Photoshop CS2 to combine various images in order to have all the visual information available for viewing.

Related:

• The WSRP maintains online guides for scholars using Photoshop in their research.
• John Dowdell mentions Adobe’s growing focus on imaging science and outreach to scientists–for example, the image authentication work on which Adobe’s been collaborating with Dr. Hani Farid & his team.
• The Photoshop product pages cover ways in which the application’s capabilities have grown for these users in the most recent releases.
  

Now that we’ve squashed some bugs in Photoshop CS2^*, we can look at an instance of the tools being used in conjunction with actual insects. Microscopy UK talks about photographing slide mounts using a combination of digital SLRs, microscope, and slide scanner. The Photoshop content here is limited, so I’m passing it along as much for the great high-res imagery as anything. [Tangentially related: Berkeley scientists have been inspired by insect vision to create new camera lens designs.]
^* Speaking of Photoshop and bugs (the other, bad kind), there’s a Photoshop Top Issues RSS feed as well as a dedicated product support page. If you see something going haywire, please let us know (and send us your feature ideas, too). We probably won’t respond to each report directly, but we do read them all, and we use the info to guide product planning. Thanks.

Now that we’ve squashed some bugs in Photoshop CS2^*, we can look at an instance of the tools being used in conjunction with actual insects. Microscopy UK talks about photographing slide mounts using a combination of digital SLRs, microscope, and slide scanner. The Photoshop content here is limited, so I’m passing it along as much for the great high-res imagery as anything. [Tangentially related: Berkeley scientists have been inspired by insect vision to create new camera lens designs.]
^* Speaking of Photoshop and bugs (the other, bad kind), there’s a Photoshop Top Issues RSS feed as well as a dedicated product support page. If you see something going haywire, please let us know (and send us your feature ideas, too). We probably won’t respond to each report directly, but we do read them all, and we use the info to guide product planning. Thanks.

Keeping the science theme going, I’ve gathered some examples of Photoshop’s use in scientific illustration:

• Olduvai George is home to the natual history illustrations and paintings of Carl Buell. Check out how he builds a mammoth layer by layer. [Via]
• Greg Martin’s site features outstanding space renderings & photography in a slick Flash gallery.
• The space art of 17-year-old Alyn Hunter is featured on deviantART, along with that of other space artists.
• Gary Tonge collects his photo-realistic sci-fi renderings in Visions Afar. [via]
• Joana Garrido uses 3D software plus Photoshop to render ancient creatures.
• Science blog Easternblot.net includes a wealth of additional links, including ones to online marketplace Science-Art.com and illustration degree programs like the one at UC Santa Cruz. And for yet more scientific illustration links, see my previous entry.

By the way, on the subject of scientific illustration, I recently discovered Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, an amazing collection of 18th-century illustrations of animals, plants and insects. And if that’s up your alley, see also Dream Anatomy, a collection of antique anatomical renderings drawn from the National Library of Medicine. [Via] Or for a more modern spin, see the adorable (?) squirting stomachs of I Heart Guts [Via].
[PS–6 minutes after I posted this, a copy of Cabinet of Natural Curiosities showed up at my door. Score!]

News of astronauts firing an empty space suit into orbit (seems like such a dude thing to do, doesn’t it? “Heh heh–when it hits the atmosphere it’ll blow up real good, heh heh”) got me thinking about Photoshop’s role in space imaging.
Data captured by the Hubble Space Telescope & other high-powered telescopes are stored in the FITS format, as packets that need to be re-assembled for use on computers. To make the public-domain data widely available (beyond the 900 or so pro astronomers in the world), a team from the European Southern Observatory, ESA, and NASA created the FITS Liberator plug-in for Photoshop. NASA’s Hubble Source features an article on creating your own color Hubble images using the tools together. As of version 1.6.05 FITS Liberator had some 50,000 users, and version 2.0 (released in August) takes advantage of new 32-bit HDR imaging support in Photoshop CS2.
Check out the image gallery, and drop us a line if you try out FITS Liberator with Photoshop. We’d love to hear your story & see your images.
[More SuitSat links here and here]

News of astronauts firing an empty space suit into orbit (seems like such a dude thing to do, doesn’t it? “Heh heh–when it hits the atmosphere it’ll blow up real good, heh heh”) got me thinking about Photoshop’s role in space imaging.
Data captured by the Hubble Space Telescope & other high-powered telescopes are stored in the FITS format, as packets that need to be re-assembled for use on computers. To make the public-domain data widely available (beyond the 900 or so pro astronomers in the world), a team from the European Southern Observatory, ESA, and NASA created the FITS Liberator plug-in for Photoshop. NASA’s Hubble Source features an article on creating your own color Hubble images using the tools together. As of version 1.6.05 FITS Liberator had some 50,000 users, and version 2.0 (released in August) takes advantage of new 32-bit HDR imaging support in Photoshop CS2.
Check out the image gallery, and drop us a line if you try out FITS Liberator with Photoshop. We’d love to hear your story & see your images.
[More SuitSat links here and here]

The topic of verifying image authenticity, covered well in the NY Times article It May Look Authentic; Here’s How To Tell It Isn’t, continues to draw considerable attention. Photoshop of course gets pressed into duty on the falsification side, so Adobe staff have been fielding a number of press inquiries on this subject.
What may be less obvious is Adobe’s interest in the other side of the coin: image analysis & authentication. Last summer Dr. Hany Farid (mentioned in the Times article) spent his sabbatical from Dartmouth at Adobe, collaborating with the Advanced Technology Group on tools & techniques for detecting image manipulation. Photoshop is heavily used by a wide range of government & scientific bodies, aiding in everything from detecting forged checks (you’d be amazed what a few adjustment layers can reveal) to cleaning up satellite imagery to analyzing the Dead Sea Scrolls (more info on that soon). At the request of image retouchers who need to document their work, we added the Edit History Log, making it possible to store a textual log of edits done to an image (essential for reproducibility). Combined with the ability to embed raw files as Smart Objects, this feature makes it possible for a Photoshop document to contain essentially the negative, the print, and a printable record of edits performed.
For more on Dr. Farid’s research & tools, see his own site as well as this National Geographic article on detecting forged artwork. For more on Photoshop in scientific imaging, Adobe.com now details how scientific features have grown over the last few releases, alongside white papers on best practices.

The topic of verifying image authenticity, covered well in the NY Times article It May Look Authentic; Here’s How To Tell It Isn’t, continues to draw considerable attention. Photoshop of course gets pressed into duty on the falsification side, so Adobe staff have been fielding a number of press inquiries on this subject.
What may be less obvious is Adobe’s interest in the other side of the coin: image analysis & authentication. Last summer Dr. Hany Farid (mentioned in the Times article) spent his sabbatical from Dartmouth at Adobe, collaborating with the Advanced Technology Group on tools & techniques for detecting image manipulation. Photoshop is heavily used by a wide range of government & scientific bodies, aiding in everything from detecting forged checks (you’d be amazed what a few adjustment layers can reveal) to cleaning up satellite imagery to analyzing the Dead Sea Scrolls (more info on that soon). At the request of image retouchers who need to document their work, we added the Edit History Log, making it possible to store a textual log of edits done to an image (essential for reproducibility). Combined with the ability to embed raw files as Smart Objects, this feature makes it possible for a Photoshop document to contain essentially the negative, the print, and a printable record of edits performed.
For more on Dr. Farid’s research & tools, see his own site as well as this National Geographic article on detecting forged artwork. For more on Photoshop in scientific imaging, Adobe.com now details how scientific features have grown over the last few releases, alongside white papers on best practices.

No, they don’t wear fezzes and matching shirts, but resident brainiacs Todor Georgiev and Jeff Chien have been behind some of the more eye-popping features in the last few releases of Photoshop, including the Healing Brush, Patch Tool, Match Color, Smart Sharpen, Reduce Noise, Perspective Crop, and Spot Healing Brush.
I mention this because Todor will be speaking at the next Silicon Valley ACM SIGGRAPH event, taking place on Thursday the 17th in Cupertino. For background, here’s a PDF on the kind of thing Todor will be discussing. My fellow product manager Ashley Manning will kick things off with a demo, and Jeff should be on hand as well. (Oh, and there will be schwag.)

No, they don’t wear fezzes and matching shirts, but resident brainiacs Todor Georgiev and Jeff Chien have been behind some of the more eye-popping features in the last few releases of Photoshop, including the Healing Brush, Patch Tool, Match Color, Smart Sharpen, Reduce Noise, Perspective Crop, and Spot Healing Brush.
I mention this because Todor will be speaking at the next Silicon Valley ACM SIGGRAPH event, taking place on Thursday the 17th in Cupertino. For background, here’s a PDF on the kind of thing Todor will be discussing. My fellow product manager Ashley Manning will kick things off with a demo, and Jeff should be on hand as well. (Oh, and there will be schwag.)

Psst–hey buddy, seen any good kite-borne photos of Estonian peat bogs lately? You would if you checked out the winners in Science Magazine and the National Science Foundation’s Visualization Challenge [link via PhotoshopNews]. But if your tastes run more towards the secret life of the pea weevil (really!), check out the Visions of Science Photographic Awards. Winners include revealing images that were colored in Photoshop.
Photoshop wasn’t designed for scientific imaging per se, but we’re learning quite a bit about how it gets used in a broad range of applications. Last year I got to visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The team preparing the next shuttle flight requested better measurement tools that could aid in the analysis of the shuttle’s heat-resistant tiles. (They also mentioned a rumor that a copy of Photoshop has even found its way onto the International Space Station–evidently several astronauts are avid photographers–but I’ve never been quite able to confirm that.)
We’re working to build up info and resources on Photoshop in the sciences, as well as its uses in engineering and other disciplines. If you’re using Photoshop in these fields, and/or if you have ideas on how we should develop the app to suit your needs, please let us know. Post a comment, or drop us a line.
Thanks,
J.
PS–Apple’s scientific computing pages mention numerous uses of Photoshop, including the Visible Human Project.
PPS–Good luck to this group of 7th & 8th graders, who want to send film into orbit and then analyze the results in Photoshop.