Wow, Adobe has a lot of my money!

dobe builds great creative solutions, and through the years, I’ve purchased, upgraded, and cross-graded a slew of their products. My primary focus has been Photoshop, and I was surprised to find that I had a stack of Photoshop versions dating back fifteen years or so. The Adobe collection in my office includes several versions of Illustrator and PageMaker, an old Photoshop and Illustrator suite that brought Streamline into the mix, and Premier. A recent addition to the menagerie is Lightroom. There’s also an old Macromedia bundle in the mix with FreeHand and its brethren.

The Costly Road To CS3

So when CS3 was announced I decided it was a good time to upgrade the whole shebang, and get Flash into the mix. A glance at the Creative Suite options shows me the cheapest route is to upgrade Photoshop CS2 (yeah just Photoshop) to Production Studio and then upgrade PageMaker to InDesign CS3. Those two upgrades, combined with Lightroom, tallies up to $1600. Ouch.

I’m a software engineer, not a professional graphic designer or photographer or video production guru — and $1600 seems pretty steep. While I understand not bending things just because some guy bought an old Macromedia or Adobe bundle, it seems like there should be some additional credit available for owning recent versions of Illustrator and Premier. And a way to wrap InDesign and Lightroom into a bundle. But I digress.

Looking Forward To CS3

Adobe’s silly upgrade schemes and their frustrating bundling aside, I’m eager to get Photoshop CS3 Extended up and running, not to mention the new Illustrator, Premier, Flash, and After Effects. But that won’t be available until July.

To review, some of the benefits of CS3 are better synergy between apps, including Flash, some performance improvements, 3D enhancements to Illustrator, and new 3D and video features for Photoshop (in the Extended edition). I’m also particularly keen on messing around with the image stacking features of Photoshop Extended.

Get CS2 To Get CS3 (Plus)

Unable to wait for CS3 Production Premium, I upgraded Photoshop CS2 to Production Studio Premium CS2, anticipating the free upgrade to CS3 when it’s available. Of course that means that I upgraded Photoshop CS2 to a bundle with Photoshop CS2, but at least it paves the way to CS3 Extended when my future bundle arrives. And for what it’s worth, the route through CS2 includes the Audition sound application as well as CS3’s Soundbooth.

Oddly enough, I can not even use CS3 in 30-day trial mode. It steadfastly refuses to run in demo mode on my system. Even after freshly installing Windows XP and nothing else. A day on the phone with Adobe Customer Support left us all perplexed.

But my shiny new CS2 bundle will tide me over.

Adobe has made many of their CS3 applications available for download, including Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator, Flash, and others. They are actually the full versions, provided you have a valid serial number. Otherwise, you can choose to run them for 30 days for free (supposedly).

Installation Woes

My system is a Windows XP Professional install with SP2. In fact, I just reinstalled XP last night. At first didn’t reformat, but did a complete XP reinstall.

After a few attempts to install Photoshop CS3 failed because some beta files were on the system, tucked in various crannies, it finally installed after running Adobe’s cleanup script. Mind you, though this was on a system where the beta was once installed, it had an hours-old Windows XP installation. The cleanup script did the trick; it installed and everything was groovy. Or so I thought.

CS3 Trials

We all understand (or should understand) the needs of a software company to ensure that they aren’t being robbed; but it’s my feeling that Adobe has finally gone a bit overboard.

After finally getting Photoshop CS3 installed, I was eager to start it up. It asks whether you wish to enter your serial number or to run for 30 days for free. Great. Except that selecting the free option ends up with an error saying it’s unable to load the free trial, presumably because there are problems validating my eligibility.

After a several calls to Adobe technical support, Photoshop still refused to run. We ran the Adobe CS3 Clean script at the first two levels (though it claims to have two levels of cleaning, there are at least four levels). We uninstalled, reinstalled, ran as me, ran as “administrator.” Nothing worked.

Harsher Measures

Sigh. At this point I rebooted to the Windows XP install disc, deleted and recreated the C: partition, formatted C:, then re-reinstalled XP. Now, I ran the clean script at level four several times. Then reinstalled Photoshop. Still can’t get it to accept the 30 day trial option.

Adobe Technical Support

At this point I’d spoken with a few Adobe technical support folks and, while one lady early on was very helpful and patient, I’d gotten nowhere. Yet another call got me to someone else and we struggled for a while to understand each other’s English, but after some time determined that indeed Photoshop CS3 was not accepting the 30 trial option and that I had at one point installed a beta version. Sigh.

Scratching My Head

At some point it dawned on me to try Illustrator CS3 in trial mode to determine if it was specific to Photoshop or a more general problem with my system as a whole, or perhaps to the network. “Problem with Trial” again. So it wasn’t Photoshop or the fact that I had once installed a beta.

Back to Adobe Technical Support. Reached a guy who seemed on the ball, and walked him through what I’d done. After a short hold time he came back and told me I had done all the troubleshooting possible, taken the most severe of remedies in repaving my system and running the Adobe Clean script several times at top secret defcon level four, so it simply would not work. But of course I was welcome to purchase the product and enter a serial number. And I was even welcome to return it if it didn’t work. Thanks.

Okay, so maybe it’s my router? Running the ether direct from the cable modem into the PC might help. Or not. “Problem with Trial.”

A Wasted Day

So I wasted nearly ten hours determining that I can’t play with CS3 unless I dole out the big bucks. Some free 30 day trial. Wow. Bang up job Adobe. You’re stopping pirates (maybe), but you’re also stopping some of your loyal paying customers.

Now I have to get back to reinstalling my system. Sigh.

As you’re probably aware, there are two editions of Adobe Photoshop CS3, regular and Extended. What’s so great about Extended? Why would you want to shell out more cash for Extended? The upgrade for Photoshop CS3 Extended is $150 more than the upgrade for Photoshop CS3, while the full package price differentials are $350.

Over at John Nack’s excellent blog, he’s posted on what the “Extended” in Photoshop CS3 Extended buys you. The basic gist is that it’s targeted to film, video, scientific, and engineering disciplines and anything else that isn’t photography or basic graphics folks.

The official Adobe line is that “Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended delivers everything in Photoshop CS3 and more. Render and incorporate 3D images into your 2D composites. Stop time with easy editing of motion graphics on video layers. And probe your images with measurement, analysis, and visualization tools.” The go on to list the target markets:

• Film, video, and multimedia professionals
• Graphic and web designers using 3D and motion
• Manufacturing professionals
• Medical professionals
• Architects and engineers (AEC professionals)
• Scientific researchers

But back to Nack’s article. He lists some further details, including opening/placing video and 3D files, painting on 3D textures, enhanced 32 bit / HDR support, MATLAB integration, extended measurement and counting tools, medical imaging file support, and image stack analysis filters.

An earlier Nack post on the Photoshop CS3 announcement has some additional info.

Image Stacking

Martin Evening of PhotoshopNews.com has an intriguing tutorial covering the new image stack filters. They show a sequence of misaligned shots of a fountain containing a variety of tourists walking by. PS CS3 Extended aligns then stacks the images, removing aberrations such as the tourists and leveling the exposures. Then they go on create a crisp low-noise image from five nearly identical shots.

Not for Photographers?

Adobe claims the differentiating line between the Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended feature sets is, essentially, where photographers lose interest. At least with the image stacking capability of the Extended version, that’s a tough sell. The Extended upgrade is $150 more — while the full package is $350 more — than the standard Photoshop CS3 edition.

Adobe has released a Photoshop CS3 Beta (and Bridge CS3) for customers with a valid Photoshop CS2 serial number. It is available for Windows and Mac, including Intel-based Macs. New features in this beta of Photoshop CS3 include (from the release notes):

• Non-destructive Smart Filters
  Smart Filters are Photoshop filters that are applied non-destructively, and that remain live and re-editable. To apply a Smart Filter, select one or more layers and choose Filter->Convert for Smart Filters. The selected layer(s) will be converted to a Smart Object, to which you can apply filters non-destructively. Smart Filters appear as parameters under the layer to which they have been applied. Edit the Smart Filter mask to adjust the filter’s effects on different areas of the image. Note that any filter is treated as a Smart Filter when you apply it to a Smart Object.
• Quick Selection Tool
  The new Quick Selection Tool creates selections by painting the general area of interest. Photoshop CS3 analyzes the image to complete the selection automatically. To remove pixels from a selection, hold the Opt (Mac)/Alt (Win) key and paint. You’ll find the Quick Selection tool in the same slot as the Magic Wand tool in the Tools palette.
• Refine Edge
  The new Refine Edge feature offers a simple, flexible way to modify the edge of any selection. Available via the Options bar or via the Select menu, the Refine Edge dialog lets you smooth, feather, contract or expand the current selection by using simple slider controls. Experiment with the Radius slider to select irregular or fuzzy edges.
• Automatic layer alignment and blending
  Using automatic layer alignment and blending, easily combine the best parts of multiple images of the same scene into one “best” image. Simply place multiple, related images on separate layers in one document, and let Photoshop CS3 analyze the contents, moving and rotating the layers so they overlap as precisely as possible. Then use the masking tools to reveal the areas you need from different layers to finalize the elements of the composite image. Automatic layer blending seamlessly blends the color and shading into the final image. The “Auto-Align Layers” and “Auto-Blend Layers” commands are both found in the Edit menu. Note that you must have multiple layers selected simultaneously in the Layers palette before you can apply these commands.
• Vanishing Point with multiple, adjustable angle perspective planes
  One of the most powerful new features of Photoshop CS2 is now even more flexible. Vanishing Point adjusts brush strokes, healing and cloning as you paint over its perspective planes. In Photoshop CS3, you are no longer restricted to adding planes at 90-degree angles. You can now quickly and easily create multiple planes in any image, connected at any angle. In addition, artwork (for example, a product label pasted from the clipboard) can be wrapped around multiple planes simultaneously. To adjust angles of planes, use the Alt/Option key when dragging on a side point of a plane, or enter a specific angle in the Angle field in the dialog.
• Black and White conversion
  Advanced black-and-white conversion is now simpler and faster. With the new Black and White adjustment, one button analyzes the image and offers conversion settings. Fine-tune your image with simple sliders that control the conversion of each color. Click and drag any portion of any image to adjust the corresponding tonal range (for example, click and drag on a red car to lighten or darken all red tones). The improved Channel Mixer adjustment includes new black-and-white presets, the ability to save your own settings as presets for reuse later, and the new Total indicator that keeps you informed on the total percentage contribution from all three color channels.
• Enhanced Adobe Camera Raw
  Camera Raw 4.0 now features Fill Light, Recovery, and Vibrance controls; a parametric tone curve; sophisticated black & white and split toning controls; and more.

New Features in Bridge CS3

• Using Bridge CS3 with Bridge 1.0
  Bridge 1.0 and Bridge CS3 can both be installed on the same computer. When Bridge CS3 is launched for the first time, the preferences from Bridge 1.0 are automatically imported. Subsequently, changes to the preferences settings of Bridge CS3 and Bridge 1.0 do not affect each other. Exported thumbnail caches from Bridge 1.0 are used by Bridge CS3 when present. Startup Scripts installed for Bridge 1.0 must be moved manually to the Bridge CS3 Startup Scripts directory. Bridge 1.0 cannot use scripts installed for Bridge CS3. The location for custom startup scripts for Bridge CS3 is:
  o Win: %CommonProgramFiles%\Adobe\Startup Scripts CS3\
  o Mac: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Startup Scripts CS3/
• Faster Thumbnails
  This release offers improved performance and more control over the display of thumbnails. For some file formats such as camera raw and Photoshop, it is possible to control the quality of the thumbnail displayed: Quick Thumbnails use the thumbnail embedded in the file if present, while High Quality thumbnails are thumbnails rendered with image settings applied to them. The default behavior can be selected in the Preferences > Thumbnail section. In addition, the commands Edit > Generate High Quality Thumbnail and Edit > Generate Quick Thumbnail can be used to control the setting of selected items. In the Preferences > Advanced section, Color Management can be turned on or off. When Color Management is on, thumbnails may be displayed more accurately but more slowly. Note that there is more space available to display the filename below the thumbnails and the name may be displayed on two lines if necessary.
• Enhanced Preview Panel
  The Preview panel can display multiple files for side-by-side comparison. Simply select up to nine files in the Content pane and they will be displayed side by side in the Preview panel. Click on the image in the Preview Panel to bring the Loupe tool. Change the magnification of the Loupe by pressing the +/- keys or by using the scrollwheel on your mouse. Files can be displayed up at up to 8x the original fill size (i.e. full size previews). Multiple loupes can be displayed by pressing the Command (Mac)/Control (Win) key while clicking on an image in the Preview panel. Loupes can be dragged in lockstep by pressing the Command (Mac)/Control (Win) while dragging.
• Improved Slideshow
  For a full size view of your images, select View > Slideshow. You can customize the settings of the Slideshow by selection View > Slideshow Options. While in Slideshow mode, to magnify an image up to 800% of actual size click on the image. Click again to revert back. The magnification level can be controlled using the +/- keys or using the scrollwheel.
• Stacks
  Create stacks to group a set of related documents together. Stacks are useful for keeping multiple photos of the same subject in one place, and they reduce clutter in the Content Panel. Stacks are also useful for collecting image sequences into a group that can be ‘scrubbed’ in the Content Panel. To create a new stack, select multiple items and select Edit > Stacks > Group as Stack. You can also use drag and drop to add or remove items from a stack. To collapse or expand a stack, click on the stack indicator (the number at the top left of the stack). When collapsed, use the scrubber (displayed next to the stack indicator) to quickly view the content of the stack without expanding it.
• New Filter Panel
  To quickly filter files displayed in the current folder, use the Filter panel. The Filter panel displays an overview of the files in the current directory. Clicking on an entry in the filter panel will change the Content panel to only display items that match this entry. Several entries can be selected to display the relevant items. The Filter panel allows instant searching of items with a single click and gives you the flexibility and power of a database without having to import your files first. The filter gets reset when you navigate to a new directory. To keep the filter applied instead, click on the pushpin icon in the Filter Panel. To clear the filter, click the Reset icon at the bottom of the Filter panel.
• Metadata
  To indicate that you have reviewed a file and decided to reject it, select Label > Reject. This new rating, in addition to the 1 to 5 stars rating of Bridge 1.0, makes it easy to note that a file has been reviewed but without having to move files to the trash. The display of rejected files can be toggled using the View > Show Reject Files command. The Metadata panel includes a convenient metadata placard that resembles the display at the back of a camera. The metadata placard displays at a glance in a compact format all the essential information about an image. The Keywords property in the Metadata Panel can now be edited directly. To create a metadata template, select the Tools > Create Metadata Template. Select which properties should be modified by selecting the appropriate checkbox. Properties that are selected but left blank will be cleared when the template is applied. After saving the template, use the Tools > Append Metadata or Tools > Replace Metadata to apply the template. This template can also be applied from the File Info dialog.
• Organizing Files
  Several operations such as move, copy, duplicates can be undone. To undo, select Edit > Undo. To quickly move some items to a new folder, select File > Copy to or File > Move to. These commands are also available in the contextual menu. Moving and copying items is faster. A progress dialog, with a Stop option, is also available. Also, sidecar files are automatically copied with their master file. To rename a set of files, select Tools > Batch Rename. This command will rename the files in the current folder according to a pattern you specify. Note that RAW+JPG files are renamed correctly, that is, they are kept together.
• Improved Searching
  Search performance has been improved. When a search is in progress it can be canceled by clicking the Cancel button at the top of the Content panel. By default, only items that have been previously indexed are searched. If you do not see the items you expect, select the Include Non-Indexed Files checkbox in the Find dialog. More properties can be searched on, including Document Type. To save a search query as a collection (live search), use the Save As Collection in the Find dialog. Note that in this build relative collections are not supported yet. Note that collections files saved with Bridge 1.0 are not supported by Bridge CS3.
• Faster Cache
  The cache used by Bridge CS3 has been significantly improved for better performance. The cache takes advantage of multi-code and multi-processor hardware when available. As a result, the Bridge CPU usage may sometimes be displayed as being over 100%: this is a not a bug and simply indicates that Bridge is using more than 1 CPU. To purge the central cache, go to Preferences > Advanced and press the Purge Cache button. Note that exported caches are not affected by this operation. To create the cache for a set of folders without navigating to them, select Tools > Build Cache for Subfolders. A dialog is displayed providing the option to also export the cache for those folders. This option is useful before burning a set of folders to a read-only media (the exported caches enable faster browsing when reading the read-only media later on). The caches exported by Bridge CS3 used a new, more efficient, format. Those new caches are saved as invisible files. Note that Bridge CS3 will read Bridge 1.0 cache files if present. To automatically export caches when visiting directory, select the Preferences > Advanced > Automatically Export Caches to Folders When Possible option. This replaces the Distributed Caches option from Bridge 1.0.
• Adobe Photo Downloader (APD)
  Adobe Photo Downloader is a component of Bridge CS3 to copy files from a camera or a card reader. To use APD, simply connect a camera to your computer or insert a card in a connected card reader, then select File > Get Photos from Camera…
• Customizing Bridge
  You can match the visual appearance of Bridge to your own environment by customizing the background of the preview and control panel, as well as the overall brightness of the UI in the Preferences > General dialog. For greater flexibility, Bridge CS3 includes three columns of panels. Bridge 1.0 had a single column on the left hand side. You can drag and drop panels to the column of your choice. A blue insertion bar is displayed to indicate where the panel will be inserted when you drop it. To quickly toggle the left and right panels, press the Tab key. The icons at the bottom right of the window provides quick access to predefined Workspaces. Click on those buttons to switch to the panel indicated by the tooltip. Press and hold those buttons to change the Workspace they are associated to. You can create your own workspace and associate it with those buttons.

In old news (well, a couple months old), Adobe Lightroom Beta 4.1 is available for download in both Mac and Windows flavors. Check the release notes for what’s new.

I have found Lightroom to be a bit slow, particularly when importing, but nevertheless intriguing. It clearly feels like a photographer’s tool, rather than an image editor’s tool, as is the case with Photoshop. Both programs will be invaluable, though I hope Adobe makes Lightroom and Photoshop an affordable combination.

Sony has released the 10.2 megapixel A100 DLSR body-only configuration ($899 at Amazon) and in a kit with their 18-70mm lens ($999 at Amazon). It has built-in image stabilization Sony is calling Super SteadyShot, which gains you about two stops, and it performs nicely between ISO 100 and 400. Sony has dubbed Minolta’s A-Type bayonet mount the Alpha Mount. Eye Start AF fires up the autofocus mechanism when it detects your eye near the eyepiece to speed focusing.

Reviews:

DP Review
DC Resource
A Digital Eye
Imaging Resource
Ken Rockwell

Seen here and here.

What comments would famous photographers get if they posted their work online? The Online Photographer has a good guess.

LeAnn Prescott at HitWise, a company that analyzes internet usage behavior, compares traffic to online photo sharing sites, including flickr, Kodak gallery, Snapfish, Photobucket, Slide, and others. Top of the pile is Photobucket, followed by Yahoo! Photos. She is surprised that flickr, with all the online buzz about it, comes in merely sixth.

In the SF tech bubble that I live in, most of the talk about photo sites has been centered on Flickr. In fact, you could get the impression from most people I meet that Flickr is the ONLY site at which you can share and store photos. Examination of the category however, shows that Flickr is #6 among the top 10 photo sharing sites, with a market share of 5.95%. Industry standbys like Yahoo! Photos, Webshots Community, and Kodak Gallery currently rank higher than Flickr.

Forget Lensbaby, a group at flickr called Through the Viewfinder is all about using one camera to shoot through the viewfinder of another camera. Typically this means using an SLR to shoot through the viewfinder of a TLR camera.

Check it out, and check out Mr. E’s work. Good stuff.

flickr has been a wildly successful photo sharing and community website, but has suffered from slow performance, small workspaces, and navigational issues that hamper its usefulness. However, they are releasing some much-needed changes this week, including navigational and performance improvements, along with organizational tweaks to better relect how people like to use flickr. Kudos to the flickr team.