Photoshop Tips

Wacom has just released the 6×11 version of the intous 3. This is mainly for use with wide screen monitors or dual monitors. A Wacom tablet (graphire 3 or intous 3) is great for any photoshop designer or artist.

PRESS RELEASE

New Intuos3 6×11 is Designed for Use with Widescreen Displays and Dual Monitors

Wacom Technology Corporation’s new Intuos3 6×11 pen tablet is specifically designed for photographers, designers and artists who are using multiple monitors or a widescreen display like the 23” Apple Cinema HD display. The Intuos3 6×11 features an active area with an aspect ratio (height-towidth) that is a great match to the screen aspect ratio of either a widescreen display or two standard displays used together. This provides optimal pen control and efficient use of the entire tablet.
“With as much as 50% of the creative community soon using either widescreens or dual monitors, we’re confident that the Intuos3 6×11 is going to be very popular,” said Michael Marcum, Wacom’s Director of Product Management. “The Intuos3 6×11 is really a demonstration of the importance we place on identifying emerging customer needs and providing products in a timely way to meet those needs.”

Creative Controls for the Seriously Creative
The Intuos3 6×11 comes with all the features that have made the Intuos3 line of pen tablets the de facto standard for the serious photographer, designer and artist. Intuos3 turns on the full power of Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Painter™ and over 100 other leading software applications with its intuitive controls. Programmable ExpressKeys™ and Touch Strips are within easy reach for modifier keys, keyboard shortcuts, scrolling, zooming, controlling brush size and more. The comfortable cordless, battery-free Grip Pen offers 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity for superior creative input and, when used alternately with the ergonomic five-button Intuos3 mouse, reduces repetitive motion. The Intuos3 6×11 has a suggested retail price of $389.95.

Perfect Companion for the Wacom Cintiq 21UX
The Cintiq 21UX interactive pen display (priced at $2499) combines the advantages of an LCD monitor with the control, comfort, and productivity of Wacom’s most sophisticated patented cordless, battery-free tablet technology. Users report that working with the pen directly on the screen yields significant productivity gains. Using the new Intuos3 6×11 with the Cintiq 21UX lets users navigate seamlessly across multiple monitors (including the Cintiq) with a single pen.

Valuable Software Included
All Intuos3 pen tablets include Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 for digital photo editing, Corel Painter Essentials 2 for creating natural media art, nik Color Efex Pro™ 2 IE for selectively applying photographic enhancements, and Wacom Brushes 2 for even more brush choices in recent versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

I have always used the Adobe Color Management control panel to calibrate my monitors. Apparently, I’m going to have to try something else tonight when I get home.

Microsoft has released a color management program to allow their users to do what Photoshoppers have been doing since man first started walking upright.

I have not tried it so I don’t know if this will cause your computer screens to blow up or not (It probably won’t.. but then again this is by Microsoft). You can download it by visiting this link (click here).

From the site:

Professional-level photographers and designers know that getting consistent, accurate color from file to screen to print and beyond is a requirement for great results.

However, until now Windows has lacked a central Control Panel interface for managing ICC color profiles and ICM 2.0 color settings across the system. The new Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP addresses this by adding a Color tool to the Windows Control Panel, making it easier for you to manage Windows color settings.

yay!

Finally, an indepth preview of the new Aperture software by Apple. However, this is not an actual review because the guys who wrote it haven’t actually tried the program out… they’ve just asked the Apple guys a whole lot of questions. All the data they collected has been gathered up, refined and finally presented to us.

Basically, the article tells us:

• Aperture doesn’t mess with the original images so your originals are always safe and can never ever be over written (unless you really really want to I assume)
• A section called the Library is where you will gather all your photographs. The library will worry about all the photo organizing and will not trouble you with extra stuff. Theoretically the library can hold an infinite number of images but you know thats not true since you’ll be capped by your computers hardware
• You can partition your Library into Projects which can be exported or imported back in
• It is meant to be used by only one photographer. You can’t have profiles for multiple photographers.
• It creates automatic backups in to a place called the Vault
• It is mainly for use with RAWs but also supports PSDs, JPEGs, TIFFs etc.
• Uses its own algorithms to convert RAW images (to increase the speed) instead of relying on software development kits (SDKs) from Canon, Nikon etc. This might be bad because this may decrease image quality but Apple assures us that this is not the case and that the RAW conversions are optimized for most popular cameras
• Works with Automator (which can be applescripted) to do lots of advance batch stuff.
• The colours that flow through Aperture’s colour managed printing pipeline to the printer driver are impacted by four things, beyond the colours in the picture itself: the profile selected, the rendering intent, black point compensation and gamma. This is just how Photoshop handles printing

Basically, it is mainly competing with Capture One PRO and its wins in some areas and loses in others.

How will this affect us Photoshoppers? In my opinion, we have nothing to lose. Photoshop has nothing to worry about because all Aperture is doing is provide an easy to use program for computer illiterate photographers who get lost in programs which have more than 10 buttons (no offense to anyone).

What Photoshop users should expect, however, are improvements in Photoshop. Adobe will be watching closely and if they like what Aperture is doing as far as workflow management and ease of use goes then they will implement it into Photoshop and improve on it. This is a good time to be a Photoshopper

Read the complete preview by clicking here.

GazetteTime has a story about some dude making non-traditional pumpkins.

I found this slightly amusing:

He used Photoshop technology to turn a photograph of his daughter into an elaborate pattern of lights and darks which would help him decide where to cut and which parts to leave whole.

They make it sound pretty complex. Fortunately we posted a tutorial on how to do that just a few weeks ago. If you have not seen it already then click here to check it out

More Tutorials coming soon

Adobe has released two new support documents on the following issues:

Brush stops working and Photoshop freezes when you paint (Photoshop CS2 and CS)

Application updates are unavailable with the Adobe updater (Adobe Creative Suite 2)

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