PHOTOSHOP CS . . . . buy here.

[RacerX]

Check out this link for anyone who wants to buy the latest ver. of PhotoShop CS.
goto: http://www.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catPhotoshop

I'm still waiting to hear from others if it's going to be worth the $$$. :D

Rick

[mpeman]

In a nutshell....yes!

[Swampy]

I'll be making the switch. Should have my copy next week. Glad work pays for it. hehe

[stevebri]

Got mine....love it.....

Haven't done a back to back RAW test 'straight out of the box' yet, will try very soon, but initial settings and colours do look spot on.

I'm going to shoot in New York for a week or so so hopefully I'll find a free, or not so free seminar or something to pop into.

Steve

[Swampy]

Got mine. I LOVE the RAW converter over the Fuji. Only been using it for about 2 hours now. Had to re-touch up a few pics for someone here at work, so didn't really notice any differences yet. But I did snap a raw off in the office real quick and played with opening it and it was pretty cool.

[mpeman]

I am finding that the RAW converter in CS offers tons more control over the final image than EX. It has made a heap of difference in my workflow!

[coughlin47]

Oh my aching wallet! Still waiting for the S2 .... new flash of course.....normal lens...midrange zoom....considering a wide angle - and all of this before I've taken one shot with the S2 (oh yeah....a 1gb card...in addition to all of the other 'stuff' I've purchased since I went digital) I was considering EX for any Raw I may shoot ... or possibly Capture One by PhaseOne .. however, it looks like PS CS may be the way to go....oh well, what's another few hundred on top of everything else. Guess I may have to order the upgrade. (Back to reading the Hogan S2 guide - not quite the same as holding an S2, but I should know most of the controls by the time it gets here!)
Regards,
Bill

[Swampy]

Here's a screenshot of the RAW converter in CS...
For Size, you can go to 5120x3426 and even 6144x4111 above our normal 4256 size. This also apears to have more advanced functions if needed too, which I'll post next. They will only be the tab sections though, but they are located on the right side when you click on Advanced.

[Swampy]

Here's the Detail's adjustment pane.

[Swampy]

And the Lens adjustment tab...

[Swampy]

And the Calibrate tab. Excuse the picture in the converter. It was a last ditch attempt to try and capture something that looked pretty cool out there, but never did come out right. That other cruise ship was lighting up the low clouds above and around it and. Well. It really looked cool. But, I was on a moving ship, it was a moving ship. Not much I could do for a long exposure. Quickest RAW file I could find to do this.

[Swampy]

And to give you a quick idea on the power of the converter. That NASTY picture that I thought I couldn't do anything with when using the Fuju converter.... All I can say is WOW. Here's the processed pic. Only processed in the RAW converter in CS, cropped a little bit and USMed once at 49%, .7, 0. It's usable as a great snapshot for those that were there!

I just fixed the tones on this one and brought out the "clouds" above the ship a little.

[Swampy]

And here's the original, processed using the "camera settings". I could never get the redish noise out using the Fuji converter, let along ALL of the noise out. I never looked back to this shot after opening it once. Looking at the image above, I would tone the greens down a little, but it is pretty close to what I actually saw, minus the lit up clouds above.

[LinhLe]

The price for Adobe Creative Suite Premium is $ 399.98
Adobe Photoshop CS Win (Upgrade) is $ 299.98


http://bncollege.journeyed.com/cgi-bin/sgsh0101.exe?SKW=jemwebspecial&FNM=01&UID=2003103005474848&&GEN2=BN653&GEN6=Northern_Virginia_Community_College_-_Manassas&GEN7=/logos/BN653.gif&GEN9=index2.html


Lính Lệ

[HulaMike]

Originally posted by LinhLe
The price for Adobe Creative Suite Premium is $ 399.98
Adobe Photoshop CS Win (Upgrade) is $ 299.98


http://bncollege.journeyed.com/cgi-bin/sgsh0101.exe?SKW=jemwebspecial&FNM=01&UID=2003103005474848&&GEN2=BN653&GEN6=Northern_Virginia_Community_College_-_Manassas&GEN7=/logos/BN653.gif&GEN9=index2.html


Lính Lệ

Not so Linh Le. The Adobe web site lists the upgrade at $169.

http://www.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catPhotoshop

[CaptJR]

Everyone does know that the windows requirement is
Microsoft® Windows® 2000 with Service Pack 3 or Windows XP

Guess I'll be moving from 98 to XP soon. That was in my plan anyway.

JR

[HulaMike]

Capt,

I'm still on WIN98 too. You and I may be the last holdouts....From what I've seen, we'd both be better off on WIN 2000 not XP.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Swampy]

I still like Win2k better than XP myself. XP has some plus's but, for me, they are only good for laptops, so I use XP on my laptops and 2k on my desktops, except right now, I decided to give XP a chance, but I'm not very happy with it over my previous 2k install. I think I'll just start all over sometime this month, including a new machine and go dual processor.

[G. Modick]

I'm not an expert in PS, so I need some help.
I have an image that I shot some months back and it was under exposed. I lightened the image up and got the skin tones looking reasonable and other colors looking pretty good, BUT the shadow areas and dark colors including black have a speckled look to it and I believe the correct term is NOISE.

I hit the noise button in filters and it didn't seem to improve it much. The whites and solid light colors look normal.

1) Is this caused by trying to correct an underexposed image and would not have happened if it was properly exposed?

2) Is there a way to correct this problem and please tell me what to do?

3) In FILTERS, by using any of the options in filters MORE than once, will that keep "correcting" the problem until the image looks good OR are those options one time use only?

4) When is the correct time to apply the options in FILTERS..before or after you make your adjustments / corrections? I've heard differing opinions.

There is so much to learn in PS.

Thanks for your help.

[Swampy]

What kind of image is it? RAW? JPG? And what are you using to try and correct it? If it's RAW, it may be savable, especially if you have Photoshop CS. :D If it's JPG, it's a toss up.

Every action or filter may be applied more than once in photoshop and will just keep compounding itself. Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad.

Take resizing a picture for instance. Resize in 3-5% increments until you get a total of 100% size enlargement and it will come out MUCH better than just doing one straight 100% enlargement. Same thing with Sharpening. Do a little multiple times and it will probably come out better.

Anyway, need answers to those quetions above.

[G. Modick]

Thanks for the reply swampy.

I shot in JPEG. I'm using PS5.0 and I also have PS Elements. Hope to get PS7 soon.
I never tried using RAW yet. Not sure what to expect and how to use it. It sounds a bit complicated, but I'm probably reading too much into this.

So, by using smaller increments in, for example USM, sharpness will look "MUCH" better than going from 0-500? Is there a reason for this or it just works out that way?

BTW, your shots of the T-Birds were great. Do you do any printing of your images or do you send them to a lab?
If you send out to a lab do you adjust / correct the images yourself before going to lab or let the lab do their thing?

[crabby]

Sorry I couldn't resist.
Anyway, to answer a few of your questions.
Yes your noise problem is caused by trying to correct an extremely underexposed image. And probably compounded by jpeg compression artifacts. The noise filters, ( dust & scratches, despackle, and median) don't really work well for what you need to do. A simple explanation is that the just give different degrees of a kind of blur. There is a program called Dfine that I use that works great for this kind of thing, but nothing is as good as a properly exposed image. It will take a lot of work but there are a few things you can try. Without seeing your image I can only make a few general suggestions. You can try selecting the problem areas, one by one if necessary, and running the Noise>Median filter. I like median because it has a slider that controls its strength. But it will only work for you in the more solid areas or else it will just blur the fine details that you want to keep. If the noise is primarily in the shadows where there really isn't much color, you could try the sponge tool set to desaturate and go over the trouble spots. This will not get rid of the noise but it will get rid of the color speckling.
There are many,many ways to try to correct for noise. None of them are fast or easy or do a flawless job. Whole books could be written on this subject and software has been developed specifically for this issue. If this is a really important image to you, say worth $50, then I would suggest buying a program like Dfine. There's another one for PeeCee's that works equally as well but I forget what it is called. Perhaps if you could post your image we could give you more specific help.

[Swampy]

I would have to agree with Crabby. Many, many different ways to go about it and there's probably 50 different ways for each type of "noise". Post the image and let us take a crack at it. Say, post it in the photos section with the title Noise Edit Challenge. Post it at say 1024x768 or something larger with as little compression as possible.

If you're looking at getting PS7, don't. Go straight up to CS (version 8). RAW is not all that complicated, but it is time consuming. I suggest you try your Fuji converter software on one or two different images and see how you like it. I mean, underexpose a shot like you have now and play around with it in the RAW converter. Then, think of that, 100 times better in PS8 (CS), but about the same speed. I mean, PS8 is not going to improve your image by 100x, but it can be 100x better on a shot like the one you're having difficulties with. It certainly gives you many more options for control over an image.

Thanks for the comments on the Air show pics. I took a few of the shots to go into my 8x10 album over to Ritz to print on the Frontier system. They were about as smart as an untrained chimp. I tried to talk to them about how I should go about processing them, but they had absolutely no clue. Uh. We put it in and hit print. That was about all they could tell me. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy with my prints and I won't be going back there again for prints.

I had posted here about a week or two before I had those prints done under printers about how to process them, what DPI, CMYK, RGB, 16bit or 8bit, etc. And I got NO answer except Capt. giving me a very, very small insight on DPI. That was a depressing post. Guess I'll have to go buy a Frontier system for my house next.

Now, I have printed them out on my Sony UP-DR100 at 4x6 and 5x7 and they have come out great. I have custom software that I use for printing on that, so I edit them in photoshop and save in full res after editing it (or a close crop in full res at least) and just send it over to it. Very simple. What I see on my screen is what I get. No calibrations, no mess, just great pics on semi-indistructible paper. I keep a $50 dollar bill in my desk and when people see it, I tell them that the 50's for them if they can tear the photo in half without cutting tools- bare hands in otherwords. Even tell them to try using thier finger nails, but no teeth. :D. No one has taken the 50 away from me.

[G. Modick]

Thanks swampy and crabby. You gave me some very good insight and answers.

Sounds like PS CS is the way to go, but I'll have to ask Santa and see if I 've been bad or good.