PhotoshopCS
The newest version is a worthwhile investment with a few new, powerful tools. Here we are going to take a look at some of what this release has to offer.
Especially exciting to those in a production environment is the new Shadows/Highlights adjustment. Less-than-perfect originals are a fact of life, whether you are shooting film, or the latest whizband digital camera. Pulling detail out of shadow areas in poorly exposed originals has always been the Achille's heel of desktop digital color. Adobe has taken a shot at solving this problem with PhotoshopCS.
Keep in mind, there must be detail in the shadows of the scan to start with. As we will see, the Shadows/Highlights adjustment is a powerful tool, but it can not conjure detail not present from thin air. Adobe's improved ability to open RAW files from digital cameras addresses this. With extensive tweaking options, including exposure compensation, those of us shooting digital are at a decided advantage.
Tests
The images in the following tests were shot with a Nikon D100 digital camera. Images were processed without selections, or masks. Please note these images are downsampled and compressed hard. The text will point out factors evident on the originals, but not in these web graphics.
Shadows/Highlights
This first image was metered on the sky. It is typical in that part of the image is exposed properly, and part is grossly underexposed. This is often seen with pictures of people outside in bright sun, or wearing hats. This is our first example:
Not much of a photo, I'm afraid, but shots like this cross the desks of publications across the country. After the Shadows/Highlights adjustment:
There are cool faint, wispy cloud formations throughout the sky. They don't really show up in these images, but it was possible to preserve them even through this radical adjustment, without resorting to masks. Let's take a look under the hood of the Shadows/Highlights adjustment:
The Shadows controls open up the shadows, and the Highlights controls deal with "blown" highlights. The Color Correction slider saturates the shadow colors, becuase they tend to be flat after lightening. Midtone Contrast does exactly what is says. All of this was possible in previous Photoshop versions... with masks, and selections, and adjustment layers. All those techniques are still important, but sometimes you just need to bang out 300 pictures of houses shot by realtors. This feature alone is worth the upgrade price. Thank you, Adobe.
Camera RAW
The new, built-in RAW feature is a very handy thing. People who shoot digital cameras in RAW mode want to capture everything the CCD can see at the moment of exposure. The important questions are "have I captured all the shadow detail?" and "have I preserved the highlights?". The image is then imported through the Camera RAW plugin which enables the photographer to adjust a surprising array of factors. FInally, the image is opened into Photoshop... in 16bit, if that's what you want. Look at the controls:
Note the continuous White Balance Temperature slider, with a Tint control. This translates to tweakable, and stands head and shoulders above the standard method of choosing from a few presets. Of course, several presets are available, under the pop-up that reads "custom" in the above picture. The presets make a good starting point, then apply the tweak of your choice.
Under the other tabs of the Camera RAW window you will find goodies such as Sharpness, Color Noise Reduction, and even the ability to correct for chromatic aberration, an optical defect in some photographic lenses.
The above picture was shot on a very cloudy day, and the lighting was flat as can be. The Camera RAW adjustments allowed a fine tuning of the Color Temperature and Exposure. The Saturation control allowed the colors to "pop" just enough to capture the vibrancy that drew me to the shot in the first place.
Combo
When you combine the power of the Camera RAW import and the Shadows/Highlights adjustment, you have an awesome amount of power under your control. Let's look at another image. It has already been processed through the Camera RAW to compensate for a pretty rough exposure (the image was captured on the spur of the moment from a moving vehicle).
During the Camera RAW phase, enough adjustment was done to see that there is detail in the shadows to bring out later. Extra attention was paid to the highlights to preserve any detail left in the sky (it is already quite "hot").
Subsequent processing in the Shadows/Highlights adjustment and Unsharp Masking yields this image:
The best part? Correction time: 2 minutes.
So, are these the best features of the new Photoshop? There are other tools that bear mentioning. The Photo Filters gives you color control modeled on conventional camera lens filters. A truly handy little tool, designed no doubt to entertain the serious photographers who will be flocking to a digital process after checking out the new RAW feature. There are new filters, tools, enhancements, the list goes on. Get your hands on this latest release and have at it!
Those of you interested in digital photography, be sure to check out our Digital Camera FAQ.