News, news, news..

Epson has posted “Public Beta” print drivers for recent Epson Stylus Pro printers to provide full Macintosh 10.5.x (Leopard) compatibility.

These drivers provide enhanced functionality as well as the potential for 16 bit/channel printing–just as soon as imaging applications can actually send 16 bit data. Neither Photoshop CS3 nor Lightroom 1.3 do yet.

The drivers that are currently available are:
Stylus Pro 3800 Series

Stylus Pro 4800 Series
Stylus Pro 4880 Series

Stylus Pro 7800 Series
Stylus Pro 7880 Series

Stylus Pro 9800 Series
Stylus Pro 9880 Series

Stylus Pro 11880 Series

The download page is Professional Imaging Public Beta Leopard Printer Drivers

Additional info is at Epson’s Macintosh Leopard Support

There is no word, at this time, regarding Leopard drivers for Epson Stylus Photo printers such as the R2400 and R1800 although Leopard drivers are expected (some time in December, 2007).

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Real World Camera Raw for Adobe Photoshop CS3 written by Bruce Fraser and myself just hit #1 on Amazon’s category of Adobe Photoshop books! Yeah! Must have been that glowing (but biased review) Michael Reichmann of the Luminous Landscape posted today. Read the review here.

Thanks Michael! But wait, there’s more…

I was pretty excited because at one point the book was ranked at #181 overall in book sales! However, I was pretty depressed to learn that Today’s best seller was You: Staying Young: The Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty. But, that book is even outselling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7), at least today.

:~)

Of course, fame is fleeting. I went to check the Photography category only to find it’s at #2 behind Scott Kelby’s The Digital Photography Book.

Oh, well…there’s still time.
(but hurry)

Original post by Jeff Schewe

The MPS Digital Photography Department of the School for Visual Arts (SVA) is presenting a lecture by renowned landscape photographer Stephen Johnson, a pioneer who has helped shape the technology for today’s (and tomorrow’s) digital photographers.

Based on his latest book, Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography, Johnson will discuss the history of electronic imaging, the transformation of the darkroom, ethics in the digital age, and trends in digital photography for the future.

SVA Amphitheater
December 4, 2007 7 PM
209 East 23 Street, 3rd floor
New York City

Free and open to the public

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Source: Detroit Free Press
Written by Patricia Ansetett

A little-known field of ophthalmology soon will get work space in Ann Arbor that matches the stature a University of Michigan team has achieved.

A $1.5-million grant awarded in October by the Harry A. and Margaret D. Townsley Foundation will help U-M build a state-of-the-art Ophthalmic Imaging Center in the new Kellogg Eye Center under construction.

Scheduled to open in 2010, it will house six camera rooms, a photo studio, a waiting area and a larger work space.

When ophthalmologists review milestones in their field, they will likely credit Richard Hackel, chief of the U-M ophthalmic photography program, as the person whose digital images helped transform the diagnosis of eye disease.

In 1995, Hackel changed an arduous process of cutting and pasting together dozens of photos of the eye’s interior — much the way a collage is made — into digital photographs that precisely capture its texture and color.

Today, ophthalmic photography is an important adjunct to the diagnosis of eye disease. It also is used to monitor whether patients benefit from certain treatments.

In that way, a computerized photo can spare patients from undergoing possibly risky, invasive procedures and save money by avoiding unnecessary treatments that may cost $2,000 or more.

Read entire article

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Source: Freelance UK
Showing reality through a picture is generally accepted as photography’s main purpose.

But popular and easy-to-use image editing software is calling that reality into question.

Last month, Culture Secretary James Purnell was unable to make it on time to a photo-shoot with other MPs to promote a new development at a hospital in Tameside. See the PSN story James Purnell in fake photo row.

His spokesman has said that instead of ‘letting anyone down’ the MP gave his consent for the hospital to doctor the image so it looked like he was actually there.

As Mr Purnell did eventually turn up, software was used to add his pose to the original image, giving the impression he was present and accounted for – when, in fact, he wasn’t.

The Photoshop guru at the hospital remains unknown but if that person, and others who use the software without declaring it, did come forward, then they may face legal bother.

Such is the verdict of Roger Sinclair, legal consultant at Egos Ltd, a contract, commercial and media law specialist.

He told FreelanceUK: “If you use photo editing software to produce a piece of art, [then that’s] fine.

“But if you’re using it to make material changes to a picture which you are using to report an event, and to make it seem something different to what it in fact was, then there’s a technical term for that which you’d better get to grips with: it’s a ‘lie’.”

Mr Sinclair said a news photojournalist who uses Photoshop without declaring its use is tantamount to a “journalist who invents material facts underlying a story.”

Read entire story

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

In Chapter 1 of my Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers book, I provided a brief example of how one might apply the Lens Blur filter to a Smart Object in Photoshop CS3 and keep the background blur settings editable. However, it was pointed out to me just recently that the Lens Blur filter is actually disabled in CS3 when you seek to apply it to a Smart Object. This is one of those things that I failed to notice as I was finalizing the book and it seems that I am not the only author who got caught out by this late change to the program. Fortunately there is an easy remedy for accessing Lens Blur as a Smart Filter.

At first, disabling Lens Blur for Smart Objects seems like an odd thing to have done, because if you can use the Lens Blur to make a background go out of focus, you might well want the opportunity to re-edit those settings at a later date and work from an original, unblurred image – an ideal case for using Smart Filters. But then it was explained to me that one of the key features of the Lens Blur filter is its ability to reference an alpha channel and use this as a depth map to control the level of blurring across different parts of the image. This is indeed a useful feature, but it did have the potential to cause confusion when working with Smart Filters. Imagine you had applied the Lens Blur filter to a Smart Object layer and had referenced an alpha channel in the source document. If you were to later edit the alpha channel in the source document, the Smart Object layer would not register any change, no change that is until the next time you double-clicked to open the Lens Blur filter. Doing that would cause the smart filter to reference the alpha channel again and if the channel had been edited, you would only then see a new rendering of the Lens Blur filter. Figure 1 has a summary taken from chapter 1 of my book that shows the Lens Blur being used as a smart filter to blur the background in a photo.

Figure 1. In this example I opened a raw DNG image as a Smart Object and added a normal pixel layer of a backdrop image, which I then converted to become a Smart Object layer. I then added a layer mask to reveal the model on the layer below. Once a layer or group of layers have been converted to a Smart Object, one can then apply Smart Filters. Here, you can see how I applied a Lens Blur filter to the Smart Object and applied a gradient to the Smart Filters mask to reveal some of the unsharpened detail in the original pixel layer.

Now to be honest, if you are the type of person who is inclined to use the Lens Blur filter with depth maps, you are probably going to be OK coping with anomalies like this. The good news is that although the Lens Blur has been disabled to get around Photoshop’s inability to ‘paramertize’ the depth map settings, there is a simple way to override this behavior.

How to enable the Lens Blur filter
Help is at hand though in the form of a script that you will find inside your Adobe Photoshop CS3 application folder. Here are the instructions you need to enable all filters:

1. To enable Smart Filters for all plug-ins, go to the File ➯ Scripts menu in Photoshop CS3 and choose Browse…

2. This will open a system navigation window and from there you will want to use the following directory path: Adobe Photoshop CS3 folder/Scripting Guide/Sample Scripts/Javascript and select: EnableAllPluginsforSmartFilters.jsx (shown here is the Macintosh navigation window, but the PC directory path is exactly the same).

3. Once you have located the EnableAllPluginsforSmartFilters.jsx script, you can click Load or double-click to run it, which will then show the Script Alert dialog. If you wish to proceed, click ‘Yes’ and the Lens Blur including all other filters will now be accessible for use as smart filters. If you want to turn off this behavior, run through the same steps described here and click ‘No’ when the Script Alert dialog shows.

The benefits and pitfalls of enabling all filters
Now that you can see how simple it is to enable all filters, it is tempting to leave this as the new default. Which you can do of course, but it is worth bearing in mind that it is not just the Lens Blur you are gaining access to, but all filters that were previously unavailable for use as smart filters. However, unlike the Lens Blur, some of these do not fit in well with a smart filter workflow.

Basically, smart filters are intended for use with value based filters only: things like the Add Noise or Unsharp mask filter. They do not work well with filters that use brushes, such as ‘Liquify’. With ‘all filters enabled’ you can add Liquify as a smart filter, but the usefulness of doing so is restricted to turning an applied Liquify filter on or off. For example, you won’t be able to tweak the Liquify settings. If you double-click a Liquify filter in a filter stack it will cancel the current liquify settings and reopen the Liquify dialog with it reset to show no adjustments. This is not exactly what you would expect to happen here, but it does at least allow you to experiment with various liquify treatments and use the History palette to compare different liquified versions of an image. Likewise, if you adjust any filters in a smart filter stack, these too will force the Liquify dialog to reopen, with everything reset again.

Third-party plug-ins
With third-party plug-ins, the same rules apply, except you will find that those plug-ins that have been recently updated for CS3 should have an embedded smart filter marker that will automatically make them compatible with Smart Filters in CS3. If that is not the case, then enabling all filters in the way I describe here will help your get around such restrictions. But again, with the same provisos as before. Any filter you apply as a smart filter must be a ‘value based’ filter if it is to fit in successfully with a smart filter workflow.

My thanks to Uwe Steinmuelller for pointing out the ‘enable all filters’ script to me.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers is published by Focal Press and can be purchased directly from Focal plus all the usual book publishing outlets.

This latest edition is 704 pages and comes with a DVD disk containing a CS3 Help Guide plus movie tutorials.

As a special perk for PhotoshopNews readers, Martin has made his Chapter 1: What’s New in Photoshop CS3 available for free download.

The 24 page PDF, outlines all the new features of Photoshop CS3 and Bridge 2, written from a user’s perspective. It offers an honest appraisal of what is on offer in Photoshop CS3.

Click here to download the PDF (4.05 MB)

You can also access a Photoshop News story on the latest Camera Raw 4.1 update and download a printable PDF supplement the book: Camera Raw 4.1 Update (2.5 MB)

Original post by Martin Evening

There has been confirmation of an issue with the most recent version of Camera Raw (4.3) and Lightroom version 1.3 when processing Nikon D100 raw captures when the camera is set to compress the NEF file. The results are incorrect color casts. The suggested work around is to either:

1. Set the D100 to use uncompressed NEF files. (The bug is limited to compressed files.)
or
2. Use the DNG Converter version 4.2 (not 4.3) to convert the compressed D100 NEF files to DNG, and then use them with Camera Raw 4.3 or Lightroom 1.3.

Indication are that there is going to be a Camera Raw 4.3.1 interim update to address this issue in the very near future. It’s expected that a minor update to Lightroom will also be released. No exact time table has been indicated other than “soon”.

The Lightroom User to User forum had a post outlining the issue with confirming posts by Thomas Knoll regarding the problem. See: v1.3 and Nikon D100 NEF files - Not so good!

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Alien Skin has released a variety of updates that provide improved compatibility with Max OS 10.5.x (Leopard) and certain Alien Skin plug-ins.

The Mac Updaters are available at Alien Skin Support.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

DxO Optics Pro v5 features a breakthrough RAW Engine, dust/blemish removal, improved user interface, support for the Canon EOS 40D as well as expanded Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® compatibility, and an exciting new ‘Snapshot’ feature 

Press Release: Paris, France – DxO Labs has announced the immediate availability of DxO Optics Pro v5 for Windows, the latest version of its award-winning flagship automatic image quality enhancement software application for Digital SLR camera users. DxO Optics Pro v5 can be purchased via download on the company’s e-store (www.dxo.com) as well as from several well known retailers (a full list of resellers is available at http://www.dxo.com/intl/photo/Resellers). DxO Optics Pro v5 for Macintosh is scheduled to be available towards the end the year. All purchasers of DxO Optics Pro v4.5 on or after August 1, 2007 are eligible for a free upgrade to DxO Optics Pro v5.

DxO Optics Pro v5 RAW conversion delivers a breakthrough in image qualityHeadlining the new features in DxO Optics Pro v5 is a brand new RAW conversion engine including a breakthrough demosaicing algorithm which produces images with much more detail and fewer unwanted artifacts. In a second major breakthrough, DxO Optics Pro v5 now applies its noise reduction techniques prior to demosaicing — before noise has a chance to be amplified by the RAW conversion process and become obtrusive.

“Thanks to our new RAW converter and moving noise removal up front, before RAW conversion, images processed with DxO Optics Pro v5 are more natural looking with better detail and excellent color saturation. The results are really remarkable, and particularly on images shot at high ISOs in low light conditions,” says Luc Marin, Sales and Marketing VP of the Photography Business at DxO Labs. DxO Optics Pro v5 also includes a “click once, clean many” dust/blemish removal tool as well a completely reorganized user interface to improve workflow and ease of use.

DxO Optics Pro v5 adds even more features and support for more cameras
Previously unannounced, a handful of additional new features make DxO Optics Pro v5 even more of a time saver.

• Compatibility between DxO Optics Pro v5 and Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® has been deepened. DxO Optics Pro v5 can now read from and interact with image libraries from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, providing a more fluid workflow between these two popular applications.
• Using the new ‘Snapshot” feature; users can create several ‘virtual versions’ of an image to which they can apply different DxO Optics Pro corrections for processing.

With DxO Optics Pro v5, the library of camera bodies and lens correction modules expands to include the recently released Canon EOS 40D and selected lenses. In the coming months, the Canon 1Ds MKIII, Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 DSLR camera bodies will also be added to the more than 600 correction modules currently available.

Pricing and availability
DxO Optics Pro v5 is available in Standard and Elite versions at pricing unchanged from the previous version :

• DxO Optics Pro v5 Standard: $169
• DxO Optics Pro v5 Elite: $299
  (All prices are excluding sales taxes)

All customers who purchased DxO Optics Pro v4.5 on or after August 1, 2007 are entitled to a free upgrade to version 5. For customers who purchased DxO Optics Pro before August 1, 2007, the pricing of upgrades is as follows:

• DxO Optics Pro Standard (any version) to DxO Optics Pro v5 Standard: $95
• DxO Optics Pro Elite (any version) to DxO Optics Pro v5 Elite: $125
  (All prices are excluding sales taxes)

DxO Optics Pro v5 for Windows is currently available. DxO Optics Pro v5 for Macintosh is scheduled to be available towards the end of the year.

Operating System Requirements
Windows:

• Intel® Pentium® 4 processor or AMD® equivalent (Pentium® Dual Core or higher or equivalent recommended)
• Microsoft® Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows VISTA™ 32 Bits

Macintosh:

• Universal Binary (G4, G5 or Intel)
• Mac OS X.4 or X.5 when available

120 MB of available disk space
DxO Optics Pro Standard Edition: 1 GB RAM
DxO Optics Pro Elite Edition: 2GB RAM

About DxO Labs
DxO Labs offers products and solutions ensuring excellence in digital imaging. DxO Labs develops and licenses intellectual property serving the entire digital imaging chain: licensing of optics and silicon architectures for embedded still and video image processing; image quality evaluation and measurement tools and methodologies; image quality enhancement software for consumers. The company’s key customers and partners include:

• Consumer electronics manufacturers such as digital camera vendors and cameraphones vendors;
• Imaging components suppliers: camera module manufacturers, sensor vendors, and processor vendors;
• Demanding photographers, as well as photography journalists and imaging experts.

DxO Labs’ product portfolio is steadily finding a place at the heart of advanced consumer electronics and world-class industry imaging systems where “Image Science by DxO” becomes a reference for quality.

For more information or a list of distributors and resellers, visit DxO Labs online at www.dxo.com

DxO is a registered trademark of DxO Labs. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. DxO Labs disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and trade names other than its own.

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff

Source: Perthnow

A CANADIAN man who used a well-known Photoshopped image circulating on the internet to prove a cat charity owner had been abusing animals has been ordered to have a psychiatric assessment.
Stewart Bright, 62, pleaded guilty in Court of Queen’s Bench in Edmonton yesterday to charges of sending defamatory letters and possession of child pornography, the Edmontonsun.com website reported.

According to facts handed to the court, Bright lived for some years with Marjorie Hervey, president and founder of the Hervey Foundation for Cats, a charity for abandoned or injured cats.

Read entire story

Original post by PSN Editorial Staff