Why I’m deleting Adobe from my PC

Monday, February 6th, 2012

Rather than buy a new laptop, I recently decided to recondition a four-year-old Acer to see whether it was up to the relatively light duties intended of it. This laptop had been my workhorse during a period when I was regularly flitting between my home office and business headquarters, and had almost no available space on its 140GB hard disk. The first job, then, was to do some weeding.

Microsoft Office was the first package to go, now that I use Google Docs almost exclusively. I found plenty of dross in the Downloads folder of course, but the real shock came when I looked through the list of Adobe programs installed on this machine and realised that I use almost none of them regularly any more.

When I bought this laptop, I reckon I spent around two thirds of my working day using Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Flex Builder – with the last of these accounting for the lion’s share. And yet, over the past year, Flash based development has dropped away almost entirely.

The rot began with Dreamweaver, which I’d been using since it was first launched in the mid 1990s. Since I began creating websites using PHP, and especially when WordPress became the basis of most of my web development, Dreamweaver became irrelevant and I’ve not used it for over five years now. (more…)

Photoshop-style Content-Aware Fill, for free, on your phone

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

We’ve covered Adobe Photoshop CS5’s stunning Content-Aware Fill feature on the blog before, as it’s an undoubted head-turner: the ability to draw around an unwanted object in your photo and, with a bit of tech trickery, watch it disappear, with the gap filled by the app’s best guess as to what should be there instead.

That’s the kind of feature you expect to find on paid-for software such as Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop Elements, but there’s an app that’ll do the same thing for free on Android and iOS devices – TouchRetouch. Here’s how it’s worked its magic on one of my holiday snaps, with a couple of inconveniently-placed tourists removed from in front of this Cretan ruin:

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The all-new PC Pro Real World Benchmarks

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

It’s our mission to bring you the most accurate and informative reviews on the market. That’s why we’ve updated our benchmarks to reflect the way real people use computers today.

Our new tests don’t rely on synthetic measures: we use real, current applications such as Microsoft Office 2010 and Photoshop CS5, as well as a completely new set of responsiveness tests, to get an all-round picture of a PC’s performance.

That means the benchmark scores you’ll see from this day on are not directly comparable with older scores, but they give the best ever insight into exactly what each system can do for you.

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PostworkShop: reinventing the bitmap filter

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

When Photoshop was launched some 20 years ago, one of the capabilities that made it stand out was its support for plugin filters and the extraordinary creativity that this unlocked. Indeed bitmap filters became a major industry in their own right and the creativity of add-ons from the likes of Kai Krause, AutoFX and Alien Skin often outshone their host.

Since then, however, the focus for bitmap editing has moved on from creative origination to photographic enhancement, and the bitmap filter has become increasingly marginalised. Nowadays users might explore the odd artistic filter that comes with Photoshop but, if they do, they are likely to quickly become disillusioned by the disappointingly limited range, control and end results.

Now a new kid on the block promises to radically shake up the whole world of creative bitmap filters.

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Adobe: friend or foe of the web design community?

Monday, April 26th, 2010

It would be easy to see Adobe as the injured party in its current war with Apple over the absence of Flash Player from the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. With the release of its flagship CS5 series of products, however, it’s clear that Adobe is a company with ambition and plenty of ideas intent on continuing its own brand of world domination. Ironically, the world it dominates is “Planet Apple”, with products such as Photoshop and Illustrator as synonymous with the web design community as Apple’s iMac and MacBook Pro.

As a developer, my main interest when it comes to CS5 is the new release of Flash Builder (aka Flex 4) and its interaction with Flash Professional and Flash Catalyst, and I’m looking forward to seeing whether Adobe has succeeded in creating the new, more productive workflow it was aiming for.

However, I’ve recently been attempting to peek through the fashionable spectacles of a young web designer so that I can advise a particular individual on how to get started in their own freelance business. And it’s a frighteningly expensive vista.

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What’s the point of Photoshop Extended?

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

The latest Photoshop CS5 has received near universal critical acclaim for its seemingly-magical image processing power and Photoshop CS5 Extended builds on that with even more extraordinary 3D functionality.

photoshop CS5 extended

But is the emperor wearing no clothes? Does anyone actually use the extended 3D functionality of Photoshop Extended?

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Happy Birthday Dear Photoshop!

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Break out the champagne and prepare the bunting because on Friday 19^th February 2010 Adobe Photoshop officially reaches the grand old age of 20.

To dominate such a competitive field as photo editing for so long is an extraordinary achievement. All the more so because Photoshop hasn’t been able to rely on a proprietary edge in terms of file formats and integration to secure its success. Basically all bitmap editors are dealing with the same pixel grid/histogram and working with the same core bitmap formats, most obviously TIFF and JPEG.

Essentially it’s an open and level playing field – so what are the secrets behind Photoshop’s extraordinary success?

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Adobe Photoshop Elements 8: First Look

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Earlier today Adobe announced the latest version of its best-selling consumer-oriented photo-editing and organization package Photoshop Elements 8. This has become something of a yearly event and the previous version 7 release clearly suffered from the tight turnaround in a Creative Suite year. By comparison, version 8 is packed with new power and has a strong focus: building on Adobe’s state-of-the-art image analysis to bring the best out of images and to make life easier for the end user.

Editing highlights include the new Photo Merge mode that automatically picks out and combines the best exposed areas of bracketed shots to produce a best-lit composite image and the Image Recompose feature that automatically preserves foreground objects while removing unwanting backgrounds as you resize your image – in real time.

Elements’ editing power remains unchallenged in the consumer arena but, for most users, serious editing images is a relatively rare requirement compared to the regular chore of getting on top of your images through tagging. Here Adobe’s image analysis expertise promises even more, holding out the prospect of automatically tagging images based on quality and – through automatic face recognition – even subject.

It sounds great on paper and works brilliantly with the sample images included in the pre-release press pack, but how does it work in practice with real images?

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How to add punch to your digital photos with the Levels and Curves tools

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

A common complaint from new DSLR owners is that their cameras leave their images looking rather dull and washed out: not like the punchy, eye-catching images they used to get from their cheaper compact camera.

The complaint isn’t baseless. Most DSLRs, by default, do less in-camera processing than compacts; the assumption being that you’d rather start with as exact a replica of reality as possible and edit it later.

Still, there’s little worse than a perfectly-composed, perfectly-exposed image that nonetheless doesn’t look as exciting as you thought it would. The answer is to get to grips with the Levels and Curves tools. The good news is that virtually every photo editor includes these, from Photoshop and Lightroom, to Photoshop Elements, and even free applications such as the GIMP.

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Photoshop rivals – one real, one fake

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Photoshop’s had more than a few imitators over the years, but I’ve never before seen one that was made from real world materials!  It was beautifully constructed as part of an advertising campaign for an Indonesian firm called software-asli.com – you can see how it was made here on Flickr. 

Coincidentally, I also stumbled across this browser-based Photoshop equivalent today:

It’s called Pixlr and though it’s not about to surpass Photoshop CS4 in terms of power and features, it’s more than competent for applying quick fixes and touch-ups to digital photos. It’s impressively fast too – much faster, in fact, than Adobe’s own online editor at Photoshop.com and it doesn’t demand that you fill in any annoying registration forms. You just rock up and use it. 

I’m particularly fond of Pixlr’s Old Photo filter. Let me know how you get on with it on the comments below.