I hope everyone had a nice holiday. I am starting the new year with a new blog address and format that I hope will read better on your computer. I will keep the 2008 archives at the old address if you would like to refer to any of the older posts. You can find them
at http://web.mac.com/jimdivitale. Please bookmark this new Blog address and I invite you to subscribe and become a follower of Digital Imaging Tune-Up Clinic Blog by clicking on the link to the upper right of the page. I will try to post 3 to 4 different tutorial lessons each month if possible, but sometimes the shooting or seminar schedule might interrupt the writing schedule. If you are looking for a new post and there is not one there, please be patient with me.
I am sure many of you have already upgraded to the newest version of Adobe Photoshop CS4. Some of you may not have and are waiting to make sure it is stable or maybe waiting to see what others are saying about the upgrade. There's no reason to be waiting. The longer you wait, the more catching up you have to do with all your competition. Many of the upgrades to the newest version are improvements under the hood. They are not new tools, but improvements to the tools that are already there. Big improvements! One new tool that I really like is the new Content Aware Scaling. This is a very subtle new tool that lets us re-size document dimensions while preserving the most important main subject from distorting. This will be very important when the finished image doesn't quite fit the final output size needed for delivery and croping the image is the best option. I think this is one of the most
amazing technologies Adobe has ever come up with. Let's look at a simple example.
In this image of a bald eagle, we see that it was photographed as a horizontal image. Yes, you could crop it to a vertical image, but you would loose a lot of the volcano in the background. If you used the traditional Free-Transform Tool Command-t (PC Control-T) and scaled it, it would become totally distorted and that wouldn't work at all.
Now with Content Aware Scaling, you can size this horizontal image to become a vertical by pressing Command-Option-Shift-C (PC: Control-Alt-Shift-C) and the main subject of the eagle stays in proper shape, while the rest of the image scales back to the vertical shape...
It's just plain amazing the way it works... It's kind of spooky!.... How does it know that?..... This is going to be very important for image re-use when it was shot for one crop, and then needed for another later. Well worth the upgrade, and this is just one of the many improvements to Photoshop CS4...
Helene and I are just returning from a nice cruise over the New Years Holiday and Helene's birthday. Leaving out of Miami, we spent a week with friends visiting Key West and Grand Cayman. As we got ready to start our vacation, we decided to leave the bags of cameras behind and just take the Canon G-9 cameras with us instead. They worked great and we were a lot happier not carrying heavy bags of equipment around when we were supposed to be relaxing. We had a great time and feel ready to start the new year.
Off to Imaging USA conference this weekend to do some Canon sponsored programs in the trade show. If you are going to be there, please check the speaker schedule in the Canon booth and come by for a visit..... Till next time... Have a great week... Jimmy D.....
Training DVD's and are available through Software Cinema
Please visit my website at DiVitalePhotography.com for more information on upcoming classes,workshops and seminars in both Atlanta and around the country.
Please add any comments, questions or suggestions by clicking the comment button below. I would love to hear what you think of the new look, and how well it works on your computer. The older Blog seemed to take more time to load for many viewers. Any topics you would like me to write about?... Just let me know.....
