Time OUT...

Photography has its almost indescribable lures – spring, far away places, magnificent scenery…
The paucity of bloggin is due to planning for sequential trips to Utah and Arizona. Today is a loading day, tomorrow begins a new adventure.

Hopefully, I will have some awesome nature/landscape scenes to report on return…

…until then!

CS5 Mania - It's Gone Viral

Mayday!, Mayday!, Mayday!...

The distress call for voice radio, for vessels and people in serious trouble at sea. The term is anglicizes the French "m'aidez," (help me).
Two friends called me yesterday on April 29th saying, "Joe, you can download CS5...; Joe, I'm already playing with CS5…" looks like CS5 has gone viral!
This morning Adobe lets me have a DVD CS5 version for Try It with a 30 day limit. Amazon lets me pre-order a version to be shipped May 25. Well, maybe it's not Mayday ...after all.

Helpful Videos
In a neat advertising coup d’état, Amazon adds another fillip - Checkout Related Media! This is an amalgamated video feed essentially featuring Scott Kelby to begin explaining CS5.




BTW, a number of more advanced videos are also available. If I were you, I'd watch these knowledgeable sources for future, perhaps more in-depth video tutorials.
PhotoshopUser TV - a free iTunes weekly video with the Photoshop Guys
Julieanne Kost - Adobe TV evangelist
Russell Brown - Adobe guru with 10 new CS5 videos
John Nack - Adobe blogger reaching throughout the company
I'll be digging deeply through these and succeeding tools!

Hardcopy Learning Tools
Amazon also provides me with other learning tools. The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter) - Scott Kelby, shipping date TBA. Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS5 – Schewe and Fraser, shipping date TBA.

While it's quite a plethora of data, diligent attention may let you learn a lot before you actually read those books...
Of course, for this Mayday, you may want your own particular writer.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Forums
Well, this one got away from me. When I put "Adobe Photoshop CS5" and "forum” in Google I only got 1,390,000 hits... you be the judge! I'm not at all sure any of us can handle this particular Mayday.
If you keep your eye peeled, podcasts and videos are quickly spewing out of Adobe and many others as we speak.

Well, looks like we've handled the last Mayday! If you were in trouble with the sea of data regarding Photoshop's CS5 release, if you cried Mayday, the information above may act as your rescue rope...

Enjoy!

My New Adobe Photoshop CS5 Image Enhancement Mantra…

With some of its advanced tools, CS5 proves to be both a great time saver and a post-processing delight for fine art photographers: masking, motion blur, content aware patterns / rotation, and advanced puppet warp.
Let’s talk about some new videos

Russell Brown Russell has taken my learning to a higher level with 5 videos which detailed steps to become part of my new CS5 mantra. Explanations are clear; video examples let me easily understand and annotate mechanics involved.
Click on each title to step into a new world of tone mapping and image enhancement! Or, check out John Nack’s webpage for more videos…

Advanced Masking: edge detection for hands w Smart Radius. Refine Edge for hair and paint to find edges. Decontaminate colors and make new layer mask.

Advanced Motion Blur Masking: decontaminate colors in white dove wings. Blend results against brick background.

Content-Aware Rotation: Magically fill in missing parts to background of a rotated image with Content-Aware Fill.

I like the way Russell shows advancing stages of intricate steps using CS5. I usually have 2 windows open; the playing video (which I can stop at will) and Notepad (I can document each step for future review). I play the video thru to get flow, then replay to document important advances for my continuing Photoshop learning curve.
May I encourage you to take a look at all the videos – you will love the new stuff!

The Photoshop Guys
The Guys did a summary to their impromptu NAPP webinars from last week’s launch. You can find a downloadable video here or on iTunes. Here are my fav’s…
Refine Edge – masking every day
Plugin Decline – CS5 replaces many older plugins
Lens Correction Filter – camera, body, lens – corrections
HDR Pro – detail, radius, strength, spot removal, remove ghosts (water), base image

I blogged about NAPP’s free webinars (available for 30 days) here. Right click, Save Link As… and you’ve got a copy!

Enjoy…