8. Compensate for Your Camera Automatically
Why does the upcoming Adobe Photoshop CS5 cost $600? We tested out its features to find out what you’re paying for.
Almost every camera lens distorts the image you’re shooting. While sometimes the image distortion is the effect you want, often the curving of lines that ought to be straight just looks wrong. The Lens Correction in CS5 is a filter rather than processing you can apply directly to camera RAW files at this point (although Adobe tells us it's a future feature). However, it does use the profile of the lens in your camera to apply corrections for the specific distortions your camera and lens tend to introduce. As well as geometric distortion (the barreling out and pin-cushioning of lines that should be straight), the filter can automatically correct chromatic aberration, such as the purple fringe of color along edges that can happen if you shoot in bright sunlight, and vignetting.
You need a lens profile to use the automatic corrections. If you don’t have one you can click through to the Custom pane and adjust the sliders. This can fix very obvious problems with dark corners and color fringes while subtle tweaks to the geometry can improve photos dramatically. However, you can end up with white areas at the edge of the image you need to crop, while the automatic corrections seem to take care of that automatically.
There are only a few profiles bundled for key camera manufacturers: Nikon (the 3DX and Coolpix P6000), Canon (two EOS models), Sony (A700 and A900)), and Apple (the iPhone 3G and 3GS). The iPhone is so popular and the iPhone camera so in need of correction that this feature is very welcome. However, it only applies to the main DSLR makes and the iPhone and doesn’t cover third-party lenses. Owners of most other cameras will feel left out.
To expand the coverage of camera profiles, Adobe will offer a Lens Profile Creator that you can download free. With it, you can take a set of photos of the camera-calibration chart displayed on screen and the tool will create a custom profile. You can use the tool for each lens and this will tell the lens-correction filter how your camera and lens distort a known image. However, your camera has to have a calibrated screen to take advantages of this feature (another reminder that Photoshop is aimed mainly at creative pros).
There’s a Search Online button in the filter that looks for other lens profiles on the Labs site and you can click through multiple profiles to see which gives the best result. If the profile tool takes off and lots of users create custom profiles, you might get one for your camera. Ideally, camera manufacturers would see the value and supply professionally created profiles to work with this. With the right profile, you could get much better shots out of a point-and-shoot pocket camera.
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Selecting Things That Aren’t Easy to Select
- 3. Get Rid of It
- 4. Get HDR Effects Without Multiple Images
- 5. Paint in Photoshop?
- 6. Move People Like Puppets
- 7. Do More with RAW files
- 8. Compensate for Your Camera Automatically
- 9. Create 3D Images and Scenes
- 10. Is Photoshop CS5 Worth It?
Nice. Photoshop sure is quite the package.
However, I wonder why, along with all the tools you cite, there is no mention made of the Gimp...? After all, it is available on Windows, Mac and Linux, it doesn't cost a dime, and it also includes:
- HDR effects (in script-fu): Tone Mapping and Exposure Blend
- painting effects (programmable brushes)
- GEGL (yes, 3D in Gimp)
- lens correction
Now, all of these aren't as advanced nor are they as easy to use as the Photoshop versions, but they are here and they work. For free.
Mitch - to fit in as much information about Photoshop CS5, I only had room to mention a tiny fraction of all the image editing tools out there
I'm quite a fan of Paint.Net and Irfanview, personally...
The Gimp also had content aware fill years ago in a plugin called Resynthesizer.
Paint.NET, iPhoto, WL Photo Gallery are not exactly professional-grade applications - while the Gimp (with colour profile management capabilities, layers-based approach, programmable filters, vector graphics capabilities, advanced stylus management, etc.) is, actually, used by some professionals... And a direct competitor to Photoshop.
Thus why I found its absence (Paint.NET isn't quite there yet, it does have the merit of being free for use -but not open source- ) a bit surprising.
"Digital SLRs let you save files not just as JPEGs but in a RAW . . . "
So does my point and shoot from 2002 . . . and (I believe all new) Interchangeable Lens Digital Cameras, and lots of point and shoots available today. You could have just said "Many Digital Cameras" rather than implying that Digital SLRs do something that other cameras don't, which is not true.
Traciatim - true, but 1) the CS5 emphasis is very much on the DSLRs judging by the minimal list of cameras covered by the cusotm lens correction (and Adobe refers to only 275 cameras whose RAW formats are supported) and 2) my feeling is usually that point and shoot cameras with small lenses and sensors tend to need the in-camera processing to deliver good images
Photoshop is the ultimate consumer image editing tool. There are lesser tools sold by Adobe that will do for most people with digital cameras, and they are a lot less expensive- Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Lightroom. Of course Gimp and Irfanview are much cheaper options than that for the average person too.
If it was for sale for half-price $300, I doubt sales would double. The same universities and design companies would buy it, but it would still be out of many consumers' price range. At this price range, with spreading of costs the time saved and final quality of the product will justify the price.
...Also you're paying for the ostentatious value.
Student discount FTW! Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard, $299 at Amazon. Won't be available until June 30, though...
"Digital SLRs let you save files not just as JPEGs but in a RAW . . . " So does my point and shoot from 2002 . . . and (I believe all new) Interchangeable Lens Digital Cameras, and lots of point and shoots available today. You could have just said "Many Digital Cameras" rather than implying that Digital SLRs do something that other cameras don't, which is not true.
I would argue that most point and shoots today do not offer RAW. And, most interchangeable lens cameras ARE DSLRs (not all).
@Smochina: what RAW format are you speaking of? If memory serves me (I haven't done photography for a while, I "only" use a tablet and do touch up), there's almost a RAW format per camera...
OK, let's take 'a' generic, 32-bit per pixel, uncompressed RAW format: for a 6 Mpixel camera, that means 24 Mb per image. Times 500, that represents... 12 Gb of RAM required to open the images! Yikes!
You would have to use the 64-bit version of the Gimp on a rig with 16 Gb of RAM for it to behave properly, as it doesn't implement its own memory manager: it relies upon the OS for that.
We get photoshop free in my country. Piracy rocks!
The ruler trick has worked in Photoshop for as long as I remember, but it was obfuscated a little bit - there was no Straighten button, but if you draw a ruler along what should be a straight edge, then go to Image -> Image Rotation -> Arbitrary..., the ruler's angle will automatically be applied. Just click OK and your image is straightened. Works back at least as far as Photoshop 7.
The only new thing there is the "Straighten" button that saves you a few clicks.
I hope the "Content-Aware Fill" feature can remove clothing
I hope the "Content-Aware Fill" feature can remove clothing
lol, no pictures on facebook are safe.
We get photoshop free in my country. Piracy rocks!
You sir, are a thief.
People pay for Photoshop?
A company I worked for a few years ago normally used Adobe Photshop. Tereduce costs the company switched to GIMP. The learning curve was steep but eventually the employees got used to the application.
Corel Photo Psint as part of Corel Draw Suite is better in terms of cost and features. Adobe is nothing but bloated and overpriced software.
@ Viewer: You are comparing apples & oranges. Corel is a vector image creation program used widely in graphic designing. Whereas Photoshop is an image editing software which is the industrial standard. Instead of vectors, it uses bitmaps.
Try editing an image in Corel by its histogram. You won't be able to, coz it doesn't exist in Corel! Also you' have to tear your hair apart if you try creating a high quality bitmap in Corel.
The usage for both is different.
JohnnyLucky,
It is like the WordPerfect versus WORD wars of only 10 years ago. The ageing population of WP users utterly hated the transition to Word. Now, virtually all are competent. Tools are tools, and very few of the "special features" are really useful in day to day processing. Yet that said, some are critical, especially Photoshop's built-in memory manager, that rather smartly deals with aggregate image area well in excess of physical memory.
For instance ... my brother does digitized large-format work. Average "high-quality" images might be 480 dpi, 30" by 40" ... which if you do the math is (480 x 480 x 4 (bytes/32-bit) x 30 x 40) = 1 gigabyte ... without any layers.
Adding the profusion of layers to the image in PS ... can cause it to easily be a 5 to 10 GB file.
Now ... imagine having it open in the middle of "editing", and simultaneously needed a few dozen other images open (to cut, paste layers, do adjusts). 12-15 GB, easily.
CS skims past this potential roadblock without significant productivity impact. Not so for any operating-system based virtual memory consuming application. GRANTED, soon (say in 5 years) the bog-standard machine will have 16+ GB of memory ... and that brother's work is pretty unusual stuff ... but I'm thinking that CS's 25 year old memory managment philosophy is more sound than the competition who have nothing "special".