REVIEW: The Photoshop Channels Book

Those of you who have followed my blog know that I am frequently recommending Scott Kelby books, so when I recently went to a NAPP sponsored seminar, I decided to take advantage of a sale they had going on and I picked up this somewhat old book by Scott Kelby. It was written for CS2, but all of the concepts still apply for both CS3 and CS4, so I figured it was worth a look.

Chapter by Chapter Comments

Here are my thoughts about each chapter of this book.

Chapter 1 - Channels Basics

This chapter teaches you the basics of channels, explains what an Alpha channel is and how they relate to the Save/Load selection feature.

Chapter 2 - Masking Using Channels

This is where the fun begins because you learn how to make what seem like impossible selections in a way that is so simple you'll just shake your head and smile. For example, before reading this book I could have never made such a complex selection to create the photo you see here (hover over to see what the original looked like):

Can you believe it only took me less than a minute to do 90% of the selection, and just another 5 more to do the rest? No, I'm no selection God - in fact, I'm far from it - instead, I just learned how to do Channel based selection as described in this book and used CS3's quick selection tool to do the rest. When I finished I was wondering where this book had been all my life and why I hadn't found it sooner!

Chapter 3 - Layer Masks & Adjustment Layers

This chapter seemed a bit out of place in this book because it starts by double exposing an image using layer masks, then it goes on to compositing and finally it demonstrates some complex printing press technique.

Layer masks are important, but I must say this is probably the weakest chapter in the book. If you are new to layer masks then this chapter might be helpful - somewhat, but there are better resources on this subject.

Chapter 4 - From Color to Black & White

This is a really outdated chapter that explains how to use channels to create black & white photos. My suggestion is to skip it if you own CS3 or greater as its Black & White converter dialog (described very well in Chapter 7 of The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers) is a much easier way to accomplish what Scott is trying to demonstrate.

Chapter 5 - Channels & Better Color

This chapter starts off with some channel based color enhancements which I didn't find to be of much value as there are better ways to get much better results. Scott finally gets to those better ways in the Creating Vibrant Color section where he starts to discuss LAB color, but like many of the images in this chapter he goes overboard creating some oversaturated looking images. The Blending Channels and Toning Down Highlights sections at the end offer lots of value for real world applications, so they help make this chapter a must read. The last section about Red Eye Repair is also a new twist on this common problem and offers a neat channels based solution I've never seen before.

Chapter 6 - Sharpening with Channels

This section offers a few channel based selection mechanisms for doing sharpening on selective portions of the image and later this chapter even goes into noise reduction (which I didn't find to be especially useful). The sharpening stuff is good, but is easy to go overboard using the techniques described. I'm not sure if Scott will still offer these suggestions as I didn't notice them in some of his more recent books, but still there's some good stuff to know here that might help you out for specific real-world scenarios.

Chapter 7 - Channels & Web Optimization

This is a cool chapter that shows you how to optimize an image so that the alpha channel preserves the detail where you need it and the heavy compression occurs on the non-important potions of the image. I found this to be very useful and very cool. It also includes a short section on color table optimizations which I think are less useful and practical these days.

Chapter 8 - Special Effects Using Channels

I enjoyed some of the tricks discussed in this chapter, but perhaps the one that was the most fun was the texture map example. I decided to use an image of myself to demonstrate this point where I kinda make myself look like Nightcrawler from X-Men 2 using a blueprint image from the book:

This is a very cool technique that has more practical applications like adding tattoos or things like logos to objects. It was pretty easy to do, but the results make it look more tricky than it really is.

The last section shows how to do a transparent shadows trick with channels that truly rocks. This is good stuff, so don't stop reading until you've finished this chapter. The rest of the book after that is just advertising and a short Q&A.

Conclusion

Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Value: Good (because you should be able to get it for much less than the $40 cover price)
Recommendation: Recommended

This is a good book for those who have got a good handle on Photoshop and are looking to take their skills to the next level. While it is true that anyone of any skill level could follow the instructions and memorize the techniques, I think that many would find it a bit overwhelming. It is a short read that is well written (except the intros which are much more lame than usual for Kelby books) and the examples help make the concepts stick. If you are an intermediate to advanced Photoshop user then you'll find this book worth the investment of your money and time.

As a side note, the Maximum Photoshop Tour taught by Dave Cross teaches many of the concepts presented in this book, so that's an alternative way to learn what is taught here if you have the time and the tour is in a city near you.

Maximum Photoshop Tour with Dave Cross

On the first day of my Thanksgiving vacation this year, I had the opportunity to attend a NAPP sponsored seminar entitled the Maximum Photoshop Tour which was taught by Dave Cross.

The Agenda

Below I've listed the agenda exactly as it appeared from my materials. Dave delivered as advertised on all of the topics mentioned:

7 Functions You Never Use but Should 10:00 to 11:00 A.M.

Learn very powerful yet often-overlooked Photoshop functions such as Layer Comps, Calculations, Apply Image, Advanced Blending, Tool Presets and more. Increase your productivity, enhance your workflow, and realize new creative possibilities with these essential Photoshop functions..

Selection Secrets 11:15 A.M. to 12:15 P.M.

Make selections like a master! Discover the secrets to making great selections, quickly and easily, each and every time using Photoshop CS4 selection tools and Channels.

Photoshop Fixes 1:15 to 2:15 P.M.

Learn how to quickly fix many of Photoshop's most common image problems. Repair white balance problems and harsh shadows, fix blown out image details, and learn how to colorize black and white photos and objects and much more.

Photo Effects & Finishing Touches 2:30 to 3:45 P.M.

Your Photoshop masterpiece is almost complete, but you need a last little something for that finishing touch. A border effect perhaps, or maybe a color treatment to add some "pop." This class is all about adding a finishing touch to your images, including frames, photographic effects, dramatic lighting effects, adding texture, and much more. You'll learn how to create special effects in very flexible, editable ways that are just the tip of the iceberg, giving you countless possibilities.

Get Smart with Photoshop 4:00 to 5:00 P.M.

So, you think you know Photoshop? No matter how experienced you may be with Photoshop, this class will take your skills to the next level! Learn how to take full advantage of Layers, Adjustment Layers, Smart Objects, Smart Filters, Actions and Variables, and create fantastic re-usable templates that are sure to make your workflow easier.

My Thoughts

When I first entered the classroom and saw what seemed to be a thousand people, I got concerned that this course was going to be fairly useless. I was fortunate enough to get a good seat up in the front row so I could get a good view of the huge projector (there were two). While the class was large, it was well prepared and the hand out materials were excellent. I was also able to walk up and stand in a short line to ask Dave a question which he happily answered without any sarcasm, so I felt he was very accessible during the class.

The price with my NAPP discount was only $79 and the savings offered on books and DVD's were very good during the show, so overall it was an excellent value. I definitely got my monies worth.

In the end, I highly recommend these courses as they seem to be an excellent value and a quick way to learn a lot in a short period of time. Scott's books are probably just as good, so if you learn very well from reading books then you can skip these class, but for those who like to be trained in real life then I think these are a great value.

Don't forget, you can save big if you join NAPP and much of the materials taught in these courses are already available to NAPP members.

REVIEW: onOne Software Genuine Fractals 6.0 Professional Edition

 

For those of you who are in the stone ages, Genuine Fractals is the defacto standard used by professional printers to resize images prior to printing. It is also used by a ton of web developers who want to resize images without jaggy artifacts when publishing images to the web. In this article, I try to determine if it is as great as its reputation or if Photoshop CS3 has finally gotten good enough to make this program obsolete.

NOTE: This article was not done with Photoshop CS4 because I do not currently own CS4 due to Adobe's bizarre upgrade policy (you can't downgrade from CS3 Design Premium to just CS4 Photoshop).

Photoshop CS3 versus Genuine Fractals 6.0 Downsizing Comparisons

When using the default settings with sharpening turned off from Genuine Fractals 6.0, you'll notice that CS3 does a pretty good job - in fact I'd say it is a bit better than Genuine Fractals 6.0:

However, that's now how you're supposed to do resizing because the best results are achieved when you sharpen just before saving. As a result, check out this version which uses the default sharpening settings of Radius 2, Amount 100, Threshold 30:

The sharpened version is much better, but I still prefer the Photoshop version because there's a slight artifact at the bottom of the fourth star on the bottom of the left gate as shown magnified here:

For those who are interested, I've included the settings used in both products below. Click on the image of the Genuine Fractals dialog to see a larger version with legible text.

Genuine Fractals 6.0 Default Resize Values

Photoshop CS3 Default Resize Values

In The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers Scott Kelby suggests that for reduction you should use Bicubic (best for smooth gradients) when downsizing (instead of the Bicubic Sharpener (best for reduction) option used above), so I also tried that and here's the result:

In this case, excluding the artifact bug, I prefer the Genuine Fractals 6.0 version (hover in and out of the picture to compare both versions).

Photoshop CS3 versus Genuine Fractals 6.0 Upsizing Comparisons

Here's a portion of the original image cropped at 100%:

Here's the results of a 100% crop of a portion of the same area after a 200% upsize with GF6 (no sharpening) defaults:

Here's a similar 100% crop of a 200% resize using Photoshop CS3's "Bicubic Smoother - (Best for Enlargements)" option in one resize (versus the conventional wisdom that says do your upsizing in 10% increments:

In my opinion the previous GF6 version looks a bit better and sharper than the Photoshop version. However, in The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers Scott Kelby suggests that you should resize in one step using the Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction) option - yes, you read that right - use the reduction option when enlarging! Anyway, here's the results using that option:

In this case, I'd have to say that Kelby was right because you get results that pretty much match those of Genuine Fractals 6.0 in my opinion. Kelby credits Vincent Versace with teaching him this technique, and I've gotta say that Vincent is on to something!

What's New in GF6

The web site does a good job of explaining what's new for Genuine Fractals 6.0, but my favorite features are the Gallery Wrap feature, the Tiling feature, and Batch Processing. Unfortunately all of these features are found in the Professional Edition only, so don't bother with the Standard Version.

Gallery Wrap

If you've ever done a canvas, then you know that you need a little extra space in your image for the canvas to wrap around the wood mount. This simple, but wonderful feature makes that a snap to do when you are already using Genuine Fractals to resize your image to its final destination size.

Tiling Feature

Have a small printer, but want to make a huge print of something (practically speaking, think things like flow charts)? This is your feature as will do the hard work of breaking your image up for you so that you can print and piece it together later.

Batch Processing

Have a directory full of images that you need to resize? Well now you can do it quickly and easily with this very useful feature.

What about the Lightroom Support?

Well that was one of those features I got excited about when I saw it, but the real implementation is a bit lame as it is really little more than a droplet which means Photoshop must be installed on your machine.

To use Genuine Fractals in Lightroom 2.0, you don't use the Export dialog as you might imagine but instead you use the File | Plug-In Extra's menu (yeah, I didn't know it existed either) which presents you with this dialog:

From there I suppose it would take you into Photoshop and give you the express dialog, but I never got that far. My CS3 installation is a bit flaky since I installed then uninstalled the CS4 trial version, so now I just get a droplet error when I try this. While I'm sure a clean installation would produce a better result, I'm not seeing anything here that makes me want to use the Lightroom support directly so I consider this to be a non-feature.

What about Alienskin Blow Up 2?

If you are like me and you've been seeing ads for Alien Skin's Blow Up 2 product, then you probably wonder if it is any good. I did too, so I downloaded the demo and put it to the test just a point of reference:

All I can say is WOW - that's good! This was with its default settings and no sharpening as shown here in its UI (which renders the results in near real-time):

I think onOne has a stiff new competitor in town so stay tuned for my upcoming review of this and other products from Alien Skin Software.

What's the Verdict?

Before I wrote this article, I had been super happy with Genuine Fractals 6.0 for downsizing images because everything I've ever thrown at it has turned out very well. If you've read some of my recent reviews then you've seen GF6 in action. For example, here's a recent photo that I was very pleased with:

It not only resized the image of the car nicely, but it did a reasonable job with the text and thumbnail images. However, when I wrote this article I decided to throw a very tough and complicated image to it so I'd put it to the test, and I'm sad to say it didn't perform as well as I would have hoped.

I can say that printing experts I've talked to say that when you are taking high res images and making them larger, the results are significantly better. However, nothing in this article has given me any significant proof of that. In fact, Blow Up 2 has blown my mind and shown me that a seriously good alternative exists.

The moral of the story is that you can still get reasonable results compared to GF6 using tried and true techniques in Photoshop. In addition, if you outsource your printing and web publishing (i.e., Smugmug, Flickr, 3rd Party) then you may never need to own this product as others will do the resizing for you. You just send your highest resolution images to these sites and let them do the rest. However, if you really need to do some serious resizing then you might want to take a look at Alien Skin's Blow Up 2 .

The problems seen with GF6 in this article causes reason for concern, but I know the folks at onOne will be working hard to address the problem and this isn't likely to occur with more typical photos. However, it is clear that the competition is heating up in this space so the new kid on the block (Blow Up 2) might cause some pain for onOne until they can catch up.

TIP: For best results save and then temporarily flatten your image before resizing an image with Genuine Fractals, and for the love of God don't have a smart filter in your layers palette or else you'll be waiting a long time for the resize.

Special Offer

Please visit the Discount Coupon Code page for a discount when you buy directly from onOne Software. You can also try out a free demo  and watch some cool videos so you can see if this product is right for you.

Please use this link when purchasing from Alien Skin software. Unfortunately they have discontinued all coupon codes at this time from all sites.

Smugmug Metallic Prints ROCK!!!!!!

 

Over the holidays I decided to use a little spare Christmas cash from my parents to order some prints of my favorite photos. In doing this, I decided I'd try out Smugmug's new metallic prints. I ordered two 8 x 12 images (one shown above), and 3 8x10's and all I can say is WOW! These prints rock! Sadly, I can't show you how cool they are, so all I can suggest is that you try it out for yourself and order at least 1 4x6 print in the metallic format the next time you get a chance. I promise you that you'll be super jazzed with the results.

For those who are interested, the metallic print is just a white paper with a shiny metallic finish (i.e.,  the paint on a white metallic car) and the paper used is the Kodak Professional ENDURA Metallic Paper.

If you aren't a Smugmug user, then you can either consider joining them now or use ezprints.com.

REVIEW: Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 1.0

NOTE: A 15% discount on Nik Software for readers of this blog by entering the code rmartinsen when you order online or call to place an order. This offer NOW INCLUDES bundles!

**** SEE MY NEW Silver Efex Pro 2.0 Review ***

I'll admit that Black and White photography isn't really my thing, but I can appreciate a good one when I see it. When doing this review I decided to pour through my photos and find some that might be fun to try out with black and white to see if Nik Silver Efex Pro was really worth the cost of upgrading from the very good black and white conversion features built into Photoshop CS3 and up.

In the first image you see in this article, I chose the Dark Sepia effect with the Kodak 100 TMAX Pro film choice. Overall I was very pleased with the results and felt it didn't take away from the original color version (available via a mouse over). In fact, I liked it a lot!

Next, I decided, what would it look like if I decided to go for a more grungy aged photo look, so I chose the Antique Plate II filter as shown below:

Now I had something that I thought looked truly authentic, even if my tendency is to enjoy the sharpness and dark colors of the first one. I was starting to enjoy this product and experimenting even more.

Next up was my favorite Geshia photo since I was curious how it could take a portrait and give it that old fashion charm. Now this was just a candid shot taken in Kyoto, Japan of a real maikosan (apprentice geisha) that I enjoy very much so I was curious if it would take away from the charm of the photo to lose its rich colors in favor of black and white. For this one I chose the Soft Skin B&W filter and used the Kodak ISO 32 Panatomic X film selection:

In this case, I still prefer the color version but I thought it was a fun touch on a beloved photo.

Next up I decided to do what I think most people do when they choose black and white (or so it seems) - rescue an otherwise crappy photo by giving it that old black and white charm. In this case, it was just a lame street photo during a recent snow. For this one I customized quite a bit from the Push Process N+1 filter and removed all of the noise grain this filter adds. I also burned the edges to get this result:

The result here was a little charm to an otherwise dull snow scene, and more fun playing around in Silver Efex Pro.

The User Interface

I'm a big fan of Nik Software's U-Point technology and it's fantastic Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete product, so I had a good idea of what to expect in the user-interface for this product. However, given the fact that this program just makes black and white photos, I didn't think there would be too much stuff it needed to do so the interface would be fairly simple like Nik Software Viveza 1.0. However, I'm please to report there's a lot of cool stuff in here to give you a lot of control over how to present your black and white images. This interface makes this product very fun to experiment with and you'll quickly find yourself spending more time than you expected coming up with the perfect black and white effect.

Conclusion

This is a fun product which anyone who enjoys black and white photography will certainly enjoy. it provides a ton of flexibility and its built-in features will allow for excellent results in a short time. I think that Wedding photographers will simply love it for the work they do with black and whites, so if your business depends on black and white photography I think you'll find it worth the investment to own this product.

If you are like me and only dabble in black and white photography occasionally then its $200 price tag will be hard to justify. I can't afford it, so I won't be adding it to my collection right now but when I do I'll definitely use the 15% discount on Nik Software for readers of this blog by entering the code rmartinsen when ordering online (or call to place an order). This offer excludes 3rd party software, bundles and upgrades.

**** SEE MY NEW Silver Efex Pro 2.0 Review ***

REVIEW: Canon 5D Mark II - Canon FINALLY gets back into the game with Nikon

Updated 12/8/09

For the 3 or 4 Canon shooters left who survived the painful last 15 months or so since Nikon introduced the D3 and promptly made everything Canon makes look like toys, it is time to rejoice. Canon has finally got its head out of its a$$ and responded - and then some!

Rather than go over the well known features of this camera, I will point you to numerous resources that already exist. For example, Canon offers a 77 page whitepaper that discusses the technical merits of the 5D Mark II as well as comparing it to the 5D it replaces and its expensive sister the 1Ds Mark III. It also has an intro site, product tours, the manual and more on its site.

Canon is spending a fortune to promote this camera as the savior to its brand which has found itself fall second to Nikon for the first time in many years. In fact, while my girlfriend was in Tokyo she just so happened to be right next door to the Canon world headquarters for the 5D Mark II launch in November and was given a bunch of great info on the 5D Mark II(unfortunately its only in Japanese):

There are also reviews at the following sites:

• Digital Photography Review
• The Digital Picture
• Canon-Reviews.com

and you can find a bunch of links at http://www.planet5d.com. Enough of that though, let's get down to business and look at some pictures and videos.

Sample Pictures

For this article I decided to do a controlled experiment where I took my photos indoors, under regular household lights, without using a flash using whatever I could find at the time in my house. In this case, a bottle of wine (complete with dust intentionally left untouched) and a hip-hop singing Seahawks frog. The purpose of this was to take shot that the "average Joe" could get.

I chose to use the "kit" lens (which I had purchased previously with my XTi back in February 2007), which is the only lens in my collection that I have owned from day 1 in my adventures into digital SLR photography.

The picture shown first in this section was taken on a tripod using mirror lockup and ISO 100 (which meant a long 2 second exposure) with a 2 second timer to avoid any camera shake from my finger pressing the button. I used f/8 to show the sweet spot of this lens. I will confess that this version has been processed slightly and downsized using onOne Genuine Fractals 6.0 so it would grab attention, but if you click on the image it will take you to the original on SmugMug where you can choose the O option to see the original unprocessed JPEG.

ISO and 1D Mark III Comparisons

It looks pretty awesome if you ask me, but what about higher ISO's? What about comparing it to a pro camera? Well, I had those same questions so I thought I'd conduct a little experiment. Of course, I didn't have a 5D or a 1Ds Mark III, so I had to settle for a comparison against my 1D Mark III pro sports camera ($4500 retail).

All images were exported from Canon's Digital Photo Professional 3.5.1 as JPEG with 10 for compression with no modifications from their original CR2 images.

The images shown in the left column (assuming your browser is formatting properly) are from the 5D Mark II. Both cameras were set to Auto White Balance and the 5D Mark II seemed to do a much better job of removing the yellow from the lights.

For each ISO I include a value in parenthesis for the exposure. I shot using Av mode, so this is the value that the camera chose. The versus value is for the Canon 1D-Mark III which was consistently slower. This confirms my belief that the 5D Mark II can be perfectly matched with the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM because it is such a "fast"/"bright" camera, so you can get the "speed" that was once only found in the 24-70mm f/2.8L USM but with the added benefit of the IS found in the 24-105 (at least until Canon comes out with the much hoped for 24-105 f/2.8L IS USM).

ISO 400 (0.6 sec exposure vs 1.0 sec)

 

ISO 800 (1/3 sec exposure vs 0.4 sec)

 

ISO 1600 (1/8 sec exposure vs 1/5 sec)

ISO 3200 (1/15 sec exposure vs 1/8 sec)

ISO 6400 (1/30 sec exposure vs 1/15 sec)

ISO H1 - 12,800 (1/60 sec exposure)

ISO H2 - 25,600 (1/125 sec exposure)

The net result is that the 5D Mark II images are better exposed and have a better white balance out of camera. It's a brighter camera with an extra two stops of ISO so it makes for an outstanding travel camera where light is typically less than ideal.

A surprising thing to me is just how fast this camera is. To prove this I conducted a test with both cameras using the same exact lens and settings. I used the same 24-105mm AF off, IS on, ISO 400, 1/3200, f/8.0 with the lens cap on writing to the same SCREAMING FAST Sandisk Extreme III 8GB (30/mb sec) and the results were shocking:

• 1D Mark III (in L 3fps mode) - 24 RAW exposures 15 seconds to flush the buffer
• 5D Mark II - 17 RAW exposures 10 seconds to flush the buffer

In fact, the write speed of the 5D Mark II was so good that its post buffer full wait time was about half of the 1D Mark III. The amazing fact here is that the 1D Mark III is only writing 14MB files whereas the 5D Mark II is writing 24MB files, so this camera is FASTER than its pro equivalent! In JPEG L mode, the 5D Mark II seems to run endlessly (56 frames until buffer delay), so you can really use this for sports (think kids soccer games).

Is it so good that it out resolves the lenses?

Ken Rockwell suggests that the Canon 5D Mark II is so good that it will out resolve most lenses and make zooms under perform. While I wish this were the case, I think you'll find that you are very happy with any quality lens you choose with this camera - zoom's included.

Sample Video

The cool thing about the 5D Mark II is that it saves its files in Apple's Quicktime (MOV) format which means the video is silky smooth with fantastic quality. If you see any skipping or problems with these videos then it is your machine or Internet connection, not the source videos.

Canon has some sample videos on its web site, and there's some REALLY COOL aerial footage, but I thought I'd do my own experiment with my singing frog:

While I'll doubt that there will be a Golden Globe sitting on my doorstep anytime soon for that video, what you can see is that the picture quality is very good. In fact, I'd say outstanding. In fact, if you compare the video to the still images, they appear to be very comparable.

Video Gotcha's

There's a few caveats that I've learned about video on the 5D Mark II. While it is true that you can record full 1080p video in all its glory, the way you do it is going to be entirely different than what you'd do with your HD camcorder or even point and shoot.

The first thing, and this is probably the most important, is that you have to manually focus for video which means you either set your lens to focus on infinity or your pick your point and stick with it without moving your camera body for the entire video clip (for best results).

The second thing, and it is really an annoying thing for me, is that the ISO will auto adjust upwards to 6400 ISO to get the shot, which will result in video that isn't going to make you super happy. Sure some of the sample videos on Canon's web site were shot in 3200 ISO and still look pretty good but it is obvious they've either been post-processed or had lights on the set to get those kind of results. The short of it is that you and I aren't going to get those kind of results, but that's okay.

The third thing is that you are limited to a 4GB video file on your CF card because CF cards in Canon cameras use the FAT file system and that's as large as files go on that file system. I've read this translates into about 12 minutes of HD video, so plan accordingly. Honestly though, I don't want to watch your videos if they are > 12 minutes for a single scene (yes, even if Jessica Alba was naked)!

Lastly, and perhaps the most annoying to some, is that while you are recording you can't change your settings (other than manual focus). However, I'm fine with this one since proper video is supposed to be done in short clips and fused together using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 Video Editing Software for Windows (Mac) or Adobe Premiere Elements 7 Video Editing Software.

What does all of this mean? Well, with some careful planning (just like Photography) you can get some amazing video as Canon and others have proven. For people like me who just want to grab a video of something like my son's birthday party, you'll find it easy to get bumpy and out of focused shots in real world applications. In short, don't sell your HD camcorder just yet.

Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and the 5D Mark II

Unfortunately Adobe has chosen to block support for the 5D Mark II in Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom 1.x, so if you want native support you'll have to upgrade to the latest versions. Of course, Adobe's upgrade (or more specifically downgrade) policies are bizarre, so be careful in that adventure that you don't end up with an upgrade that doesn't work (like I did when I tried to downgrade from CS3 Design Premium to just CS4 Photoshop - that's not allowed).

If you can't afford the upgrade now, then you can get the DNG Converter with RAW 5.2 support and convert your images to DNG format (embed your raw's if you are paranoid) before you try to use them in older Adobe products. Here's the settings I used which took about 12 seconds each to convert the RAW files to DNG on a quad-core Dell XPS 420 system running 32-bit Windows Vista with 3GB of RAM:

This of course has the nasty side effect of taking the already huge 23MB CR2 files and turning them into larger 44MB files, but if you don't embed the original (which makes me nervous) it takes about half the time and results in a smaller 20MB dng file. However, once you've done this you can open the file in Lightroom or Photoshop and work on it as normal without submitting to extortion by Adobe as shown here:

Alternatively you could convert your images into TIFF files in Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP) that comes with the camera, but that results in files that are over 100MB. While DPP arguably has a better RAW convert than Adobe Camera Raw 5.2, personally I just stick with the added flexibility that ACR adds to my workflow.

If you are using Lightroom 2.2 you have a third option that is probably the best. When you choose the option in Lightroom to edit your photo in Photoshop or open as a smart object you'll get this dialog:

Simply choose Render using Lightroom and Lightroom will create a PSD file for you and then open that in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS3. This is  a great workaround, so I am pleased to see that Adobe isn't leaving its loyal Lightroom customers out in the cold.

Live View Enhancements

Live View is probably the most misunderstood feature in the digital SLR photography community. Because point and shoot cameras have a video display on the back to allow you to take pictures instead of using the view finder, people assume that Live View is for doing point and shoot with a DSLR. However, the reality is that the view finders are so terrible on point and shoots that the LCD shooting is necessary to see something that will actually look like your final image, but in the case of DSLR's the purpose is different.

For DSLR's there are times when your image through the view finder simply can't tell the whole story to help you get the best focus and sharpest image. While the autofocus systems are good, they are still no substitute for a trained eye and a precise manual focus. To aid in this process (think macros and landscapes), Live View was introduced.

This was a great win for photographers, but with its arrival on the Canon 1D-Mark III and 40D came a slew of complaints that it didn't support autofocus because people misunderstood it to be a point and shoot feature making its way to the DSLR world. As a result of this many people never took advantage of Live View, but not me. I loved live view because it allowed me to get precise 10x zooming so I could focus when doing macros like this and get both the trumpet and seeds in clear focus (by striking a focus balance between the two - something autofocus would never do - it's one or the other).

In the 5D Mark II Canon has conceded and added autofocus to Live View - with one exception - you have to hold the AF ON button to get it to autofocus, which I'm sure will irk the clueless masses. However, for me this is great because it gives you a faster starting point for autofocus before you have to dial in the exact focus intention of your shot. This combined with support for video live view (I've gotta admit - video through the LCD is always going to be better than through the view finder) means that rear display is more important than ever. Which leads me to my next topic...

FANTASTIC Rear Display

Oh my God, if there is one thing that I notice right away on the 5D Mark II that stands out above all other Canon's is the AMAZING high resolution rear display at 920,000 pixels (4x over the 1D Mark III's display) means that 10x zooms are super crisp and clear. You no longer think you need stronger glasses when zooming because ever detail is in crisp clear focus - woohoo!!!!! Using Live View for Landscapes where you are doing a 10x zoom on a far away object to check your focus (for your narrow aperture shots) is going to be heavenly!

More megapixels that really count!

Have you ever wondered why consumer point and shoot cameras with 12 megapixels don't create images that look way better than DSLR's with only 8 megapixels?

Sure, part of it can be attributed to the DSLR having a better lens, but that's not it - the answer lies in the sensor size and the ratio of pixels to that sensor size. The net result here is that more megapixels aren't always a good thing such as the case of the Canon 50D which has 15 megapixels versus the 40D which only has 10, yet the 40D has less grainy images. As a result of this, some pundits were expecting the 21 megapixel 5D Mark II to be inferior to the Nikon D3 and D700 and some were even expecting its predecessor the 5D to be better at high ISO noise performance and overall picture quality. However, Canon has shown what they've spent the last year doing in their long overdue release of the 5D Mark II - they've figured out how to get more megapixels and better quality out of a huge full frame sensor that will simply blow your mind!

UPDATE: If you want to do some head to head comparison with better images, check out this site where you can see images taken with a 1Ds Mark III and Nikon D3x right next to the 5D Mark II. To my eyes, the 5D Mark II is the clear winner against Nikon D3x in terms of color (the D3x has a blue tint), exposure (the D3x is a bit overexposed), and focus but it has a slide edge in sharpness (which can be done in Photoshop). The 1Ds-Mark III is very close, but does seem to have a slight advantage in black level and sharpness, but not enough to justify the extra cost.

Conclusion

While it still ranks 4th behind Nikon's amazing D3 and D700, as well as the super expensive 1Ds Mark III, I think that its added features and USABLE megapixels make it the best camera on the market today. It's fast, it takes amazing pictures which need little post processing, it is very well built, easy to use and at $2700 it is reasonably affordable for what you get compared to its closest competitors the 1Ds Mark III at $6500 and the Nikon D3x at $8000 neither of which can do video!

Run, don't walk to order yours...

If you've been on the fence about upgrading, fear not your wait is over. This is THE camera to own if you have an investment in Canon lenses, and Adorama (where I purchased mine) was the only online place I've seen that is consistently taking (and filling) orders:

• Canon 5D Mark II Body Only
• Canon 5D Mark II w/ 24-105 f/4.0L IS USM (save $200)

NOTE: The 5D Mark II picture in this article is courtesy of Canon USA.

onOne Software knocks another $100 off Plug-in Suite 4.2 - save $970!!!

*** THIS OFFER HAS EXPIRED ***

please refer to the version 4.5 article for more information

For a limited time only, onOne Software has reduced the $499.95 bundle price to $399.95 and is throwing in a CS4 training DVD! If purchased separately this bundle would cost $1369.95, so it is a pretty sweet deal!

Buy now and qualify for a free upgrade to version 4.5 which will include an all-new version to PhotoTools in January 2009.

I'm a big fan of the new PhotoFrame 4.0 and Genuine Fractals 6.0 (the industry standard for resizing photos for perfect prints), so this is a sweet deal that's too good to pass up.

Happy Holidays!

Cool PhotoFrame 4.0 Tip

In playing with PhotoFrame 4.0 I was pleased to see the cool background they had, but despite looking at the videos on the web site I couldn't figure out how (within PhotoFrame) to create a frame that punched a hole through a background like the photo shown above. Thanks to Brian Kraft at onOne Software, I finally know how now. Here's the directions:

1. Add background
2. Add instant frame
3. Go to Frame menu and select "Invert"
4. Change the instant frame color to "Transparent"
5. Make sure your options are set to "Apply to new layer"

PhotoFrame 4.0 Holiday Pack Releases

Just in time for the holiday season, onOne Software has released a holiday pack for PhotoFrame 4.0 which features 25+ new frames including some very cool layouts like the one shown in this article. Go get your holiday pack here, and refer to my review of PhotoFrame 4.0 for details on how to get a discount on this cool new product. You can even try to make your own, like I did below, but trust me you'll want to use the cool new ones created by 'the pros" at onOne!

REVIEW: onOne Software's Photoframe 4.0 Professional Edition

Truth be told, I wasn't very impressed with version 3.x of this product. I felt the UI was way too cumbersome, the frames were so cheesy that I couldn't understand how any real photographer would use them, and time spent using the product didn't justify the output. As a result, I just never really used this product. In fact, onOne Software even contacted me after my review and asked me to share what it was I didn't like about the product, and I didn't hold back. I explained how I thought the frames were cheesy, the user-interface sucked, and the results were something I'd be embarrassed to have my name associated with. They said they heard my feedback loud and clear and felt they had an answer to my complaints. With the 4.0 release, I can honestly say that they were right. They've come up with something that I'd actually use and I'm excited about this cool new product.

What's Changed

Well to avoid sounding like a press release as I had in a previous post, I'll just list what I've observed the best new features are of this product:

1. All-new UI with a usable way to view frames.  One of the things I hated about the previous release was that I had to scroll through a bunch of acid burn frames with the only differences being something minor like color. The worst part was that there was no live preview, so it was a hassle to see what the frame looked like on my frame - no more. Now all frames are automatically shown in a preview area with resizable thumbnails and a mechanism for filtering or ranking what is shown. The short story is that you can now find good frames fast and instantly see what they look like - as you would expect a program like this to do!
2. Better Quality Frames - Try as I did, I just couldn't find frames in the previous release that I'd actually use on my photos. In fact, there's only one occasion where I've ever used one and that was on this photo where I was trying to hide a defect in the image and this preset was the only thing I could tolerate.
3. Great Layer Support - This stuff works as you would expect where the frame is a layer that can be turned on and off.
4. Improved Performance - I've found the performance of this release to be quite usable compared to its predecessor.
5. Layouts - These are fantastic and shown here in the first two frame images I am using. They are basically pre-build composite frames that are really cool, but they are currently only in the Wedding and Senior Portraits groups, but this is where I see the future being very bright for this product. These are things I'd really use!

So What's it Really Like Ron?

The new user experience is great because you are immediately shown a preview window of all of the frames in thumbnails and you can filter down the noise really quickly by typing in keywords or selecting groups. This is a really great design, but to make it even better they've added the ability to rank your frames. This is a nice touch, so the productivity of this version goes WAY up.

Once you start working with your image and frames the sky is the limit and it is all easy to understand since it uses the same layers concept as Photoshop. The tools are a little quirky in places still (i.e., my copy wouldn't allow me to reduce the size of my image using the slider, so I had to type manual figures or do a ALT+Move to reduce the image) and it definitely works better with smaller files, but overall these are  little bugs I suspect which will be addressed in the first update. The bottom line here is that after you get used to what frames are available and you know what you are looking for, it doesn't take long to get great results fast.

Another great thing they do in all onOne products is include a great library of video tutorials, and this version is no different. As a result you can quickly see how to do any task in the product with a nice real world demo.

But wait, there's more...

The problem with most frame software is that you get tired of the frame choices pretty quick, so the only solution to this problem is to include a ton in the product. This of course makes it hard to know what you have available, so less is more. onOne heard me loud and clear on this one and they've done the best compromise by only including the better frames and making additional frames available online so that you can get fresh frames in the future. I can see this catching on with the community and some really great frames for Christmas, etc... coming out. I love this approach and I think it will really make this product more useful over a longer period of time.

In addition to the cool layouts, they've included some really cool backgrounds like brick, fabrics, etc... (some of which were used in the layouts) as well as the most awesome set of film frames I've seen to date. There's some really good stuff in the box here, so I'm very excited about using these frames on upcoming projects.

Conclusion

With great power comes great complexity, so there's plenty more here that I need to learn. However, I'm happy to see that even without much knowledge I can get some very cool results in a hurry. I like PhotoFrame 4.0 quite a bit and I highly recommend it for those who are looking for something more than just the simple cheesy frame templates we find on the web all of the time. This is a cool product with some exciting stuff to come as the community embraces it and starts to build some great frames for the holiday season.

Don't forget that if you use coupon code RMART20 you can save 10% off when you buy directly from onOne Software. You can also try out a free demo  and watch some cool videos of this baby in action so  you too can see just how cool this stuff really is.