This latest sneak peek offers a look at Photoshop’s new Iris Blur feature, which by all indications will render any “Bokeh” filters by 3rd parties virtually obsolete for the average designer.
That being said, Bokeh 2 from Alien Skin offers a lot of control over the bokeh filter process, as well as numerous other features that I don’t see in this video – so I suspect photographers and designers who want a richer feature set may still find value in the Alien Skin plugin.
Creating grids using Photoshop’s guides can be a pain in the behind if you’re doing it manually. If you’re working on website designs, you no-doubt find yourself doing this regularly; and hating every moment of it.
Pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baseline guides can be easily created in your Photoshop document with the click of a button using GuideGuide. Frequently used guide sets can be saved for repeat use. Grids can use multiple types of measurements. GuideGuide is available for Photoshop CS4 and CS5+. Best of all it’s free.
Presets migration is now my favorite feature of PS CS6! I always hated upgrades or new computer setups for this very reason. You can do it manually, of course, but it’s a bit of a pain and not very thorough.
The layer duplicate and mutli-layer coloring is a nice touch as well!
Alien Skin Software yesterday announced the immediate availability of Exposure 4, the new version of its photography effects plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Photoshop Lightroom. Exposure provides accurate film simulation and a wide range of creative effects in a simple interface.
Exposure 4 is a great tool for photographers and high-end designers, and carries a rather hefty price of $249 ($99 upgrade). I’m a huge fan of Alien Skin’s plugins for Photoshop. I have not used Exposure 4 yet, but I’ll be testing it out and posting a brief review very soon.
Adobe has released two preview videos to date, showing off a few features of their upcoming version of Photoshop (CS6) due out in the spring. The videos cover the Liquify and Background Save features (I love that they’ve added this to Photoshop), the new Camera Raw capabilities, and a little more of the new dark interface option.
I’ve linked to a lot of free textures here at The Graphic Mac over the years, and there are tons more to be found with a simple Google search. Quite a few of them are paint splatters or textures that you wish you could drop a white background out of. This can be quite tedious to do manually. Thankfully there’s an easier way that works pretty darn well.
MediaMelitia has a fantastic Photoshop Action set called Background Removal that’s free to download and use. The set includes three different actions to achieve different results. One version maintains the color of the foreground image, the other two remove the white background using the color parts as a black mask, as seen above. They offer clear instructions on the download page, along with when you might want to use the different action files.
Simple to use Photoshop action to turn your images into comics
Photoshop actions can save you lots of time by automating tasks. Aside from productivity, they can also be used to create some really cool effects. This action turns your images into colorful vintage comics, complete with oversized halftone dots.
Last August I wrote a brief post sharing some of my favorite tips for speeding up Adobe Photoshop. If you’re new to the site, or using Photoshop, I encourage you to read through the article.
If you want more information, you can read a rather lengthy post directly from Adobe on how to optimize Photoshop that mirrors what I said, as well as adds more in-depth coverage on the topics.
Adobe Photoshop's new appearance
While in early beta stages, Adobe appears to be working on a new, darker interface for the next version of Photoshop that resembles Pixelmator. In addition to the new appearance (which in beta stage at least, offers an option to revert to the existing platinum appearance), Photoshop will feature new 3D tools, healing brush and red-eye reduction enhancements, and a perspective cropping tool. AppleInsider has more details and screenshots here. (more…)