A Review of Photoshop CS6 Beta

The original

For a fun, April Fools Day joke, I decided to put my Florida Gator fan friends into FSU gear. You can see the original picture of them at The Swamp (where the Gators play) all decked out in UF blue and orange. Their hated rivals are the red clad Seminoles of Florida State University.

Edited with Paint.NET

My first go at this was in the free Paint.NET software. I copied the bottom layer and then deleted everything that wasn't a shirt or a hat. Then I separated each article of clothing into its own layer. I changed the colors by using the hue, saturation and lightness adjustments. It worked well for the polo shirt and the visor, but, as you can see, it introduced some artifacts into the tshirt. The difference between the red and the blue was too much and my clone-tool application didn't do enough to fix the problems. The result was an obvious edit that just doesn't look very good. I'm happy with the visor and polo from Paint.NET, but the tshirt just didn't turn out very well.

Edited with Photoshop CS6

So, I downloaded the Photoshop CS6 Beta, which is a free download and will be free to use until they come out with the retail version later in the year. The first thing I noticed was that the selection process was much faster. The smart select tools automatically found the edges of the shirts and hat, though it had trouble differentiating the hair and the visor. I could quickly cut out the clothes and get to work.

Instead of using the hue tools to change the color, I used the color change tool in Photoshop. I was able to select the source color and the destination color, then I just painted over the shirts and the colors changed to the relative tone. That resulted in shades that were much more similar between the shirts, but it also removed the artifacts on the tshirt, which was good.

The content aware fill and spot-healing brushes were invaluable in Photoshop, allowing me to fade in the logo on the polo and remove stray hairs on the tshirt. Overall the tools and options available in Photoshop made the process of editing the picture go much more quickly than with Paint.NET. I'm estimating that it took me 1/4 the time to complete the job in Photoshop versus Paint.NET.

My biggest gripe against Photoshop is that they use a unique control scheme. Where most other programs use a "Ctrl+" scheme to enable different options, Photoshop uses "Alt+" for no apparent reason. More than that, the single level of Undo really annoyed me. The "Ctrl-Z" for Undo is still available in Photoshop, but if you want to step back further than one action in the history you have to press "Ctrl-Shift-Z" which is unnatural and awkward. I've been trained to use the keyboard shortcuts of "Ctrl-Z" and "Ctrl-Y" for Undo and Redo in virtually every other program on every computer platform. There's no reason why Photoshop needed to change things (other than Adobe's need to be different for the sake of being different).

Overall, Photoshop has proven to be a powerful tool that can quickly tackle any editing task, but you'll have to learn the unique and arbitrary control scheme of Adobe to unlock the power of the software.

Picnik is Shutting Down

The online photo editing tool, Picnik, is closing down as of April 19, 2012. Google advises that you "take heed" and find another online or desktop based tool to do your editing. I put together a list of some great alternatives here.

Have you been using Picnik? Are you sad that's it's closing?

Photo Editing Basics: Effects Plugins

Both Paint.NET and Photoshop are super powerful tools for photo editing, partly because there is a seemingly limitless supply of effects that you can use on your pictures. Most of the basic effects are built into the software so you can play with blurring, sharpening or adding lighting effects to any image. But for some of the more specialized effect you might need to find and download the effect as a plugin to your photo editing software.

You can grab Pain.NET plugins here as either a package or individually. Once you've downloaded the plugin you need to install it into Paint.NET (hey, here's a handy tutorial). The simple explanation is that you will extract the contents of the ZIP file to the Extensions folder of your Paint.NET directory.

Photoshop, as a paid program, has a bit more polish to its plugin process. But with that you'll pay for most of the plugins, anywhere from a few bucks to hundreds of dollars. You can browse through the available options at the Adobe Marketplace.

In my experience, Paint.NET needs to have several plugins installed before it has all the features of the stock version of Photoshop, and some of the features of Photoshop may not be available at this point in Paint.NET. However the open source nature of Paint.NET means that developers all over the world are crafting plugins that you can add to your experience for zero monies, versus having to pay for everything in Photoshop.

What's your preference?

Photo Editing Basics: Knowledge

One of the problems that most of us (me, this is my problem) have with photo editing is that we don't really know how to take or develop good photos in the first place. There was a whole culture of photographers with a specialized language (contrast, white balance, composition, etc.) that existed before computers and digital cameras came along. Then photo editing software was written by and for photographers and graphic designers so it's very much like learning a new language. When I first sat down with Photoshop I had no earthly idea what most of the things meant. I still don't know what "Gaussian Blur" means, but I know what it does (in general, don't ask me though). Now there are things like a histogram that I can see on my digital camera if I want, but to me it's all just bumpy lines. For people who know about the science-art of photography it means something.

Getting just a bit of knowledge can make a huge difference in your ability to edit photos well. Take a class at the local community college (and it's a great way to meet people in your neighborhood), read a book or go to a photography exhibit. There are some websites that will help you to understand the fundamentals of photography like "Basic Principles of Photography" and "Principles of Photography."

Composition refers to the elements in a picture and where they are in the shot. The rule of thirds is a compositional help for photographers and photo editors.

Contrast is the difference between light and dark, white and black. Higher contrast will generate a starker image, but may remove some of the subtle details. Brightness is the amount of light from zero (black) to 100 percent (white). Brighter pictures may be easier to see, but the colors get washed out if it's too bright.

Practice taking good photos so you can learn what you want to achieve when you edit photos. Remember, it's all digital, so you can't mess it up. Just keep taking pictures and see what happens. The only way to get better with photos is to get some experience. And that experience will come more easily if you take the time to learn the language.

What photography principles do you find the most helpful? What did I get wrong in this post?

Photo Editing Basics: Layers

One of the more difficult things to figure out with photo editing software like Photoshop or Paint.NET is the inclusion and manipulation of layers. Layers exist within the photo editing software and give you the ability to transform anything under that layer. Imagine a stack of transparent slides, one on top of the other. If you want to draw a funny mustache on the picture, you actually start drawing on the transparent slide over top of the picture. It's essentially the same process in the higher end photo editing programs. Your background layer is you base and you apply different effects over top of that.

Layers allow you to make one set of edits that are independent of other layers. If you put text on one layer you can then move that text around independently of the other layers. If you have more complex effect like light or shadow set up you can move, delete or intensify the effect independent of other effects on the photo.

It will take a while to get used to editing with layers, but it adds quite a bit of power and functionality to the photo editing experience. Spend some time playing with layers (or watch the video below) to get an idea of how layers work. Get familiar with switching between layers.

Note, that when you save a photo in a layered photo editing software that it will use it's own format so that each layer can be preserved. When you save the image as a JPEG format (which you'll need to do to bring the image into PowerPoint), all the layers will be collapsed and you won't be able to undo anything that you've previously done. So, never save over your original image, but rather create an edit-file so you can always start from scratch. Don't save your edited photo as a JPEG until you're done using the editing software.

What tips do you have for editing photos with layers?

Photoshop Elements Layers - Basic Principles - More free videos are here

Photo Editing Software Roundup

Photo editing software is going to be necessary at some point. You'll need to crop, remove red-eye or completely transform an image. The level you get into things is really up to you, but you need to have some tools at your fingertips.

Many thanks to Lifehacker for their useful Hive Five series that gave me a list of the five best image editing tools and the five best online image editing tools.

Desktop software:

Adobe has a slew of photo editing tools that have become the standard in the image editing industry. Photoshop has even become a verb to denote editing an image. The $700-$1000 price tag means that only professionals are going to use the high end software. The next level down is Lightroom which is about $300 and offers all the photo organizing and editing tools that most people will need. Lightroom is focused on giving photographers a way to mess with the pictures they've taken rather than the full on graphic design done in Photoshop. The most stripped down version is Photoshop Elements for $99 which offers great resources and tools (and probably more than most people will ever need). Think of it as what the full Photoshop was three or four years ago.

In the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) camp are GIMP and Paint.NET, which is what I use by the way, I use it because it's free and because it has most everything that I could ever want. I was able to make the graphic header for this blog with Paint.NET and there are a lot of other options available. Basically the difference between Paint.NET and Photoshop is that you'll have to do a lot of things manually in the FOSS that are automated in the Photoshop family. How much are you willing to pay for convenience?

Google offers the Picasa photo organizing software that also has quite a bit of editing power baked in. Just like you can click "I'm Feeling Lucky" when searching with Google, you can click it in Picasa and the software will automatically crank out the adjustments to the image that it thinks are best. If you have a huge database of images with people in them, Picasa has a handy face recognition feature that is fairly accurate. This is also free.

Online Tools:

There are several online image editing tools that allow you to upload your image to their website, edit it and then download the finished product. Most of them share similar features, what sets them apart is the speed of the software. Lifehacker prefers Aviary, but there's also Pixlr, and SumoPaint to consider. If you want to use the Adobe software they now have an online version of Photoshop. Finally, when I need to edit photos online I use Picnik because I like the interface and because you can install it as an app in Google Chrome.

Update: Unfortunately, Google is closing the doors on Picnik, effective April 19, 2012. It's probably a good idea to start learning another online application, if Picnik has become your go-to online photo editor.

What tools are your favorite?

Photo Resources part 4 - Editing

Photo editing can be an overwhelming proposition at times. I know that I've opened up Adobe Photoshop

Learn how to make this at Photoshop Tutorials

and seen the "layers" and "Gaussian blur" and became overwhelmed pretty quickly. It's a powerful tool, but it also has a steep learning curve. If you want custom images that you can't find anywhere else, it will be worth your time to learn how to use Photoshop. Find some good tutorials that will help you swim in the deep end: Photoshop Tutorials has detailed steps for some very complex and fascinating photo manipulation projects. By the way, if you can't afford Photoshop right now, you can get a free open source photo editor that has nearly all the tools from Photoshop, called Paint.Net (it's what I use since I don't do a lot of heavy photo manipulation).

For more of the everyday photo editing tasks (cropping, straightening, removing red-eye, adjusting contrast, etc.) You have many of the feature you need right inside Microsoft PowerPoint
if you're running 2007 or later. You can also use free, online tools such as Picnik (Google has announced they are closing Picnik as of April 2012) or download Picasa to use on your computer. Both give you a simple interface for the basic features that you'll use most of the time as well as the option to get a little bit more detailed and controlled when adjusting things (looked for the "Advanced" button). These tools are generally better learned by just experimenting, they've been designed to be simple and easy to us. You won't get the stunning results of Photoshop, but you also don't have to put in the investment of time to learn it.

What do you use for photo editing?

(Note: links to products that cost money will earn me a small commission if you buy anything.)