Photoshop
Latest
The best desktop photo-editing apps
Last month we covered the best mobile photo-editing apps, but if you're serious about photography you'll need more than the tools a phone or tablet can provide. Professionals rely on software from Adobe and others because of the power these programs afford them. Combined with shooting in the uncompressed RAW format, dedicated image editing suites allow you to adjust white balance, exposure, sharpness and color at a granular level. That might be a little intimidating for folks used to point-and-shoot cameras or a smartphone, but for professionals and hobbyists, this means they can reproduce the image they saw in their minds when they hit the shutters on their DSLR or mirrorless cameras. Beyond editing tools, some of these software suites also offer ways to organize and share your photos without leaving the app.
Adobe's AI-powered Photoshop update is a time-saver
Adobe has unveiled Photoshop 19.1 with a much-anticipated AI-based feature for photo retouchers and a fix for longstanding Windows display issues. The first feature is called "select subject," and uses Adobe's Sensei deep-learning algorithms to make it much easier to isolate subjects from backgrounds. Adobe sent Engadget a preview copy of Photoshop to test, and I found that it's a big time-saver that doesn't always work, especially if your subject and what's behind it are too similar.
Photoshop uses AI to make selecting people less of a hassle
Masking a human or other subject out of a scene is a pretty common trick nowadays, but it's is still arguably one of the hardest and lowest-tech parts of Photoshop. Adobe's about to make that a lot easier, thanks to an upcoming AI-powered feature called Select Subject. Using it is pretty much idiot-proof: From the main or "Select and Mask" workspaces, you just need to click anywhere on the image, and it'll automatically select the subject or subjects in the image. From there, you're free to change the background or tweak the subject separately.
HP ZBook X2 hands-on: A hulking tablet for a niche audience
HP claims to have made the "world's most powerful detachable." The company is unveiling its ZBook X2 convertible at the Adobe Max conference today, which is appropriate since this device is designed for people who use Adobe's pro software suite. Specifically, people who use apps like Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator and need a capable tablet that can keep up with demanding graphics editing on the go. I enjoyed doodling on the Zbook X2 during a recent demo, but I'm not sure its $1,749 asking price is justified. To be fair, of course, I didn't use it as it was intended and I'm not the target audience.
Palette's Lego-like controls made me a faster video editor
Until robots take over video editing, you'll still have to fiddle with cuts, colors and sound levels. A keyboard is not always the best tool for that, and many control surfaces, like Loupedeck, are strictly targeted at Lightroom users. So what's a video editor to do? One of the more interesting controllers on the market is Palette Gear -- it's expandable, flexible, programmable and looks cool. As I discovered, if you're willing to spend some timing learning and programming, it can make you a faster and better editor, too.
Haunting 'Abandoned Places' float in digital space
"Art is never finished, only abandoned," Leonardo Da Vinci supposedly said, which is maybe why abandonment itself is a popular theme among artists. Abu Dhabi-based Brazilian artist and designer Fábio Araujo has highlighted that loneliness by putting his compact, incredibly detailed "Abandoned Places" creations adrift in a flat, digital sea. Though they resemble movie miniatures, Araujo created the pieces by digital manipulation using an Apple MacBook, Photoshop and Wacom Cintiq tablet.
Google figured out how to flawlessly remove stock-photo watermarks
Watermarks are placed on copyrighted images like stock-photos in order to keep people from using them without permission or without paying. And manually removing them requires Photoshop skills, time and being ok with the image not looking its best post-removal. But Google has found a way around watermarks -- work it recently presented at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference.
Adobe’s 'Playful Palette' makes color mixing artist-friendly
Artists work with real paint by mixing groups of colors on a palette, making for natural blending and color combinations. That's a far cry from Photoshop-type color pickers, which let you grab specific colors but not combine them. Adobe Research has come up with a solution called the "Playful Palette" that gives artists the best of both worlds. It lets you create "blobs" of paint you can blend for gradients and gamuts, while allowing non-destructive edits, infinite history and other digital benefits.
Adobe accidentally released its cloud-based photo editor
It's ever more important to be able to edit your photos on the go. Adobe has stripped-down versions of Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom apps available in both mobile and web-based formats. You manage your photos through Adobe's Creative Cloud system, though, which can be a bit cumbersome, especially when you forget to sync your files. Adobe announced "Project Nimbus" last year, an app that helps simplify the complex interface of Lightroom. According to French site, MacGeneration, the app was just mistakenly made available to Creative Cloud users. The error was caught and remedied soon after by Adobe, but not before some users took screenshots.
Google is done updating its Nik desktop photo-editing tools
Bad news if you're a fan of the Nik Collection of free photo-editing apps: Google has announced it will stop supporting the software suite effective immediately. "We have no plans to update the Collection or add new features over time," a banner atop the Nik Collection website and help center reads. Want in? Then download it now and start importing your photos to see what the fuss is all about.
Adobe demos a virtual assistant for voice-based photo edits
If CES was any indication, voice control and virtual assistants will rule in 2017. While some companies seem to be adding the tools just for the sake of doing so, others are finding some implementations that could actually be useful. Adobe falls into the latter category and the company is showing off what it calls "a first step" towards voice-controlled edits in its design apps.
Photoshop is ready to put your MacBook Pro Touch Bar to work
When Apple replaced the physical function keys on the new MacBook Pro with a swipe-friendly Touch Bar, the company touted its ability to make edits with apps like Final Cut Pro and Photoshop a breeze. While the new laptop has been available for a few weeks now, today Adobe announced that its flagship photo-editing app is ready to play nice with the machine.
Photo editor uses neural networks to airbrush like a pro
Most people think Photoshop is a magical tool that can change reality, but it does require a skilled artist for decent results. Using neural networks, however, University of Edinburgh researcher Andrew Brock has built an uncanny image editing app that can transform someone's entire hairstyle with just the stroke of a brush.
National Geographic won't 'cheat' with digital photos
There's been a backlash against digitally manipulated photos in the media, and frequently for good reasons: heavily edited shots set unrealistic expectations at best, and are outright misleading at worst. And National Geographic is no exception to this truth-in-pictures trend, apparently. The magazine has published a piece both promising "honest" shots and explaining how it screens for Photoshop trickery. It insists that photographers (both pros and Your Shot amateurs) hand over RAW files when possible, and will question anyone who doesn't have those files on hand. This isn't just a theoretical exercise, either -- Nat Geo says there have been times when it rejected images.
Adobe Photoshop adds Content-Aware Crop and font suggestions
Adobe usually announces significant updates to Creative Cloud every six months, and its delivering another right on schedule. While the changes are scattered across all of the apps in the company's software subscription and its stock photo service, we'll focus primarily on Photoshop. For its popular photo-editing app, Adobe is adding a Content-Aware Crop to the collection of smart design tools. Here, the software automatically fills in any gaps that are created when you either rotate and image or expand it beyond its original size. This new cropping option joins the handy Content-Aware Fill and other tools that make quick work of photo edits.
Google makes Nik photo-editing tools free to download
When Google snapped up Nik Software, it acquired not just Snapseed, but also the company's photo-editing plug-ins for Photoshop and Apple Aperture. Now, the company is making those plug-ins completely free to download. The Nik Collection, a suite of seven editing tools that used to cost $150, can mimic the look of classic photography, turn images into dramatic black-and-white photos, adjust colors with filters, tweak HDR images and more.
Adobe Photoshop update brings custom toolbars and artboards
Before the sun sets on 2015, Adobe has another round of updates for its Creative Cloud software. The new features span a number of apps, but we'll focus on Photoshop CC. To boost overall productivity, and to save you time and a few headaches, Adobe is giving the photo-editing software custom toolbars. This means that you'll be able to add, delete and rearrange what appears in that set of tools on the left side of the interface. The new feature allows to you customize the layout of your workspace so that only the items you use are taking up valuable space. In theory, you'll spend less time hunting for the tool you're after, too.
Adobe's Photoshop iOS apps are ready for use on the iPad Pro
If you're a designer or photographer, you're likely champing at the bit to get your hands on an iPad Pro for creative work. To prep for the larger slate's arrival, Adobe updated both Photoshop Fix and Photoshop Mix to take advantage of the tablet's tools. The duo of apps play nice with iOS 9's split-screen multi-tasking, wrangle larger image sizes (Adobe didn't specify how large, though) and offer "basic" support for that newfangled Pencil. Of course, you'll be able to make use of that split-screen feature on other iPads as well. New versions of both apps are available over at iTunes via the source links down below.
Photoshop Fix brings some of Adobe's powerful editing tools to iOS
Remember that tease Adobe gave us during the recent iPad Pro reveal? It was a brief demo of the so-called Project Rigel, and now the creative software company is ready to make the big reveal just before its annual Max design conference starts. The finished product goes by Photoshop Fix, and it'll reside in Adobe's mobile arsenal alongside Photoshop Mix, Photoshop Draw, Illustrator Sketch and the rest of the company's recent releases. You may have noticed there's more than one mobile app with Photoshop in its name. Well, there's a reason for that: productivity. Photoshop Fix will help you take care of retouching photos on that trusty iOS device, and it really works quite well, partially due to the fact that it doesn't try to do too much.
Adobe explains how space images are 'Photoshopped'
It's not exactly a secret that those glorious space images NASA and other space agencies release go through extensive "Photoshopping," just like magazines and billboard ads. Now, Adobe has explained what exactly happens during the post-processing stage in its latest blog post. First of all, the person who does the retouching can't be an ordinary graphic designer: it usually has to be an astronomer. That's because they have to be able to interpret raw data and differentiate image artifacts that need to be erased from vague planets and cloudy nebulae, among other celestial bodies.
