photoshop

Adobe extends Photoshop to mobile phones

Adobe Systems has gradually extended its Photoshop brand from its beginnings as high-end image-editing tool to its Elements consumer-oriented photo software and its Express online photo-editing site.

Now, the company has begun taking the next step with Photoshop.com Mobile (see previous coverage). The software is the "easiest way to upload, view, and share photos online from your Windows Mobile phone," according to Adobe.

This software lets people upload photos from their phones to Photoshop.com and view photo albums stored online, according to the site. The beta software, a free download for people in the United States, … Read more

Adobe releases Creative Suite 4

Adobe released details Monday about Creative Suite 4, its first update to more than a dozen design and editing tools since Adobe CS3 some 17 months ago.

The costs of the applications, set to reach consumers in October, haven't changed since CS3, but remain hefty. Should longtime users upgrade?

Of course that depends on the specific tools you need. However, we suspect that only the most well-heeled will jump at the chance, as CS4 shares the majority of tools with its predecessor. Perhaps more dramatic, life-changing alterations will come with the next Creative Suite. That said, time-saving tweaks to … Read more

Adobe uses graphics chip for faster Photoshop CS4

Photoshop is a famously taxing piece of software, but beginning with the upcoming CS4 version, it'll be able to employ the muscle of your computer's graphics chip for the first time.

The new version of Adobe's flagship software product takes its first steps in using the graphics processing unit, or GPU, said John Nack, principal product manager for Adobe Photoshop. For example, the graphics chip helps Photoshop CS4 fluidly zoom in and out, rotate the canvas so artists can reorient an image for the best sketching angle, display and manipulate 3D objects, and handle color correction.

"It's not lost on us that when you look at the rate of GPU power advancement, there's an enormous wealth of cycles we can take advantage of now," Nack said. "The rate of price drop and performance gain has been off the charts."

Using graphics chips opens up new horizons, but it poses its challenges. For one thing, graphics chips are designed to blast pixels to the screen, not back to the main processor for further work, so not all tasks can be accelerated, he said. For another, it means Adobe has to work more carefully on hardware compatibility and means some people with older machines might have to upgrade at least the video card; he recommends a card with 128MB of memory.

"Typically, when folks were building a big Photoshop rig...we never had to really concern ourselves with things like which video driver they were using. We had a very light integration. Anything was fine," Nack said. "Now that we're doing actual processing on the GPU, we have to be a good deal more stringent." … Read more

Adobe sets date for CS4 launch

Adobe on Tuesday said it will launch an update to its flagship Creative Suite software bundle on September 23.

The company has offered few details of the planned CS4 release. The current iteration of the suite, CS3, is offered in several configurations that include various combinations of the company's core applications, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Acrobat and InDesign.

Just ahead of the CS3 launch last March, Adobe made available a public beta test version of Photoshop CS3. For CS4, the company in May posted "preview versions" of its Dreamweaver Web design software, Fireworks image editing application, … Read more

Adobe gets an e-earful, and listens

A lot of people use Adobe Systems software, and apparently a lot of them feel the need to vent.

Web designer Erik Frick created the Dear Adobe site where users can enter gripes and vote for or against others' gripes. "It started from a conversation between Adam (Meisel) and myself complaining about Photoshop. Both of us being Web design nerds, we figured, 'Why not create a forum for people to vent? Who knows, maybe Adobe will listen,'" he said Tuesday on the site's inaugural blog posting.

Sure enough. Photoshop Principal Product Manager John Nack said the site … Read more

First Look video: Photoshop CS3 (Mac)

Photoshop CS3 for Mac is still your top choice if you're serious about image editing. Loaded with features for color-correction, photo enhancements, filters, effects, and layer management, Photoshop is the pro-level image-editing software to measure all others by. If you'd like a closer look at some of the features Photoshop CS3 has to offer, check out our First Look video to see if you're ready to download the trial.

Adobe strategy: Mobile app meets Photoshop Elements, Express updates

Adobe Systems on Monday let loose its plan to reinvent its image-editing software: the convergence of desktop, Webware, and mobile photo applications.

In late September, Adobe will update both Adobe's Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements with version 7, rebrand Photoshop Express as Photoshop.com, and debut a mobile Photoshop (of sorts) for Windows Mobile.

Syncing with the new Photoshop.com

Whereas Photoshop Express (review) began life as an experimental, Web-based offshoot of the Photoshop brand, Adobe's new strategy to automatically sync photos from desktop to Web to phone and back again now gives Photoshop Express a starring role … Read more

Photoshop Elements 7 preview: A little whiz, mostly gee

With the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements, Adobe's laying on the Web subscription message really thick. Take, for instance, the Welcome screen, which is your first encounter with either one of the applications. The standard Organize, Edit, Create, and Share options get relegated to a task bar that's relatively inconspicuous compared with the large, rotating slide show heralding the many benefits of the free and $49.99 Plus memberships for Photoshop.com (more project templates, remote backup, and 20GB-plus of storage space). Adobe might as well have sold the space as an ad; it's that annoying. (For more on the online and mobile aspects of the Elements release, read our coverage on Download.com.) And that's too bad, because Photoshop Elements remains a very nice midrange photo editor, but all of these bells and whistles--some pretty off-key--increasingly detract from its core strengths.

The program's main advantage is that it's cheaper than Photoshop and Lightroom, but remains powerful enough for most photo retouching tasks. Thus, the improved raw workflow is quite welcome--improved, in that you can bypass it entirely if you want. For example, to create a slide show of NEF (Nikon raw) files, it simply applies the default raw-processing settings and treats them like JPEGs.

Also quite useful is the new text search box in the organizer, which is a fast, easy way to filter by keywords or basic metadata. Very basic metadata; you can only search on time, data, camera, and caption text. But that should be sufficient for this class of user.… Read more

Three free alternatives to pricey graphics software

Why spend big bucks on graphics software when you can get many, if not most, of the same features from freeware? Here are three mui-expensive graphics apps and their free counterparts:

Adobe Illustrator Available for Windows only, Creative Docs .NET (yeah, weird name) is a vector-based graphic design tool for creating illustrations, manuals, flow charts, icons, and the like. It offers advanced features like Bezier curves, styles, convert-to-curves, and curved-path text. Adobe Photoshop You've actually got two choices here: GIMP, which is available for all platforms, and Paint.NET, which is Windows-only. Both programs offer powerful, Photoshop-caliber image-editing tools, … Read more