Early beta versions of Photoshop CS6 (codenamed “Superstition”) have already made it into the hands of testers, and information about changes and new features is slowly starting to emerge. AppleInsider has published some screenshots of the new program, which apparently comes with a darker, Aperture-esque user interface. There’s a number of new features geared towards working with 3D, a mysterious new “Remix Tool” inside the healing brush pallet, and a “Perspective Crop” tool. There’s also new auto-save options that help you save your work automatically in the background.
At this point, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be seeing Image Deblurring appear in CS6. Adobe is rumored to be shooting for a CS6 launch around May 2012.
Still think Adobe’s Image Deblurring technology is fake? Check out this before-and-after comparison showing what the feature does to one of the most famous camera-shake photos in history: Robert Capa’s D-Day photograph of an American soldier landing on Omaha Beach. Read more…
Here’s the current state of imagery: still cameras can shoot HD video, video cameras can capture high quality stills, and data storage costs continue to fall. In the future, it might become commonplace for people to make photos by shooting uber-high quality video and then selecting the best still. However, as any photographer knows, selecting the best photograph from a series of photos captured in burst mode is already a challenge, so selecting a still from 30fps footage would be quite a daunting challenge.
To make the future easier for us humans, researchers at Adobe and the University of Washington are working on training computers to do the grunt work for us. One research project currently being done involves training a computer to automatically select candid portraits when given video of a person. The video above is a demo of the artificial intelligence in action.
Adobe’s amazing Image Deblurring demo was the star of the Sneak Peeks event at Adobe MAX 2011, but it was just one of the many demos shown that night. Another interesting photography-related demo was for “Pixel Nuggets”: a feature that lets you search a large library of photos for features (e.g. people, landmarks, patterns, logos). Read more…
Last week we shared a sneak peek at some jaw-dropping image deblurring technology currently in development at Adobe. The video wasn’t the best quality and was captured from the audience, so we didn’t get to see the example images very clearly. Adobe has now released an official video of the demo, giving us a better glimpse at what the feature can do. Read more…
Demos at graphics conferences are often interesting to watch because they offer a sneak peek at technologies that may soon become available to the general public. The video above is a demo for “PatchMatch“, an algorithm developed by researchers at Princeton and Adobe. Although you might be unfamiliar with PatchMatch, you’ve probably heard of its most famous feature: Content Aware Fill. Only a small piece of this amazing technology was introduced in Photoshop CS5, so the amazing image manipulations seen in this demo are likely a sneak peek into what we’ll be seeing in Photoshop CS6.
Adobe has announced a new Android app called Photoshop Touch for tablet owners. Rather than provide a full suite of image editing features, the app appears to be more geared towards minor edits, effects, and sharing. It’ll be released in the near future for Android at a price of $10, and an iOS version is on the way as well. Read more…
Adobe announced a new cloud-based photo storage and sharing service today called Carousel, which will let you store all your photos at a central location, making it easy to view, share, and edit them — using a Lightroom/ACR-based engine — on any device you own. It’ll only be available for Apple users in the beginning (e.g. Macs, iPhone, iPad), but Android and Windows versions are in the works. The service will cost $9.99/month or $99/year, and the free apps will be released later this month.
For the first time ever, an Adobe program is available through the Mac App Store. Yesterday, Adobe began selling Photoshop Elements 9 there for $80, a generous 20% off the regular $100 price for the boxed version. It’s a pretty big deal, because Adobe — along with Microsoft — is a company that would love to keep its software out of Apple’s App Store. It generates significant profits by selling its popular programs in the traditional boxed format, while businesses that sell through the Mac App Store must fork over 30% to Apple (which may soon become the most valuable company in the world). This news shows that Adobe is at least testing the waters, and may eventually expand its offers in the Mac Store to reach Apple’s rapidly expanding customer base.
