Now, one year later, Adobe is expanding the reach of PS Touch even more: the company announced today that the app is now available for Android and iOS smartphones (and the iPod touch). Read more…
As more and more consumers are opting to use their smartphones as their primary camera, manufacturers are moving away from cheapo point-and-shoots and towards beefier compact cameras that offer quality that phones can’t match (yet). Samsung’s new EX2F definitely falls into that category. It’s a high-end compact camera that packs a 12.4MP 1/1.7-inch sensor (the size used by many high-end P&S cameras, but smaller than Sony’s new RX100), a 24-79mm (3.3x) f/1.4 lens, a 3-inch swiveling LCD, ISO of up to 12,800, dual stabilization, a hotshoe mount, RAW and full manual shooting, 1080/30p HD video, and WiFi features. Read more…
Adam Dachis over at Lifehacker offers a simple method for correcting underexposed photo with any image editor that supports layers, inversion, and Overlay blending mode. Simply create a duplicate later, invert it, set the blending mode to Overlay, and then adjust the opacity to suit your taste. While it’s certainly not a pro photography trick — other techniques including adjusting the curves and levels may be better — it’s a quick and easy tip that may be good to know.
Pentax released a new compact camera today called the Optio VS20, which offers a feature we haven’t seen before on a point-and-shoot: a second shutter release, zoom lever, and tripod mount for shooting vertically. The 16-megapixel camera is also smart about the orientation, as it packs an accelerometer that helps it intelligently display images the correct way. Other features include a 3-inch LCD screen and 720p video recording. It’ll start shipping next month for $250.
Did you know that Photoshop has built-in mechanisms that prevent you from editing photos of banknotes? After getting a payday, Reddit user tarballdotgz tried to Photoshop some of his hundred dollar bills, but ran into the above error in Photoshop. Even if you find a way to edit the images in Photoshop, there’s a good chance your printer will give you a similar error if you try to print the image out!
Update: Another interesting fact: apparently one mechanism used to do this is something called the “EURion constellation“, a specific pattern built into banknotes worldwide. (Thx David!)
Here’s a quick tip for making Photoshop faster: change Preferences->File Handling->Image Previews to Never Save. This keeps image preview data from being stored in the file every time you save, and gives you smaller files for uploading to the web!
CNBC ran this short segment a couple days ago in which they invited CNET’s Dan Ackerman to explain the changing landscape in the digital camera industry. He thinks point-and-shoot cameras may soon become extinct due to the rise of camera-equipped phones, but also that DSLRs are the cameras here to stay. A recent study found that phones have replaced digital cameras completely for 44% of consumers, and that number seems bound to rise as the cameras on phones continue to improve.
My guess is that in five years, we’ll see digital camera users divided into three camps: mobile phone, interchangeable lens compact, and DSLR. What’s your prediction?
Vignetting is often viewed as a bad thing when discussing lens quality, but it’s sometimes desirable to add artificial vignetting to a photograph to draw attention to the center of the image, separating the subject from the background. Here’s a helpful tutorial that shows how you can add vignetting using a curves adjustment layer in Photoshop.