Curvemeister Forum

I'll be attending Photoshop World in Vegas.  Will it be a big schmooze-fest, a bunch of interesting booths from companies with new products, a series of lectures and classes, or all of the above?

Watch this space to find out.

BTW - if you'll be there as well, send me an email and I'd enjoy meeting you.

Arrived in Vegas this morning, and checked into the Mandalay THEhotel - the room, a suite actually, is among the best I've ever stayed in.  




At the same time I feel comfortable because the place is loaded with Photoshop nerds, as well as people here for a tatoo convention.  So, the atmosphere here is very casual, a nerdfest actually, and not a stuffy suit and tie affair at all.  Las Vegas is its own unique self, a giant Disneyland fed on a diet of HGH for three years.

I felt fortunate to be enrolled in Dan Margulis's pre-show class entitled "What's new in Lab".  This included some of the basics from his book, as well as new wrinkles and techniques that Dan has discovered since the Lab book.  He frankly admits to being "wrong" about some of the items in the book, but I see them as refinements rather than contradictions.  Things like sharpening the a and b channels to emphasize color variation, and use of RGB and Lab in alternate passes.  And curves like you wouldn't believe.  And, the new player - to me anyway - apply image.  The curvemeister idea mill hopper was filled to overflowing - if I can only figure how to add apply image to Curvemeister 4, without adding a ridiculous amount of complexity.

That's it for tonight.  Tomorrow morning it's the keynote address, and awards.  Look for more info in this space.

Photoshop world kicked in officially today, on October 1st.  The first order of business was the keynote address, introduced by Scott Kelby, with much fanfare, with the address consisting of a recap of Photoshop CS4 features, and the unveiling of some features in the CS5 beta by Russell Brown, wearing a mad scientist fright wig.  Good showmanship all around.





I gotta confess, though.  Photoshop World was way bigger than I expected, given my experience at the preconference sessions yesterday.  There were probably four thousand people at the keynote.  Large enough that, even after moving well toward the front of the audience, Russell Brown's fright wig still could not be appreciated in all it's splendor.

The great news of the day: CS5 will have a feature called the puppet tool- the ability to warp the shape of an image by adding joints to specific parts of an image.  Sort of like the old Monty Python animations.  Believe it or not, this is a significant advantage over conventional warp.  The presentation of the Guru Awards was the only sour note, but the rest of the keynote, before and after, was world class.

But the big deal about Photoshop world is the sessions.  The ones I attended today were excellent, starting off with an hour and a half presentation by Bert Monroy's session on Painting with Photoshop.  What can I say - Bert's work is awesome.  I expected him to be in incredibly meticulous non-people person, but to my surprise he is a good teacher, who is good at explaining exactly how he achieves his effects.  The next session was by Dave Cross - on smart objects.  Again, a very informative class about the practical use of Photoshop's smart object feature, including smart filters, layer comps, and use of Bridge to generate thumbnail filmstrips.  Gotta take another look at streamlining Curvemeister vis a vis Smart Filters.  The third session, on CS extended's 3D features was not in the same league as the first two.





Click for more pix.

I was delighted to learn that Wacom makes a multi-touch tablet, as this is something I've been wanting for Curvemeister for years - ever since seeing minority report.

Met an interesting person at dinner, Diana Volk, who does photographs of horses and rodeos up in big-sky-country Montana.  She also rides broncos and ropes cows.

Lots of sessions today, and not many images because they are not allowed during the sessions.  I did a couple of photographs around the edges of the sessions that I will upload a bit later.

Started off with a painfully early session, called "Nice Glass"  by Moose Peterson, who gave a bang-up presentation of his work, and how particular lenses fit into each situation.  Interesting, and very well presented session, mainly because Moose discussed the thinking that went into individual photographs, include how to choose the framing and background.

The next session, on still photography from a commercial photography standpoint was technically fairly interesting and presented in a lively way, but it seemed to me to be bogged down in detail, such as discusson of iPhone apps, and several long minutes spent selecting an object with the pen tool (yawn).  Just a bit disappointing, but since the rest of the class seemed to be interested, I'll skip mentioning the name of the instructor.

The third session was great - all about how to do a shoot of a musical performance, all the way from who to ask to get a photo pass to the event, the details of how photographers are herded into the "pit" for a max of 3 songs, and processing in raw mode.

The highlight of the day was two solid hours of Dan Margulis's discussion of color correction.  Dan has moved away from the shadow/highlight/neutral drill, at least in his sessions, and instead concentrates on using apply image to enhance contrast and color.  It's a very interesting technique that gets a lot of the advantages of Lab, while staying in RGB.  As I mentioned, this may be grist for Curvemeister 4, and I'm working on ways to incorporate it, if possible.

This evening there was a two hour non-technical presentation of about 6 photographers work - lots of fun and the quality was top notch.

Started off at 11am with two 1 hour Dan Margulis sessions.  This covered the picture postcard workflow, which I'm starting to get very familiar with.  One interesting technique involves using a K mask to accentuate color variation in areas of uniform color.  An example would be foliage, which you may have noticed tends to turn to mush if you're not careful.  The last session I went to was on HDI  with Moose Peterson - Moose is not technical, but he shoots great photos, and really cuts to the chase with what works and does not work.  Look for some HDR's from Curvemeister in the near future.

That's it - I think I'll continue with excerpts from our trip across the desert - tomorrow the Grand Canyon.