Today Adobe announced a new branding of their flagship Photoshop product to be released later this year, Photoshop CC. The new version will only be available via a monthly subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud and will not be sold as a traditional boxed application that consumers can purchase.
Probably the most anticipated new feature in the next iteration of Photoshop is a revolutionary new image sharpening tool that focuses on fixing camera shake issues.
The new tool analyzes images that are out of focus due to the slight movement or motion that takes place while a shutter is open. There are lots of reasons why photographers may find camera shake in their images. Many images shot slower than about 125th of a second are susceptible to camera shake unless you’re on a tripod or have a very steady hand. Telephoto shots, especially can be problematic.
With the new version of Photoshop CC, Adobe uses an algorithm to try and detect which direction the camera was moving that produced the shake. They then try to account for the movement back into the direction of a steady image without camera shake. This new sharpening tool won’t help you with other types of focal blur issues, like lens position, but it does address a fairly common issue dealt with by photographers.
Adobe had previously offered a sneak peak of this new technology in a video that they posted to Youtube. Watch the video and you’ll be impressed.
What makes this interesting to me is that there are a lot of old images that I’ve taken in the past that now will suddenly become salvageable.
This new technology advancement should be yet another reminder to photographers why they should save ALL of their images, even the bad ones that they don’t think they can use. With technology advancements in image processing, I’m finding more and more images that I’d previously dismissed due to problems. Whether previous Adobe noise reduction tech or newer tech like this new sharpening tool, it pays to save all of your images no matter what. Storage is cheap and you never know when you may need that image that you never knew you needed at the time. Even years after you are dead, those images may be important to someone, somewhere for some reason.
While the camera shake feature is the sizzle of the new Photoshop upgrade, there are several other enhancements they have made to the program as well including, smart Sharpen (new technology promising more realistic sharpening without halos or noise) and new upsampling tech (this helps make your photos look better when you make them larger than you processed them).
The biggest news though is Adobe’s moving Photoshop 100% into the Cloud and 100% by subscription. You’ll still be able to purchase Photoshop CS for the time being, but it won’t have the new features available in CC.
Pricing varies by type of customer but starts at $ 49.99 a month per person for individuals. Existing Creative Suite customers, students, and teachers will get a discount to $ 29.99 a month. Creative Cloud has a lot more applications than just Photoshop and also includes Lightroom and a whole suite of other Adobe Creative applications. It also includes integration with Behance, a portfolio site for creatives that Adobe recently purchased.
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection
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