This has been making the rounds, so I’m hardly the first to post it. It’s still pretty amazing though.
(Click here to watch a larger version on Youtube. It’s worth watching full-screen.)
I’m never quite sure what to think of these whiz-bang features in new versions of Photoshop. They’re great tools for artists, to be sure, but our culture already has a real problem with photography and how it reflects reality, and I’m not sure this kind of thing really helps. What do you think?
Wow. Adobe has done the unthinkable and released a beta for the next release of Photoshop. If you’ve got a CS2 license I’d highly recommend going over to the Adobe Labs and signing up for an account and downloading the beta. You’ll have to enter your CS2 serial number on the site to enable the beta to work past two days, but it’s worth it.
I’m hardly a Photoshop guru, but I’ve never let that stop me from commenting on this stuff before… The new palette docks are a nice improvement in the interface, or at least they would be if I could figure out how to move them over to my second monitor. The real killer feature for photographers (at least that I’ve seen) is the smart objects/smart filters stuff though. Coupled with adjustment layers this means that most photographic manipulations can be done non-destructively, i.e. you can go back and make changes to the filters even after you’ve applied them, which is pretty cool. Bridge has seen some nice improvements too; it’s actually a program I can see using to manage my photos now.
Any rate, go download it and check it out. Even if you’re not a CS2 user it’s probably worth playing around with for the couple of days before it expires.
While I’m on the topic of nifty software add-ons, I thought I’d plug the Google Browser Sync Firefox extension. Personally, I use four different computers on a regular basis (laptop and desktop at both home and work) and so I have four different Firefox installations with four different sets of bookmarks, et cetera. I always found myself bookmarking something at home that I thought I might need at work, and then of course having to search for it when I did need it at work.
Browser sync simply allows you to keep your bookmarks, cookies, and/or other settings synchronized between two or more different Firefox installations. It pretty much works as advertised; I had to go through and clean out some duplicate entries when I was first setting it up, but that’s not too surprising and I’ve had no issues since then. It does sync things by storing copies on Google’s servers, so if you’re paranoid about privacy (like I am) there’s an option to encrypt them. It uses a pretty weak PIN to protect them, but hey, they’re only bookmarks. I did turn off the cookie and history syncing myself.
I figured out the other day that it even keeps Sage feeds in sync, as well as what you have and haven’t viewed. Which is of course completely awesome. Highly recommended.
If you a) are crazy like me and use a Mac, b) use Apple Mail to manage your mail, and c) especially if you have a widescreen monitor, you owe it to yourself to give this plugin a try. It’s not quite as good as Outlook’s take on the same idea, but still pretty good, and improving rapidly. And on top of that, it’s free.
Or you could just wait until the next rev of OSX and pay $129 so that Apple can make it one of their “200 new features”…