Simple Photoshop CS5 question…

Though you would hope that the world's best image manipulation software might manage to choose some sensible defaults for those preferences when provided with abundant RAM.

Nah I'm definitely with Simon (and the Adobe forum users) on this one – that particular Warning dialog makes no sense.

SFB

and there's no button to reset to original

I only have CS2, but with most adjustment dialogue boxes, pressing alt (I think) turns either the 'OK' or 'Cancel' button into a 'reset' button.
Is this not the case with the colour balance bit you mention?

colour balance as an adjustment layer. you can turn it on/off, mask off areas, change it's strength as a percentage and edit it and edit it's mask in various different ways.

pressing alt (I think) turns
either the 'OK' or 'Cancel' button into a 'reset'
button.

Well you can't fault them for intuitive UI there can you? 🙄

colour balance as an adjustment layer

I suspect, judging by the reference to colour temperatures, that there was some confusion between "White Balance" (as performed by the camera and/or during RAW conversion) and "Color Balance" (as used within Photoshop).

Simon:

A key advantage of using CaptureNX is that it uses the same familiar Nikon terms and controls that you'll find on your camera.

So you have White Balance with Shady,Sunny,Indoor etc, Exposure Compensation, Color Mode, Optimise Image, etc and they are all set to whatever the settings were on-camera when you took the shot, and use the same processing algorithms that are used on-camera, so you can move pretty seamlessly from the shot you captured to the shot you edit.

GrahamS – Member
2gb ram aint much
when processing a 950mb image
Well no it wouldn't be, but Simon has 6GB of RAM and is seeing that message when doing "Save For Web" on a normal 4288×2848 photo from his camera, which will only be a couple of MB.

So why is there an issue?

RAW image is 300dpi ?
4288×2848 is a large jpg for a website?

RAW image is 300dpi ?

So? It doesn't contain any more actual information. That's just a number.

4288×2848 is a large jpg for a website?

Yes it is, which is why he quite reasonably opened the "Save For Web" dialog which lets you save off a JPG at a smaller size and different compression level without altering the main image.

Well you can't fault them for intuitive UI there can you?

What's wrong with a button press to change how something operates?
It means you keep one hand on the mouse to do whatever it is you are doing & then use your other hand to access other available options. Admittedly, it's one of those things that you need to know before you can use it, but no different to many other complicated software packages. Solidworks for example; manipulating a model on screen with pan, zoom, rotate etc. – different key presses combined with moving your mouse will result in a different type of movement, so you keep one hand on the mouse and the other can perform other tasks. It's not intuititve so to speak as you need to know what to press to operate it, but with something so complex there will also be a requirement to learn how it works. And when you have learnt how to use it properly, it is a very quick method of doing what you require.

Sounds like for the basic stuff that sfb and many others on here do (probably including myself), Photoshop is way more powerful than required and it is probably due to this complexity that certain things can seem long winded.

Photoshop can be using the scratch disk even when you don't expect it to. You can always purge the undo, history and clipboard before you enter that dialog, or make sure you have assigned a sensibly large scratch disk.

It means you keep one hand on the mouse

every designer/photographer/retoucher i know uses a wacom tablet/pen for photoshop unless it's just processing files.
if you have the pen rocker set up to operate the contextual menu or ctrl/alt it speeds up drawing paths or changing brush size/softness.
brushwork using a pressure sensitive pen is way better than using a mouse and a lot easier on the hands/wrist if you are working all day.

every designer/photographer/retoucher i know

Whereas I don't know any (that use a tablet). Maybe I should try again, because I do get rsi in wrist and elbow from mouse.

glen p – tablet FTW, 2 week bedding in 🙂

best to not get the big a4 one unless you have 2x24in plus monitors side by side as big arm movements are not so good. i have an A4 which i mostly use with a 24in widescreen given the choice i would have an a5 widescreen tablet but they don't do them any more.
you can actually limit the image area of the tablet if it's too big but then you are just paying more for a bigger tablet.

MrSmith – maybe, but for the occasional user such as myself I can't justify forking out on a tablet on top of all the other things that I can't afford to buy, when a keyboard & mouse works OK.

GrahamS – Member
A quick Google on the Adibe forums seems to suggest that the warning appears when the image is over 3374 x 2241 pixels.
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/369681

POSTED 11 HOURS AGO

GrahamS – Member
RAW image is 300dpi ?
So? It doesn't contain any more actual information. That's just a number.

4288×2848 is a large jpg for a website?
Yes it is, which is why he quite reasonably opened the "Save For Web" dialog which lets you save off a JPG at a smaller size and different compression level without altering the main image.

Save as > jpg would do if you dont want to see the results.

Save for web is used for optomising for website use. The average screen size is 1280. Only 25% of the image would be viewable from a jpg that size.

disclaimer : some numbers are a rough estimate.

Save for web is used for optomising for website use. The average screen size is 1280. Only 25% of the image would be viewable from a jpg that size

which is why it has 2 boxes to set the size you want (or a %age)…

Not sure why your quoting thay back to me as the Adobe forums seem to agree it is a bug, or at least an out of date warning based on an arbitrary limit.

Save for web is used for optomising for
website use. The average screen size is 1280.
Only 25% of the image would be viewable
from a jpg that size.

FFS Yes yes I know.

That's why one might use the Save For Web dialog to reduce the size of the image so that it fits on a web page!

i.e. one of the functions of Save For Web is to RESIZE the image. Simon even supplied a screenshot pointing out those controls.

there are reasons not to use save for web but to first resize the image to 72dpi from it's native 300dpi first.
but:
i can't be bothered to explain the why's and wherefore's, it will take me too long to explain.
i'm going out for a bike ride as the sun is shining.

Here you go:-

Photoshop beginners click here

Thread closed!

there are reasons not to use save for web but
to first resize the image to 72dpi from it's
native 300dpi first.

Agreed that the Save For Web dialog is not really fit for purpose. 

For one thing I generally want to apply output sharpening once I have the image the size I want it and it doesn't let you do that (or at least didn't in the old Photoshop I have). 

I have no idea why the dpi setting would matter for web images as it is completely ignored by web browsers as far as I know, but you would think the SFW dialog would do that for you too.

FWIW I find myself aligning with sfb now: Photoshop is incredibly powerful, which is why it is so deservedly popular, but its user interface is distinctly shonky in places.   

Quoting back to you because, you asked a question, answered it yourself then started being pedantic because another user may use the program differently to you.

No disrespect intended…

I'm not being pedantic. You were claiming that it was too big and you have to resize the image before opening the dialog for resizing the image.

I'm saying that's a bit mental.

The time it takes to apply sharpening is the same whether you do it to your optimised export or before you make the export, so I can't see how the way it is arranged currently is "daft" at all. Just do all your adjustments except sharpening, export at the correct size and re-open the exported jpg to double-check and do sharp etc. You're going to double-check it anyway, so no big deal.

Ha Ha!

Jucky Jim hits the nail firmly & squarely on the head!

….."I'm rubbish, me!"

glenp: if you export an optimised JPG, then open it and sharpen it and save it again then it is no longer optimised and is now lower quality.

Fair point, I put that wrong. So you need to do image size and save a psd (or other lossless), and then make optimised at correct pixel size. So, it is true to say that the ability to re-sze as part of the save for web dialog is of (slightly) limited value.

GrahamS : apologies for calling you pedantic 🙂

So, it is true to say that the ability to re-sze as
part of the save for web dialog is of (slightly)
limited value.

I'd say so, yes.

I guess not everyone bothers to sharpen after resizing an image, but it can make a pretty big difference.

But I suspect, as others on this thread have suggested, that a large percentage of users don't use the Save For Web dialog when saving for the web – which kinda suggests poor UI to me. 🙂

GrahamS : apologies for calling you pedantic

I'm an engineer. It's my job to be pedantic. 🙂

Sharpening is over-used in my view. Like all effects it is best to be sparing with it anyway.

It may have some less than 100% perfect areas, but it still pretty stonkingly good. I won't be learning another package any time soon, put it that way. But – if I were batch processing lots of images I certainly would. Not only is that not the perfect territory for Photoshop, Adobe themselves have another product for that purpose!

> Sharpening is over-used in my view.

Agreed.

Over-saturated and over-sharp seems to be the norm on the web where many folk will be using crappy 6-bit TN film monitors with the brightness at max and the colours all wrong 🙄

But when you're taking a full size original and resizing it to maybe 10% of its original size then a (lightly applied) Unsharp Mask can bring back some of the lost detail quite nicely.

sharpening. a whole new can of worms 🙂

each image usually needs totally different sharpening depending on the lens used, subject, and intended output and size.

big fan of the highpass filter > soft light/hard light method myself.

High pass is the way to go – two or three layers with different radius high pass, then juggle transparency settings, usually soft light for the local contrast layers and hard light (turned down) for the fine sharp. Means you can go back and edit the layers. I often go right ahead and build two or three high pass layers (as above) plus a levels a curves and a hue/saturation adjustment layer. Once you're used to is it takes seconds to set up and you can do it while you're having your first look of the image.

Doing it after the fact to a JPG isn't really the same thing at all.

but there are many circumstances in which the jpg is all you have…

photoshop assumes you are already aware of how additive/subtractive colour works and how the 80-82 85-81, red/green cc filters work etc.

why would one bother with ancient history when a simple slider is so much more obvious ?

– I would suggest something but clearly you have no intention of listening.

to the contrary I'm reading all the comments hoping to learn something useful

Are you saying it gives you a memory error even when you enter a more appropriate pixel dimension in the fields? What pixel dimension are you asking it to reduce to?

yes, it pops up as soon as you click the menu item 🙁 The size I get to is irrelevant as it only happens afterwards, but typically 1000 pixels high…

2gb ram aint much when processing a 950mb image

no, I said Photoshop hogs 950MB with one image loaded. Having just turned on it's at a sensible 88MB, so I guess that means it's not releasing memory. I just loaded a 21MB file and its usage jumped to 240MB, and didn't drop when I closed it.

dunno. but i doubt any prefs have been changed regarding cache/history states/scratch disk/graphics redraw/compression when saving/ amount of ram allocated to photoshop.

I prefer the programmer to sort that kind of thing out and not need handholding…

If you can think of something you want Photoshop to do, it will do it. You will, however, need to find out how it works first.

and drag through endless menus and needless dialogs to achieve it 🙁

pressing alt (I think) turns either the 'OK' or 'Cancel' button into a 'reset' button.
Is this not the case with the colour balance bit you mention?

Hey! Thanks for the tip, however, pressing the ALT key requires you to look away from the screen to find it. I can never remember keyboard shortcuts, being visually orientated (as I imagine many photographers will be) and want something on screen to click instead

I suspect, judging by the reference to colour temperatures, that there was some confusion between "White Balance" (as performed by the camera and/or during RAW conversion) and "Color Balance" (as used within Photoshop).

yes, I do get them mixed up as it has nothing much to do with 'white' and is in fact about the representation of colours. So, yes, I want a white balance adjustment layer, as images can easily have multiple light sources ie sun/skylight or daylight/artificial indoors near a window…

Photoshop is way more powerful than required

people keep saying this, but I'm wondering if they're confusing power with complexity of presentation. The things one needs to achieve are simple and intuitive, whether getting the image to correspond more closely to the original scene, as captured by 2 pieces of face jelly, or creative distortions. The complex bit is telling the program what you want.

every designer/photographer/retoucher i know uses a wacom tablet/pen for photoshop unless it's just processing files.

I think that may be the most useful tip so far, as the mouse is a hopelesly crude tool compared to the pen! I shall buy one ASAP. Any recommendations ?

Fair point, I put that wrong. So you need to do image size and save a psd (or other lossless), and then make optimised at correct pixel size. So, it is true to say that the ability to re-sze as part of the save for web dialog is of (slightly) limited value.

so resizing then saving to web is somehow better than doing it in one step ?

sorry can't help you there.

I have a new inexplicable one, if I drag the crop rectangle, when it gets close to the edge, it snaps to it. Why does it think it knows where I want the edge to be better than I do ? The only way I can find to crop near the edge is to zoom right in close…

The normal way to crop right to the edge is to try to drag beyond it – which is supported too.

it's something very easy to turn off but it's buried in a menu somewhere or you can use a shortcut to turn it on/off.

found it:

When you’re trying to crop an image using the Crop tool (C), your cropping border tries to snap to the edges of your document window. This might also be happening when drawing large Marquee selections as well. Solution: Press Command-Shift-; (PC: Control-Shift-;), which is the shortcut for turning off this snapping. The only downside is it turns off all snapping (like Snap To Guides, Snap To Grid, etc.). If you just want the Crop snapping (or Marquee snapping) off, go under the View menu, under Snap To, and choose Document Bounds, and your tools will no longer try to snap to your, well, document bounds.

phew! For a while I'd thought I was imagining it! It's not at all clear to me why this would be the default as it seems counterintuitive when there's already an obvious metaphor for going to the edge…

> Doing it after the fact to a JPG isn't really the same thing at all.

but there are many circumstances in which the jpg is all you have…

Yep, fair enough, but White Balance is really an input parameter of the RAW conversion.

If you are working with a JPG then that cake is already baked.
I guess they could offer a dialog that simulated something close to the same effect based on a similar colour temperature slider, but that might just add to the confusion.

Photo Filters seem to be the easiest way to apply a full image colour adjust after the fact. See http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/white-balance-photoshop.html

Photo Filters seem to be the easiest way to apply a full image colour adjust after the fact

thanks – but doesn't this beg the question why you can't do the same with a colour temperature effect ? I don't know the figures in millireds or K, but I suspect a percentage of 85 warm isn't the same as a smaller colour temperature correction