Photoshop CS 2

[Phil S]

Anyone found any nifty new features in it yet? It seems pretty much the same as CS to me only a bit more spangly!

[drea]

The high dynamic range (HDR) thing looks interesting.

It's supposed to let you shoot very high contrast scenes by taking multiple shots, varying the exposure between the darkest and lightest parts of the frame. Then CS2 works out which parts of each shot are properly exposed and merges all of them into a single image.

I haven't had a chance to try it out yet though, we only got CS2 at work on Thursday

A much better explanation.
www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hdr.shtml

[simpo two]

drea said:

The high dynamic range (HDR) thing looks interesting.

I thought so too, but having tried it found the result rather flat. I prefer my normal approach of exposing for the highlights and using levels to bring up the midtones and shadows.

[srider]

Phil S said:

Anyone found any nifty new features in it yet? It seems pretty much the same as CS to me only a bit more spangly!

The noise tool is pretty good (Filter/Noise/Reduce noise), Smart sharpen is excellent (Filter/Sharpen/Smart sharpen), as is the lens correction tool (Filter/Distort/Lens correction).

I still don't like the raw conversion though, much prefer Capture 1.

[Methanol]

srider said:

I still don't like the raw conversion though, much prefer Capture 1.

Totally agree, Capture One is awesome.

[Phil S]

Ditto the Capture One comment, but it is probably due to the batch processing that I use it. If i'm doing one RAW file alone I tend to use Photoshop.

I've been having a play with the NR and new sharpen features and can't seem to get far with them really. Took a few pics at 3200 ISO and is has trouble clearing them up.

[Methanol]

Phil S said:

I've been having a play with the NR and new sharpen features and can't seem to get far with them really. Took a few pics at 3200 ISO and is has trouble clearing them up.

Hi Phil,

Two of the best: Noise Ninaj and Neat Image. Hope that helps.

[ehasler]

There do appear to be some nifty features in it - the ones that interest me the most are the increased support for 16 bit images, the new lens/image correcting tools, and the support for more than 2GB RAM (with XP 64-bit). HDR is interesting, and I'm looking forward to having a play with that.

I've had it for a couple of weeks now, but haven't had a chance to really get to grips with it yet. The video tutorial you can download with it is amusing to watch though