Photoshop CS5's Showpiece — Content-Aware Fill 378
Barence writes "If you're looking for reasons to upgrade to Photoshop CS5 when it arrives, a new demo video might just persuade you. Narrated by Bryan O'Neil-Hughes, a product manager on the Photoshop team, the video shows the new content-aware fill tool, which has the potential to revolutionise the way you clean up photos. If you're not happy with an item in your picture, select it, delete it, and Photoshop will analyse the surrounding area and plug the gap as if it never existed."
Re:STOP! (Score:5, Insightful)
Early preorders are already in from (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox News and the Texas board of Education.
I'm convinced! (Score:3, Insightful)
Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective? It entered the land of exclusive pro tool years ago.
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:5, Insightful)
It entered the land of bittorrent download and piracy years ago.
There, fixed it for you.
Nice Demo... (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish there was a paper on the core algorithms behind it (cmon Adobe, SIGGRAPH), but I could see why Adobe may be sitting on every aspect of this tool; because it sure seems to bring some real photoshop wizardry to the common user. It was really an example of "delete this thing" and it just works. Takes a common complex task and massively simplifies it. One of the most impressive marketing demos I've seen in a while.
Sure, there are some cases in which I doubt it works, but from what I could see, it seemed to have some vision and perceptual rules built in to guide how to fill in the deleted area. And frankly, it's a feature that for professionals, makes the price tag for the upgrade worth it. For some tasks, it'd pay for itself in labor alone. What would take a expert hours to do, this could do in minutes. If I was Adobe, I'd seriously consider taking this and make a Photoshop Elements Extended Edition (or whatever) and add about 79-99 bucks to this price for this feature alone. Arguably, it'd be worth it for many.
Re:Early preorders are already in from (Score:5, Insightful)
Video is just a series of still pictures, that need to be interrelated. I'm certain that this could be applied to video, with enough processing power. If they can look at pixels that are neighboring in one frame, they can do it for pixels that are neighboring in time, too.
For the doubters... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll believe it when (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a 12 megapixel image in hand of a before and after and not a tiny less than 400 pixel overcompressed youtube video.
I have seen this automatic stuff before and when you look carefully at it it's not very clean unless you re-sample down to 1/4 the resolution or go small for web use.. it's never clean enough to print out at 11X17 or larger.
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:4, Insightful)
"It entered the land of bittorrent download and piracy years ago."
Terrific viral marketing. No one who downloads it would have bought it with own funds, but many will do so with company money. Adobe allowing "controlled leakage" is the best free marketing campaign since Office 97 went from workplace "to the house" and back again.
Re:One damn tool - pay for 200 unnecessary ones (Score:5, Insightful)
noone wants to shell out $60 for 200 functions 20 of which they will use from time to time.
Personally, I'll shell out. I make a living using photoshop and I support the idea that a bunch of extremely talented software engineers ought to be able to make a living developing it.
Re:I for one (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and cars have already had the native ability to drive, turn and stop for a century. The DARPA Grand Challenge isn't really adding anything new.
Those robotic cars are basically just intelligent automated versions of cars, on steroids.
Just because it happens in software does not make it trivial.
The Difference Between an Ad and "Holy Crap!!" (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm usually among the first in line to call Slashdot on its thinly-disguised slashvertisements, but this goes beyond product upgrade and into the realm of William Gibson novel.
I'm kind of staggered just trying to wrap my head around the uses and implications...
Re: Video applications (Score:3, Insightful)
The key thing is getting it not to chatter or flicker, which it probably will- as I doubt it will generate the exact same results frame to frame. Nevertheless- expect it to make matte painting, wire removal, etc a lot easier. I expect they'll use it to generate a quick starting point for clean plates, which will then be given further refinements and then composited in normally.
After watching the video and seeing obvious problems even at 360p, it seems unlikely it'd hold up at 2k without some love at least.
Re:I'll believe it when (Score:3, Insightful)
One word: wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just "wow". Everyone who has spent tedious hours "fixing" some piece of "almost" perfect photography just fell off of their chairs.
I haven't bothered upgrading anything but InDesign in recent years - the old Photoshop (or even GIMP) was good enough. This is a reason to upgrade!
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Adobe doesn't make their money on hobbyists. They don't even really make their money on small shops. They make their money on mega corporations who buy a dozen licenses because they need to crop photos, and their employees all know how to do that in Photoshop, because they've pirated every version since 5.5.
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:3, Insightful)
Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective?
One. That's why I have a legit copy of Photoshop.
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone loves throwing that line around, but I've yet to meet a professional designer (freelancer or otherwise) who's paid for Photoshop, let alone "happily."
Greetings. I'm a 3d artist that does texture and post work, and I have happily paid for Photoshop and upgrades. My colleagues that do freelance have also paid for it 'happily'. You may now tick off that "haven't met any professionals' checkbox. :D
I suspect the $700 pricetag is Adobe's way of offsetting some of the losses incurred by piracy.
No. We pay that amount because it is an effective tool that we make money from. My copy of Photoshop paid for itself easily within the first gig I did. You could partially blame its successs on vendor lock-in. Most of my clients give me Photoshop files and expect modified ones back. But it's not like it's aching for features. It's easy enough to get the results of other 2d apps into Photoshop with little to no hassle, but it's not often I find a need for that.
Try to keep in mind that photo editing isn't the only thing it does. The big money comes from image creation, and that's why there are gobs of people happily paying for it.
Re:One damn tool - pay for 200 unnecessary ones (Score:1, Insightful)
I see your problem right off the bat. Photoshop isn't a design tool. It is a professional grade tool for professional photographers to perform image manipulations.
Your post is like bitching that you can't buy a decent cheap backhoe to dig fence posts.
Re:I'll believe it when (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Difference Between an Ad and "Holy Crap!!" (Score:4, Insightful)