Photoshop Actions

[George Reis]

I attended the PS World conference this year in Vegas. They put on a great conference - lots of great instructors, valuable information, and an incredible handout (the size of two Yellow Pages phone books!). Was it forensics or science related? Of course not - but if one goes in thinking about forensics, some stuff can be of value.

The hosts of PS World is the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). They are a good organization and publish an excellent magazine, "Photoshop User." Again, there isn't much for forensics applications, but even learning new keyboard shortcuts, or understanding more about Layer Modes is valuable.

I do want to correct something in a post above. Adjustment Layers did not really get much of a boost in CS2 (I'm not sure that anything changed in Adjustment Layers at all in that release).

But, I do think we can see that Adobe is addressing more and more needs of forensics and science users. In CS2, we have HDR support, deblurring through deconvolution with Smart Sharpen, and a noise reduction filter (to just name a few). The Import Camera Script from the Adobe Studio Exchange website is a great interface for downloading digital image files. And, Photoshop CS gave us the History Log, Match Zoom and Location, PDF Presentation and Photomerge. Bridge is becoming more and more important in my own workflow - making it a stand-alone application has really made it much more efficient, as it can process thumbnails, previews and metadata while one is working in PS doing other tasks.

George