Trevor Dennis wrote: A keen photographer uses most of his budget for his camera. A good photographer uses nost of his budget for his lens. A great photographer uses most of his budget for his tripod. Actually there's a lot of truth in that. Michael Freeman? I bought a couple of books by him way back in the 80's when I started out. They were absolutely excellent and I have a lot to thank him for. At the same time I had Ansel Adams' "The Negative" and "The Print" with their somewhat more...scientific...approach (I'm putting that in italics for those who know Adams' writing. They'll know what I mean), so it was a nice balance ... View more

That sounds very much like a CG246 (the CG's are pretty much universally regarded as the holy grail of monitors. But the NEC PA's are right up there too). I already have a somewhat aging 22" wide gamut Eizo Flexscan at work, but a CG246 is at the top of my list. I was that close to getting one a couple of months ago. But I'll get there. In principle I fully agree with Herbert2001. In practice the expenses pile up and it's difficult to draw up the priorities. A Nikon D800, lenses, complete master collection/CC, a pair of studio flash units, a new i7 box fully stocked. I'm lucky enough to get most of this covered at work, but they draw a line somewhere too. Sometimes I just pay out of my own pocket. I see it as an investment in the work. At home I have an NEC P232. A very unassuming little thing with absolutely no selling points, but still a price tag of...let's see...a bit over 1000 NZ$. It's a wonder they manage to sell any of them...it's a beauty  ... View more

At face value a Dell is a bargain. A U2413 is on paper absolutely identical to an Eizo CG246 - at a third of the price. Who wouldn't jump on that? The problem is that the parameters that really matter aren't in the specs: panel uniformity, backlight uniformity, even tonal separation from black to white without banding,  and so on. These things cost money to get right, and this is where a company like Dell will cut corners. They have to, to be able to sell at the prices they do. Most units are perfectly fine, and that's why they can get away with it. But if you're not-so-lucky and get one of the lemons, you can forget about getting it replaced. (I once did; and they wouldn't). It will simply be within specification, no matter how bad. That official statement from Dell is really sensational. All of which is getting a little away from the OP's question. But I maintain that the Foris FS2333 is one of the best budget monitors on the market. ... View more

This is what bites Dell customers regularly, and have for many years. This is a very recent example: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/3529/t/19526218.aspx That in itself is forgiveable if it happens in a single unit. What is not is Dell's official response: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/3529/t/19269971.aspx?dgc=EM&cid=266809&lid=4934734 In other words: tough luck. ... View more

If you're on a budget - go down in size, don't go down in quality. There are currently only two manufacturers who consistently and reliably deliver top quality: Eizo and NEC. Both have budget / entry-level lines that perform very well at modest prices. With your budget you should look at Eizo Foris FS 2333, or the NEC EA series. All of these use IPS panels and are very good monitors. The Eizo is about 300 euro here in Norway, I know, a little more than you had in mind, but the monitor is where it really pays off to stretch the budget as much as you can. All the others aim for highest possible on-paper specifications, at lowest possible price. What's sacrificed is what the customer can't immediately see, namely quality control and tight tolerances. What they do is get their parts from the vendors' C and D batch production (the throwaways) at great discount. Dell is notorious for this. Case in point: The 23 inch, standard gamut NEC P232 is roughly the same price as the 27 inch, wide gamut Dell U2713H. There is a reason for that. ... View more

Simon G E Garrett wrote: It's Google, not Nik Yes, of course. Only Google could get away with that. Seriously: Google is starting to really scare me. I'm not kidding. They could take over the world tomorrow with everything they have - all it takes is a decision to use it. They can do that, and nobody can stop them. Google is your friend...well, friends can turn on you... ... View more

In order to receive these updates your computer must be on, connected to the internet, and your host applications must be closed. A silent auto-updater that only requires an internet connection? I don't even allow my OS to do that <note to self: don't go anywhere near Nik> ... View more

Andrew Rodney wrote: Take a look at say the work of Greg Gorman A useful reminder. Those blacks make my hair stand on end, but...it sort of works   (just kidding; great shots) (incidentally, those movie posters pop up in the Photoshop forum all the time: how do I get this effect...and they all start talking about HDR). Goes to show how paradigms change. This is pretty much the same effect as the old Kodachrome / underexpose trick. The colors would just explode, with blacks that nothing could penetrate. And that was perfectly OK. Of course back then you coudn't have both, so you picked the part of the dynamic range that the film could reproduce, about 5 stops for transparency film, 4.5 for Kodachrome. Today the sensor records up to 12 stops, so we feel we have to use them all. Anyway, black clipping is one thing, gamut clipping another. The latter often gives a heavy-handed, unpleasant effect lacking in "air" and light. ... View more

And just to add that proofing to sRGB is generally a waste of time unless you have a wide gamut monitor. If not, what you see on-screen is already soft proofed to sRGB (or something so close to it that the difference doesn't matter). If sRGB really was your target, just look at the screen. ... View more

I landed here because Configurator 4 panels don't seem to work properly in Photoshop CC - certain operations become laggy and non-responsive. Switching between layers or channels take up to a full second. In 14.1 I was able to restore normal operation by removing the panel and re-exporting it. But 14.2 is no go. A google search revealed others with the same problem. So that's it, then. I suppose there's no point in looking for a fix. ... View more

No, that's an Illustrator feature. Used to be called Live Trace; now Image Trace. Sometimes it works very well, but I doubt there would be any point in this one. There would be so much cleanup that doing it from scratch would be much quicker. You can of course make a path from a selection in Photoshop, but that's not quite the same thing. ... View more

I think this was done by hand, the artifacts and general dirt in the original would throw off auto trace immediately. There are just some things the brain does better. The pen tool is pretty darn quick when you get the hang of it. Keep one finger on the alt key and one on the ctrl key. I'm not saying I could do it, but I think it's eminently possible to do this in 40 mins (remember LPs? nah, you probably don't... ). Drawing on top of the original it's easy to miss a couple of crossed lines. ... View more

OS X 10.9 users who also have Photoshop - could you try with OpenGL turned off? That should return Photoshop to the same modus operandi as Lightroom. I think trshaners theory sounds very plausible. Under Windows all color management is performed by the application code (unless farmed out to the GPU), but under OS X the actual conversion is handed over to ColorSync (for which there is no equivalent in Windows). So I think this could explain it all. ... View more

I should add that I'm one of the apparently few who aren't too concerned with the gamut limitations of Adobe RGB vs. ProPhoto. I know it's there, of course, but I actually prefer to work in Adobe RGB whenever I can. The reason is that ProPhoto is so compressed in the shadows that I find it difficult to do subtle adjustments without spilling the whole can, so to speak. Just a matter of taste. At the same time I hate clipping on principle and go to great lengths to avoid it. So it's a rock and a hard place... But as for the finished result, it's my philosophy that if pressed, I could do whatever I want inside sRGB. It's not the absolute saturation as such, it's the relationship between colors that give an impression of rich color. And that's final I'll stop rambling and go to bed now. ... View more

Trevor.Dennis wrote: What is your experience?  What do you work in? I suppose it depends on the nature of the business. What I do usually ends up in an InDesign file, and photos stay in Adobe RGB throughout, until press-ready PDF export. We outsource "heavy" design work to an agency, and they specifically want photographic material (which I usually supply) in Adobe RGB, because they may need to make last minute changes. We also produce a lot of stuff in-house, in which case we send CMYK directly to a printer. But the basic procedure is the same - Adobe RGB placed in an InDesign file, converted on export. We usually get a PDF job options file from the printer, which specifies not only CMYK profile but also all other PDF export settings. Knowing the target CMYK, I soft proof the material, but it stays RGB. In general CMYK is a can of worms. Total ink limit, overprint and knock-out issues, there are many potential stumbling blocks. I've scr**ed up more times than I like to think about, but you learn as you go along... ... View more

Frankly I don't know. US Web Coated (SWOP) is the Photoshop default, so I suppose that tends to get used automatically a lot. But don't assume anything, always ask. (BTW "Web" has nothing to do with the internet; it refers to printing from large rolls. As opposed to sheetfed). ... View more

LukeW wrote: The 'hack' works, the only thing that does not work is the icons which are blurry. No, it doesn't, not if the image is scaled along with the UI. That defeats the whole purpose of a high-resolution display. Yes, I understand that it makes the application at least useable, which it otherwise isn't, but that's precisely what defines it as a "hack" and not a "solution". ... View more

StrongBeaver wrote: With regards to CYMK, I haven't needed to send anything to a professional print shop, so I'm in the dark with what color profile for CYMK to use, although soon I may have to. CMYK is generally best left to prepress, so it's always recommended that photographers submit RGB files for offset print. Repurposing for different press conditions should be done from the original RGB file to avoid troublesome CMYK to CMYK conversions. If you have direct instructions from the printer as to which CMYK profile to use it's a different matter (but the conversion itself should always be done as the very last step). Which one specifically depends on a lot of things, not the least where in the world you are. In the EU zone, ISO Coated v2 300% (eci) is currently more or less the industry standard for books, magazines and so on, and the safest choice. But note that it is not included in the Photoshop installallation, and has to be downloaded from ECI. Adobe RGB is a particularly good match for ISO Coated, it can usually be converted with little clipping (and sometimes none). So in Europe at least, Adobe RGB has become the de facto standard for submitting photographic material for offset print. A more specifically tailored RGB space called ECI RGB is in use here and there, but to my knowledge it hasn't gained much traction. A wide gamut monitor is very useful in this context, since it covers both Adobe RGB and ISO Coated (for all practical purposes). This means you can soft proof the file very reliably. ... View more

That's what I said (...unless you want to go all out and do a full reconstruction...) 🙂 ... View more

Rob Cole wrote: Photoshop has better tools for this job than Lightroom. Actually, not really (unless you want to go all out and do a full reconstruction). The highlight slider in Lightroom is still the best bang for the buck anywhere, since it has access to the full raw data. It is possible to eliminate glare completely, at least in a studio situation: Use a polarizer on the lens, and cross-polarize the light source(s). Not much glare will survive that. But even in natural light a single lens polarizer will work wonders and it should always be in the camera bag (not very flattering to skin tones, though...) ... View more

station_two wrote: there's absolutely nothing you can do to a single image in LR that you cannot do in Photoshop, while there are a gazillion things that you can do to an image in Photoshop that you couldn't even dream of doing in LR. Correct, but missing the point. Lightroom is about workflow organizing. You'll learn to appreciate that when you process several hundreds of shots, on a tight deadline, on a daily basis. If you do one by one, correct, there's no point in Lightroom. And there's another thing. I'll make myself the most unpopular person on this forum with this, but I think I can handle it. Here's something I recently wrote on the Lr forum: If you consider yourself primarily a photographer, sticking to Lightroom only will probably improve your work. The problem with Photoshop is that it becomes all too tempting to think "I'll fix that later" instead of getting the shot right to begin with. If you take a look over in the PS forum you'll see lots of threads like "how do I remove these reflections", "how do I clean up this shot", or the all-out "how do I fix this picture". In all cases, almost without exception, the answer is take ten minutes extra and do it right the first time...Photoshop encourages laziness and bad habits, by its very nature. <ducking and running> ... View more

No Linux, it's a marginal market. And generally, people who switch from one platform to another because they believe it's "better" are in for a disappointment. Getting a new computer may sometimes help, though If you have specific problems I'm sure there are people here who can help you with that. ... View more

The serial number is what you pay for, not the software (which is just a trial away). So it just never occured to me to not have a txt file with all my serial numbers. Getting backed up with the rest of course (considering when it's likely to be needed). I mean, glad you got it worked out, but... (edit: ...and that was obviously directed at the OP, not elie-d) ... View more

Interesting test. Here's mine: As a 50+ male that's supposedly pretty good, but still it's interesting that the errors are lumped in the same part of the spectrum. (I did get distracted by the fact that some of the patches are noticeably darker than their neighbors, and that threw me off a bit). ... View more

I hear a Kraftwerk soundtrack to this: we are the robots... ... View more

This turned up in the Photoshop forum, don't know if it's any help to anyone- http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/account-password-sign-faq.html ... View more

Ah, sorry, missed the part about different sign in name (which you said in post #15). Is there any help in the "lost password" link on the sign in page? I've always had just one single login name for everything  (luckily the associated e-mail address is still "live", meaning I can access it even if it's no longer the one I normally use). ... View more

How do you reset the Adobe Forums Password? I followed the link in the mail and reset once - the new password works everywhere: forums, store - and CC sign in. ... View more