Rangefinder - September 2014

Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 ar- rived in mid-June with the usual—or perhaps a little less than usual—fanfare. At least its arrival showed that Adobe’s latest plan is to release minor updates to Photoshop CC during the calendar year, and a full release each year designated by the year of the release. It also conveyed to users why Adobe is sticking to the subscription model—there is little in Photoshop CC 2014 to warrant a user paying for it as an upgrade.

Along with the Photoshop CC 2014 release, which includes Camera Raw 8. 5, Adobe announced the release of Lightroom 5. 5, the Adobe Photoshop Mix iOS app, and a new Creative Cloud plan for photographers (go to page 102 for more). The photo programs are part of the Adobe release of 14 new 2014

Creative Cloud desktop programs, along
with a host of new mobile apps and Creative
Cloud services.

The Photoshop CC 2014 release also includes enhancements not specifically aimed at photographers, such as improved layer comps and smart guides, along with Adobe Typekit integration. While I have overcome my initial skepticism about the Creative Cloud subscription paradigm, it is difficult to get excited about this release. There is really only one addition to excite professional photographers: the ability to make a selection based on an area that is in focus.

You can access the Focus Area dialogue box from the Select drop-down menu.

Photoshop makes a default selection that
you broaden or narrow by moving the In-
Focus Range parameter slider. There are
also brushes to add or subtract from the
selection, as well as the ability to open
the Refine Edges dialogue for further
refinements of the outline. When done,
you save the selected area to a selection,
a layer mask, a new layer, a new layer
with a layer mask, a new document, or
a new document with a layer mask.

Any new tool that makes creating a selection easier is welcome. Focus Area works well with subjects captured against an out-of-focus background. The greater the sharpness of the subject and the greater the degree of softness of the background, the easier it is to refine the result.

On the other hand, there is one aspect of Adobe’s Creative Cloud update approach to Photoshop that I find very annoying. In the original Photoshop CC, it bugged me that I could no longer point to the CS6 Plug-ins folder to access my many plug-ins. But it turned out to be no big deal to copy the CS6

folder contents and paste it into the corresponding Photoshop CC folder. I don’t recall any problems after doing this. With the new release, Adobe warns that users should NOT attempt this; the company recommends that each plug-in be reinstalled. Well, I took my chances and found that some copied over fine and others did not. But I certainly don’t look forward to doing this every year, and reinstalling plug-ins that don’t work properly in the new update.