I am really excited to share something that I did in photoshop CS5. I recently upgraded to the new software from CS3. I have had it a couple years or however long its been out and really not looking forward to upgrading, but I’m glad I did. See, I had to on one hand, My new Canon 5D Mark II camera takes files w/ a particular camera raw profile that my older CS3 could not open as raw files. I had to do a work around and open in lightroom then move to photoshop, not cool. So I decided to wait past CS4 till CS5 came out to make it a more worthy switch and I’m glad I did. They have this new thing called “Content Aware” its so stinking cool! Now its not a substitute for keeping your eyes on things that you should watch out for to not get in your images while shooting, but it is a fix for the times when you had to shoot something and there was a object you didn’t want in the image, now you can remove it almost seamlessly! Take this image of my husband below, He was a groomsman for a recent wedding and I loved the background ,but not really room to move him around and get the same elements and angles in the frame, so I just dealt with it.. Before I could use content aware, i was mostly happy w/ the image below

Well then I decided to play around w/ the Content aware effect and wow, what a difference the image is now!!! Look at it below, then side by side.

So I really truly think that if you are in CS2, or CS3, its worth the switch alone for this, but also after having the opportunity to watch the Escalate Live Conference, The Adobe Photoshop Queen (Julieanne Kost) was on and gave some really awesome hands on tips for the new “Mini Bridge” that now lives in photoshop, some tips for quicker toggling between tabs,and many other new things that photoshop CS5 offers. If you haven’t heard of Escalate live, please go check it out, it was incredible and probably the most valuable conference you can ever get for $99 to buy the video online. It was led by the fabulous, Dane Sanders, and he had the following speakers on to teach, Becker, Jessica Claire, David Jay, Jerry Ghionis, Jeremy Cowart, Jasmine Star, Julieanne Kost, It was like WPPI, online! Without the cost of travel or anything. Now some of their content was similar to other times they spoke if you saw them at WPPI or Imaging USA, but there was still FRESH new content and for 99 dollars, there is NOTHING to lose cause I guarantee you hadn’t heard Julieanne’s talk, and JESSICA CLAIRE ROCKED the house w/ her new stuff she shared, I’ve heard her speak before and on Becker’s B school blog, she has spoken and this was mostly new stuff she taught, really practical advise. Yes I can share, but not now I’m sorry! 🙂 I have to get to some editing but if you are on the fence, do it! 🙂

Anyway, one last thing, It took me about 15 minutes to do from start to finish but that was because I spent extra time using the clone tool fixing the little minisquel areas that you could barely see that left behind after the filter ran. It will get faster each time you do it cause you will use the tools quicker.

Enjoy your Wednesday! 🙂

XOXO

Katrina