4x5 negative dusting

About a three hour adventure in dusting/spotting a 4x5 negative, 2008. (The white spots are just an overlay of every area where the fixing brushes were used.)

Masking in Camera Raw

I stumbled on the Adjustment Brush tool in camera raw the other day and I'm hooked. It allows you to quickly mask exposure, contrast, and saturation adjustments without bringing the image into Photoshop.

This means you can fix hot areas of your image, brighten faces, etc., all without having to deal with big Photoshop files, because the changes are saved in your raw file. Just like any other raw adjustments, the changes are non-destructive and you can easily modify the masks later. Just make sure you're already using a DNG workflow, otherwise you're going to get separate, un-embedded (sidecar) files that store your raw changes.

The Adjustment Brush is available in Photoshop CS4 or later and Lightroom 2 or later.

Here are some real-world before and after examples of using the adjustment brush.

YouTube - (HD) Add drama with the Adjustment Brush in Photoshop CS4 & Lightroom 2 A quick primer on how to use the adjustment brush. Yes, this Brit's over processed images may burn your eyes, but you'll learn camera raw's powerful tool.

Photoshop maxes out at 4GB of RAM

If you're thinking about buying a new Mac Pro with more than 8GB of RAM, you might want to reconsider, because Photoshop CS3 can only use 4GB of RAM.

Unless you're doing high end video production (with 64-bit apps), then it's essentially useless to buy a Mac with more than 8GB of RAM, because it can't be used.

A 64-Bit version of Photoshop which will be able to use massive amounts of RAM, is still several years away because Apple has stopped development of the 64-Bit codebase which will allow Adobe and other software companies to release 64-bit version of their software.

Sadly, Photoshop CS4 for Windows will be 64-bit, allowing Windows Vista users to feed Photoshop as much RAM as they need.

There's a rumored workaround for Photoshop's RAM limit. If anyone tries this out, please spread the word. It's worth a shot if you work with massive files, such as 4x5 or 8x10 scans, or composites.

Read more:

• Macworld | Photoshop CS4 to be 64-bit for Windows, but not Mac
• Adobe Blogs - Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe's 64-bit Roadmap