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Photography can be quite a fun hobby. I used to spend countless hours in Photoshop tweaking photos until I discovered Adobe Lightroom. Now that I have this great seamless workflow, I find I rarely go into Photoshop anymore. Now that I don’t have those pixel pushing color warping capabilities quite so readily available, it’s nice to be able to find ways to get them right at my fingertips in Lightroom.

Topaz makes an incredible suite of plugins available both individually and in bundle form. I won’t talk in detail about the ones I haven’t used personally, but the Topaz suite includes Adjust for HDR effects on single exposure photos, Simplify for making artistic versions of your photos, Clean 2 for smothing and edge styling, DeJPEG for removing JPEG artifacts, DeNoise for removing noise obviously, Detail for sharpening, ReMask for making selection masks and InFocus for sharpening and deblur.

Personally I have used the trial for Simplify and I have purchased InFocus and Adjust.

I’ll include the promo shot from the site, and then a photo of my own that shows real world results with the plugin.

Topaz Adjust

For the uninitiated, HDR or High Dynamic Range photography is usually accomplished by taking a series of photos with different exposure settings, and comp’ing them back together into a single image with a much expanded dynamic range. Adjust is a tool that is able to achieve similar results from a single photo, look at the example below.

This is a fantastic example of tasteful HDR. A lot of times people go absolutely crazy with it and the image looks like a cartoon. In this you can notice how much the reflections have been pulled out of the finish of the car, the clouds are much more dramatic, the detail in the road is exaggerated and the field absolutely pops with texture. These kinds of details and color saturation are the hallmark of HDR and I have achieved amazing results with this particular plugin. Of the 3 I have used this is the one that I think is an absolute must buy.

This was taken about a year ago in the Bahamas. I don’t think I need to tell you that the scene was not this dramatic out of camera.

Simplify

With Topaz simplify, the opposite is the intent. The plugin reduces detail, but in a very attractive way. Simulating several styles of manual art like pencil or painting, Simplify creates artwork that is worthy of hanging from your photos, look at the example below.

Aside from the stunningly beautiful dog, look how the plugin has managed to capture the detail of the image, and the color, but in a completely believable paint-stroke look. There is even one preset I used that does this in an impressionist fashion with stunning results:

This photo is of my son and our dog playing in the creek near our house. I couldn’t love this photo more.

InFocus

This is the newest one I have purchased from the bunch. InFocus is a sharpening and de-blurring tool. I have yet to achieve results as dramatic as the ones in the promo shot below, but I have definitely seen some very nice detail added to my photos.

My personal opinion would be that this is the least intuitive of the bunch to use, but keep in mind that I have only owned it for about two days. I have become used to having presets to help me learn how to tweak the sliders. I will continue to work with it until I hopefully understand it better.

I think the photo below did benefit from the additional sharpness.

I might have went ahead and bought the bundle as I have now spent close to that with just 3 of the plugins. It’s something to consider if you like what you see here. Given the astronomical prices of most good Photoshop plugins, I think these are definitely a bargain.

I can’t say that I love the way you have to leave Lightroom to use them, and it seems VERY slow to sync the changes back into Lightroom, and Adobe problem I am sure.

That being said, these relatively inexpensive plugins could significantly increase the quality of your photographs in a very simple and repeatable way.

Dawngrrl was pointing out to me that my blog has been quite stagnant of late. I will toss in one excuse, which I have been doing some maintenance to the site, and that is complete, but honestly with the holidays, snow doldrums and a series of way to intense hobbies lately, I have just been a slacker. Enough of that, to the point.

This post is really a conversation about software anti-piracy schemes that is based on some research and thoughts on the activation process that comes with Adobe’s CS4 (and earlier) software line.

The Problem
I purchased a legal and legitimate copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended. I installed it on my Mac Pro and my Macbook Pro promptly and began the Lynda.com training to learn all the new features and goodies in the new version. My Mac Pro shares space with my audio gear making it not the most comfortable place to do real graphics work (something I am working to remedy as we speak) so I decided to go through the tutorials on my iMac. I got started and then wanted to check out some of the features for myself, but I don’t have Photoshop installed on the iMac. My quick remedy was to just open the Macbook Pro nearby so I can check stuff out, but tonight as I watch my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers, I decided to do a little reading about Adobe’s license strategy. I quickly learned that I am not able to have it “activated” on more than two machines and although I can install it on all three and activate and un-activate the software, after 20 or so activations, I would be locked out and have to call Adobe and beg to be able to use my software again, not an option.

The Myth
So after doing quite a bit of reading I found a lot of anti-Adobe sentiment by not so scrupulous users who openly admit, on Adobe’s forums no less, to using cracked versions of their software.Quickly you see the overwhelming majority believe that the Adobe authorization scheme is useless and does not stop piracy whatsoever.

“When CS4 is released the activation or whatever methods they employ will be cracked within days of the release. That is FACT.
I ask… How can Adobe think this is a good business decision? It’s like a slap in the face to the honest people who try to give Adobe our money and do the right thing. Maybe they are trying to push us to the point that we steal the software instead. Sure seems like it.”

This quote from one of the members of the forums clearly illustrates the myth and I think it’s time we set the record straight. I will say it as clear as possible. Activation methods are meant to stop software Piracy, but not the type of piracy you might be thinking of.

I think you will find that Adobe, Microsoft and other large software vendors accept a certain amount of illegal piracy just like Wal-Mart builds in theft into their sales projections. It’s a fact of life in the software industry. Of course they will do everything they can to stop it, but that’s not the only kind of piracy, and honestly it’s not the worst kind. I would say with confidence that the guys that download activation cracks and search websites for stolen keys never intended to pay for the software anyway. In this case it’s not really a lost sale as much as pure theft.

But there is piracy that IS lost sales. Three types that I can think of are the “casual” pirate and the “soho” pirate and the “accidental” pirate.
The casual pirate is the guy who will install any software that his buddy gives him to install. He won’t really go out of his way to figure out ways to steal it, and he can afford it, but without any real consequence, he’ll install it and not think twice. The reality is that if you make it difficult for this person to pirate it, or discourage his friend from passing it along, he’ll buy it and Adobe keeps the sale. Activation schemes accomplish this. By making me reluctant to give you my key, Adobe forces this casual user to buck up and pay for it.

The soho pirate is usually the small business that has a small design shop or web design firm. Back in the old days these were big problems because computers weren’t networked often and the user would buy one copy of Photoshop and install it on every computer in the building, no harm no foul, no consequence. Now that computers are almost always networked and usually also on the internet, activation schemes takes away this convenient license abuse and “encourages” the owner to buy the correct number of licenses.

The last category, the accidental pirate is usually not using the software at all. He is the IT guy at a huge company, and his job is just to install the software he is told to install. Without the management software and activation, there is really no way to know if they are still in the valid license zone. These strategies keep the companies “honest” by making sure they don’t over extend their licenses.

In Conclusion
I will admit to being slightly annoyed that I can’t install CS4 on all three of my Macs. I wish I could, but as someone who works for a major software company, I completely understand the logic. Adobe isn’t “going after” the customer; they are just protecting their intellectual property by making sure the licenses are followed.

This is a quick one, but I thought it was way cool so I am sharing. Microsoft Research has put out Microsoft ICE for panorama stitching. If you don’t have Photoshop CS3, this is a serious alternative, and a free one, for stitching together awesome panoramas. I used a series of 13 images shot on a tripod on the center of my office using a Canon 40D Digital SLR camera and a Sigma 10-20mm lens @ 10mm. The resulting image is a comparison of those images ran through both Photoshop and ICE, you be the judge.

Download Microsoft Image Composite Editor Here.

I am pretty sure we have all complained about Adobe’s prices for software. They are pretty expensive. What you probably don’t know is that their educational discount policies are a little bit more flexible than you might have thought.

I always thought you had to be a current student at the college level to purchase at the 40-60% discounts that websites like Academic Superstore offer. A little investigation revealed that those prices are also extended to K-12 students and better yet, parents of K-12 students.

That means that since I am the proud parent of a 6th grader, I was able to order a brand spankin new copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended for $297. What’s the retail on that bad boy? $999 US. that’s a savings of over $700.

Of course that’s only valid for non-business use, but as my photography is purely a hobby, there are no sticky license issues and I have a completely legal and full copy of Adobe Photoshop Extended for Mac at significant savings.

If you are in the market and have a child at home, don’t miss this opportunity.