Photoshop

No, that's not a touch-based version of Photoshop. Instead, this is a still from a clip (shown below) in which Senior Photoshop Product Manager Zorana Gee is showing off new 3D capabilities in what will be, as of June, Photoshop CC, now that the Extended version is gone. But be still, my beating heart! Is that not Photoshop CS7 I see in the application title bar? Which would seem to indicate that scrapping the CS7 moniker and going with CC was a fairly recent decision. While raising another question — what will future versions of the CC applications be called?

Last month I asked what now seems like a prophetic question: Why Don't We All Love Adobe? My take was that Adobe had stopped listening to the concerns of its long-time customers. So when it recently announced that our future would be Creative Cloud-only, I wasn't surprised that more than a few customers responded with a blunt, "No thanks." Typical are the comments on NAPP president Scott Kelby's blog — hell hath no fury like a Photoshop user scorned. Then there's this thread in the Adobe forums and in the comments to John Nack's blog here and here. And of course the Change.org petition asking Adobe to continue providing a perpetually licensed alternative.

It's an old meme but as Homer Simpson once said, "It works in so many ways." As you might imagine, in the clip below Hitler isn't too happy when he finds out that in fact there will be no CS7.

You can poke it with a stick all you want but it's official — Creative Suite is out and Creative Cloud is in. Way in. Actually, make that all in. To the point where CS6 is now the final Suite and has been put on life support, with sales ending in the indeterminate future. Adobe made official yesterday what many of us had anticipated for some time, namely that its Creative Cloud service would become the focal point of its offering of tools and services to the creative and development community.

It was way back in 2011 that Adobe first demonstrated advanced unblurring abilities in Photoshop, thereby generating speculation that this functionality would be added to the upcoming CS6. Alas, that didn't happen and we haven't heard much of it since. In yet another teaser leading up to Adobe's MAX Creativity Conference, the firm has now released a clip, shown below, demonstrating a fully integrated version of this functionality. Will this be available in CS7? Or will it be first provided to Creative Cloud subscribers, as is increasingly the case. No word on that to date but details will no doubt be revealed during the conference, running May 4 through 8.

The latest PBS Off Book episode, dubbed Photoshop Has Changed the World, takes a look at several aspects of the impact of digital image editing on illustration, retouching and online popular culture. It's a brief but worthy effort, although there's more to all this than simply Photoshop. For example, one can agree with the claim that, "With the ability to alter any image in the media landscape, everyday people now have the means to critically comment on culture and spread their ideas virally, leveling the playing field between traditional media creators and consumers." But those "everyday people" are for the most part not creating wacky cat photos with a product that sells for $699.

Adobe is still offering a discounted rate of $29.99 for the first year of Creative Cloud (regular $49.99) for registered users of CS3 apps or suites. But in the run-up to its Adobe MAX Creativity Conference in the first week of May, the firm seems to be relentlessly expanding its subscriber base. The latest initiative to boost the subscriber count is a limited-time offer that extends the $29.99 rate to anybody and everybody — no need to be a registered user of any Adobe product. The objective would seem to be to snag not only users of ancient versions of Adobe apps but those who have, for whatever reason, never used them. Or at least, never used a legal version. This offer is available until April 19.

Use this powerful new feature to adjust not only single still images, but to easily straighten and correct existing stitched panoramas as well.

It's been quite the week for Adobe. It began by announcing that it now has more than 500,000 paid subscribers for its Creative Cloud offering, up 153,000 in just three months, with an additional 2 million taking advantage of free or trial versions. Adobe sees most of its customers moving to the cloud by the end of 2015, resulting in 4 million individual and team Creative Cloud subscriptions. Adobe stock gains accordingly led to cigars all round.

Okay, you can't control Photoshop with the MYO armband — yet. But given that this device, which uses the electrical activity in your muscles to interact with the digital universe, can connect to Mac or Windows (with iOS and Android to follow) it won't be long until it's harnessed for digital image creation and editing. The MYO is expected to ship later this year, with pre-orders now available from Canadian developer Thalmic Labs for $149. The clip below shows some of the situations in which it might be used.