FOCUS ON IMAGING 2013 NEC BIRMINGHAM 3 - 6 MARCH 2013

OptimumCS-Pro 2, an advanced image sharpness calculating tool for photographers and videographers, is now available for iPhone and iPod Touch at just £4.99. It’s the only tool that utilises an optimum settings algorithm to calculate outputs and now features some great advances too. Here’s how it works: you decide what depth of field you want and the app displays the focus distance and aperture that minimise the combined effects of defocus blur and diffraction. If you’re shooting scenes where there is more than one object of interest, where these are located at different distances from the camera, and where you want maximum image sharpness, OptimumCS-Pro 2 is, literally, the only tool that does the job. The user sets the distances to the nearest and furthest objects, and OptimumCS-Pro 2 instantly displays the focus distance and aperture for the sharpest image across the desired distance range that the laws of physics will allow. Also see its sister app, TrueDoF-Pro.

iphone screenshots

New in OptimumCS-Pro 2: User-definable focal length presets, for lightning-fast focal length selection; Distance scales switchable from the main screen; An improved, easier to use, more elegant settings screen; A new, expanded ‘links’ screen; and instructions on using OptimumCS-Pro 2 with tilt-shift lenses. See more at http://www.georgedouvos.com

Photoshop CS6 has a lot of new functionality for photographers and is a significant performance improvement too. But one largely overlooked feature that’s been added on is a quick new way to select skin tones in any picture. From the Select menu, head for Color Range and then in the Select drop-down menu find Skintones at the bottom. Use the fuzziness slider to control how much the selection will fade into other areas of the image and use the different views down at the bottom of the dialogue to accurately see what’s going to be included. When you press OK, there’s an active selection waiting for you – because of that, when you create an adjustment layer (for example, hue saturation working on the reds would be a good choice) the software automatically creates a mask of the selection. This way any unwanted bits being hit by your tweaks can be simply painted out. It’s another neat, and yet simple, improvement to be found in the impressive CS6 upgrade.