Growing Pains

My tried, true and trusted PC finally gave up the ghost after about 15 years of great service.Yes, there were upgrades along the way, but the basic machine lasted well over a decade. (Drop me a line if you are in the Los Angeles area and need a computer. I’ll hook you up with my buddy who built me a MONSTER of a machine) It was decision time: get another PC or go with a MAC. I went with the Mac and it has not been an easy transition. I tried to run both platforms by using a virtual machine program for a long time, but that did not work as well as I hoped. I eventually wound up with Adobe Photoshop CS4 for PC and MAC and was (am) amazed at how differently the two versions work. First it seems to me that colors are different in each version--and I use a numbers based method to color correct my images. My color correction technique is a combination of techniques taught by Dave Cross, Martin Evening and Eddie Tapp. I’ve published my step-by-step method in several places, but you can see it here for easy reference: http://dantzigphotography.com/?page_id=121. I wrote an action to make the process of identifying the gray point automatic. Imagine my chagrin and angst when the action--which worked for years in my PC versions of PS--didn’t work! I went through the process manually to no avail. I was flustered to say the least. I went back to www.photoshopuser.com and found Dave’s original video and found a difference in how we were doing this procedure. When you look at my article you’ll see that I was making a duplicate layer of my background layer and filling it with 50% Gray before changing the blending mode to “Difference.” Dave added a “New Layer” from the icons at the bottom of the layers palette (which adds a new blank layer above your background layer) and then continues by filling this new layer with 50% gray and changing the blending mode to Difference to find the most neutral gray spot. I tried it. It works and I wrote a new action so I am back in business. SO...REPLACE “Duplicate Layer” with “Add New Layer” when you follow my color correction technique.