Photoshop World – day one

Day one – Photoshop World 2009

After arriving into a surprising cool Las Vegas, Photoshop World 2009 is well and truly underway. This year’s theme is the NAPP Bowl, pitching the teams RAW and JPEG against each other, staffed by black-and-white t-shirted ‘referees’ and promoted via sports-themed posters.
The keynote speech on the morning of Thursday 1 October carried on this theme, with the hosts, including man of the moment Scott Kelby, opening with an energetic ‘sports commentary panel’ under the guise of the Adobe Halftime Report. The lively introduction certainly engaged the hundreds of visitors watching on, before moving onto more serious topics.
Big news from the NAPP included the launch of NAPP Help, which has been in beta until now. This is a collection of 2,000 video tips on Photoshop, each limited to 60 seconds or less, going over any and every tool in the Adobe program. Other new features on the NAPP website include tailored Wacom driver preferences, tailored to specific tasks including retouching, Lightroom and Bridge versions. Also, Dave Cross has created 20 videos designed to help those coming to Photoshop and the NAPP for the first time.
Up next, Johnny Loiacono from Adobe and Russell Brown reviewed the past year of Photoshop, reminding, as if we needed it, of the biggest developments, from Pixel Blender to improvements in Bridge, better Photomerge functions and panels (of which two new ones, watermarking and emailing, are now on the NAPP website).

What came next was the biggest news of the whole keynote speech. While not an official announcement, or even confirmed as a definite for the next version of Photoshop, Russell Brown showed off stunning new painting capabilities. This involved improvements to the paint, working more like true paints that have wetness, a dry-out factor and blending – properties expected of real paint. This is accompanied by new brushes with tailored bristles, again to match their real-life counterparts. A handy brush preview also enables the brushes to be changed in the angle they are applied, for more natural results. An exciting development that will change the way that digital artists view Photoshop as a painting tool. The other big ‘hint’ came in a demonstration of a new Warp tool, the Puppet tool, Already seen in Flash, this enables users to lock points in an image and warp around that point. It certainly whet our appetites to see CS5, whenever that may be.
An excited audience was reminded that next February is the 20th anniversary of Photoshop and the NAPP are looking for input from users to help them put together a massive celebration – watch this space for more news over the coming months.
One traditional element of the keynote speech is the induction of worthy Photoshoppers to the Photoshop Hall of Fame. Each year nominations are made and whittled down to 24, which were announced at Photoshop World in Boston earlier in the year. Of these, two were awarded the accolade. First, Adobe engineer Seetharaman Narayana, who has been with Adobe since 1991. Second was Dave Cross, who has been teaching Photoshop since its release and has done 17 Photoshop Worlds to date, as well as working on Photoshop User and Layers magazines, completing over 250 video tutorials, a long list of books and opening the Digital Media Training Center.
The hour-and-a-quarter long keynote speech was rounded off with the Guru Awards for Photoshop Excellence, before Scott Kelby ran through the highlights of the days ahead.
Classes are well underway and the expo has opened for its first afternoon, with crowds of people checking out the latest products and services.

Check back on Photoshop Daily over the next few days for a detailed podcast on all the latest Photoshop World news, interviews with Dave Cross and photographer and Photoshop World instructor Moose Peterson, and what the attendees think of this year’s ultimate Photoshop event.