ACR 6.1 Beta first impressions

Adding lens corrections to ACR really revolutionize the digital workflow. For me, 99% of my travel photography processing will end in ACR, without having to pass through Photoshop. Photoshop remains for the 'Spacials', where you need layers, etc. It was said that ACR started as a Photoshop plug-in. It's getting to the point that Photoshop will be a plug-in of ACR.
Version 6.1 works well, with two minor issues:
There are no grid lines (at least I couldn't find them). For perspective corrections, grid lines are helpful. Workaround I used are the crop boundaries, but that's not very convenient.
The only camera I have, currently in the camera/lenses database is the Canon G10. ACR doen't find it automatically (under the preview window it does say 'Canon Power Shot G10'). I must select 'Make: Canon', then the Model and Profile come up correctly.
I hope these issues will be solved in the release version, and the camera/lenses database will grow to include my assortment of Olympus gear.
Moshe

ACR doesn't find it automatically (under the preview window it does say 'Canon Power Shot G10'). I must select 'Make: Canon', then the Model and Profile come up correctly.
It does work for me.
You can easily correct this misbehaviour yourself:
Click the lens correction check box
Select Auto from the Setup list
Select the correct Make, Model and Profile, if not yet selected automatically
Click Save New Camera Raw defaults from the fly-out menu.
The next time you load a G10 image, corrections will be applied automatically.

Similar Messages

CS6 Beta first impressions

Here is a list of things I noticed during a first test drive of the Photoshop CS6 Beta. This is a mixture of feature requests, bug reports and general observations. I just typed this up as I went along. I'm sorry I don't have enough time to file proper bug reports and feature requests, but I though this might still be useful feedback. These things are in no particular order (well, except in the order I noticed them), and I'm sure there are a quite a few grammar/spelling errors, but right now that's all the time I can invest, sorry.
And even though this all sounds really negative (I basically just listed the annoying points since a list of good thigs probably isn't very useful), I am quite happy with the new version, congratulations to the team! I love the cat graphic on the splash screen by the way.
All these things were tested on a MacBook (2008 I think) with OS X Snow Leopard and 8 GB of RAM. So here you go:
Ctrl+Some Key still not available as shortcuts (e.g. Cmd+H Hide Photoshop, Ctrl+H Hide Extras)
The aesthetic merit of the font choice in the about box/splash screen is debatable
Despite all the vector enhancements, Spacebar+drag still doesn't work in the Pen tool like it does in other Adobe applications
Paragraph and Character style definitions apparently cannot be shared with InDesign or Illustrator so far. There is no way to link to external style definition files, and no way to import or export. Since all these applications use the same text engine, this seems like a missed opportunity, requiring a lot of duplicate work on the user's part (not as much as in previous versions, though)
The title bar of the document window uses the system title bar and thus does not match the overall interface skin. If that is set to dark (which is the default), it calls attention to itself.
There is no way to hide the filter bar in the layers panel, making it waste screen space on laptop screens when it is not needed.
The Warp option in Free Transform was updated to add GPU acceleration, which is great. That would have been a perfect opportunity to make the number of subdivisions user-adjustable.
There are lots of new vector features. This would have been a perfect opportunity to integrate After Effects' mask and shape system (including effects like repeaters), resulting in increased compatibility for importing Photoshop files into AE. Besides, all enhancements would pay off double since two applications would benefit from them. That would also have added the option to feather vector shapes for use as soft vector masks (Photoshop's mask feather function seems to perform a blur and thus is significantly slower, plus it applies globally to all paths in the mask). Still, the vector features are very well implemented, even though Fireworks still seems to have a slight edge.
The red "active" indicator on the layers panel filter bar calls attention to itself. The entire application uses grayscale icons. While I can see why this indicator needs to be obvious, I think that is too much.
The "Scripted Pattern" function is not very intuitive to use without any kind of preview. Also, it is not really clear how to create your own scripts, edit the existing ones or even just adjust parameters.
The Fill dialog in general takes too many clicks with that popup menu. Using icons or something similar would save a lot of mouse miles/clicks.
There is still no way to directly load 50% gray as the foreground/background color. In photo retouching etc., this comes up a lot. Adding a little icon to the color picker in the toolbox with the ability to assign a shortcut would help a lot. Waiting for this since version 5 or so...
Curves still doesn't support editing the layer's alpha channel nor LAB mode (at least not without converting the entire document to LAB mode or a smart object).
The "File Info" is still the ugly inefficient Flash monster where everything takes ten times as long to do than it did with the old dialog it replaced a few versions back (mouse wheel doesn't work on tabs, text editing shortcuts are different/don't work, tabs instead of the InDesign-like list of categories and many more). Photomerge is still ugly, but at least it doesn't have such major usability issues. The interface is inconsistent enough already, why do these have to be Flash?!
Shift key during canvas rotation to constrain angles still only works when using the tool but is ignored when using a multitouch pad gesture
The minimum size on the new "Adjustments" panel is larger than necessary
There still seems to be no option to not hide all panels when activating another application, causing that visual jump and slight desorientation every time
That new pen tool cursor is huge
There are still no Lightroom-like info bubbles or indicator icons (like LR's process version upgrade warning) for entering Quick Mask, toggling Softproofing etc. that would alert the user when accidental keystrokes
Photoshop doesn't seem to ask the user to automatically migrate settings and presets from any previous version on first launch. The migrate presets function does nothing (don't know if this is an issue related to the computer I am testing this on).
The "Blend RGB Colors using Gamma" feature in the color management settings still seems to be global and not per document (not 100% sure, though). This results in files being displayed differently on different computers, which is not a good idea.
The line-based warping in "Adaptive Wide Angle" is only available within that filter as far as I can tell. This is a missed opportunity IMO. Being able to specify arbitrary source and destination paths to that algorithm would make for a very powerful warping tool.
I'm not exactly sure what caused it, but I managed to accidentally disable path anti-aliasing and I can't seem to find a way to switch it on again. No combinations in the GPU preferences under "Performance", including switching GPU acceleration off completely, restored it. This is either a bug or a usability problem. Personally, I think the option to antialias paths and guides should be located in the View menu, not hidden in the GPU preferences.
In the settings for a LUT adjustment layer, clicking any of the radio buttons will automatically pop up a file selection dialog, even if my intention was to use one of the presets. That file selection dialog also gives me no clue which file formats are supported (i.e the regular format popup is missing).
Both Cmd+Space and the zoom tool itself now seem to behave identically. There is no more way to drag a box, except to switch off "Scrubby Zoom" altogether. Using both methods in parallel (as I would prefer) is unfortunately no longer possible as far as I can tell.
The brush cursor in Liquify is always dark, making it hard to see on black surfaces for instance. "Advanced Mode" is also off by default. Since the entire thing is in a huge dialog box (a solution like Blur Gallery's interface would seem like a better way to do this by the way), there is no real benefit to hiding these controls since there are no UI elements that would benefit from the additional space. It just requires an additional click.
The Liquify preview flickers as I am typing this in a TextEdit window that is floating above it
Select > Color Range would benefit from buttons with icons for preview mode instead of a dropdown. Same for Curves (tabs would probably be best in that case, but at least we have the shortcuts for now)
The "Sample all Layers" option vanishes when switching the Patch tool from "Content Aware" to "Normal"
That's it for now, thanks for listening.

@Chris Cox: I didn't mean post professionals who probably answered your surveys, but cinematographers and the like who currently simply deliver JPEGs of their desired look as far as I know, not colorists and effects artists using Photoshop to generate their look. But I'm no expert on those workflows, and I completely agree, a third party solution for LUT export is probably the best way to implement such a workflow.
@c.pfaffenbichler: Most professionals are still working predominantly in a semi-destructive way (i.e. using layers). Smart objects are too much hassle for most things (especially not being able to see your changes in context when editing them), so keeping an original layer and re-applying a filter is still very common.
Seeing that Blur Gallery can export a channel, that actually makes it quite useful, contrary to my initial assessment. Even though the interface is currently not optimized for this, it looks like Blur Gallery is a great quick and easy way to generate layer masks for color corrections.
@TLL..: Professionals will always buy their software. And those people who don't won't make that decision dependent on the licensing model. Very few of those who pirate programs are actually lost customers who don't buy software because they found a way can get it for free. It just doesn't work that way even though many companies would like to think it does. Most people simply wouldn't buy the software if piracy was not an option, with price being the deciding factor. The question is simply how spread-out the transition area inbetween is. I don't have Adobe's research data, though, so I can't comment on their specific case (I'd guess Photoshop is one of the most pirated programs, though), but I don't think threatening them with piracy is going to be that effective, they probably have someone who does nothing else all day than figure out smart ways to optimize these kinds of things for maximum profit
Just as a side note, in some cases piracy actually works in a company's favor. Microsoft owed much of its market dominance in their early days to the fact that unlike the competition their software was not copy protected and thus became much more widely used than comparable solutions, leading to much higher sales than copy protection could ever have given them.
Don't get me wrong, I am in no way defending piracy here, of course, I just think it's interesting from a strategic perspective. On the other hand, Photoshop is quite well known and doesn't have any real competition, so that probably defeats my point. Anyway, moving on.
I had a chance to play with the Beta again today for about an hour, and here are a few more things I found (again, a mixture of bugs, features I had hoped for, quirks etc. that I noticed and jotted down as I went along):
The new in-place/on-canvas filters like Blur Gallery use an OK/Cancel button combination to exit the semi-modal state, which is inconsistent with all the existing semi-modal tools like Crop and Free Transform (which continue to use the checkmark system).
Panel groups can no longer be collapsed by double clicking in the free area next to the tabs, only the tabs themselves. Not sure if that is intended behavior or a bug.
Most panels seem to be docked below the Brushes panel by default for some reason so that showing any of these panels will also automatically bring up the much larger Brushes panel.
ExtendScript Toolkit always crashes when switching to the "Fonts and Colors" tab in Preferences. This behavior can be reproduced every time. Unless this is related to a specific configuration, I can't imagine how this could have slipped through during QA/internal testing.
There is currently no documentation for the APIs for the new Deco patterns, at least I was not able to find any, but I guess this is going to change in the release build.
The Displace filter is still stuck in the early nineties (no preview, not accepting channels but using separate map files etc.). Displace is one of the most used filters in photo post production and image compositing.
When placing files, it is never made 100% clear to the user which files/file types are linked to and which ones are embedded. An option to choose and possibly even a links panel like in InDesign and Illustrator would be useful.
For placed videos (which seem to be linked to rather than embedded), the link seems to consist of just an absolute path (heard about this problem somewhere else, didn't have a chance to verify). I'd suggest storing both relative and absolute paths and if one fails to match, try the other before requesting a manual relink.
The properties panel displays an unnecessary vertical scrollbar for Curves adjustment layers that just scrolls down to some empty space below
The Timeline panel flyout menu has lost the "Document Settings" command. There now seems to be no reasonably obvious way to set the overall animation duration. There is also no "Trim Animation to Work Area" command. New layers seem to always use some kind of default duration, not the duration of the current timeline sequence.
The segments in the animation timeline are a very vibrant color (at least on a wide gamut monitor). Ideally, they should at least match the color palette established by the blue selection highlight color, the ok buttons in the options bar and the render progress bar (which I really like). Strongly colored UI elements affect the perception of color in the image. Autodesk Smoke/Flame does a great job of using a non-obtrusive color palette in its interface.
The "Set Current Time" dialog box that pops up when double-clicking the timecode display in the bottom area of the Timeline panel does not support pressing the escape key to cancel if the text field has the focus. Pressing Tab doesn't seem to change the focus either. Pressing down on the OK button, holding and dragging out of it doesn't hide the selection in the text field, but the escape key now works as expected. The return key works as expected in all situations, no matter which control has the focus.
The "Split Clip" button doesn't seem to work well with the undo system. The corresponding menu bar item (Edit > Undo Split Clip) is sometimes grayed out. Switching to another application and back to Photoshop seems to re-enable the menu item in some cases. The grayed-out menu item obviously also blocks out the use of the corresponding hotkey (Cmd+Z in the default configuration).
Dragging transitions to clips sometimes has no effect. I can't give a specific combination of things that cause this behavior, but it seems to be a per-document issue. If it kicks in, transition dragging doesn't work at all, i.e. it is always all segments in a particular timeline that don't accept transitions, not just individual ones. The dragging process happens as expected, but basically, the segments don't highlight under the mouse, nor do they accept the transition.
Keyframe interpolations are limited to "Linear" and "Hold". A minimalistic "Smooth" option would be really useful, and it wouldn't have a noticeable impact on the complexity of the video timeline feature for novice users. I'm no AE expert, but I believe it has a feature called "Easy easy" keyframes, too, giving you smooth interpolation without manually adjusting the bézier animation curves.
The horizontal scroll bar on the Timeline panel always shows some extra empty space, like the Properties panel for Curves. There is also no obvious "Zoom Timeline to Fit All" function (a toggle between 100% and the last zoom position would make sense, I think this is also how Avid implemented it in Media Composer).
3D layer rendering still isn't really a background thread and almost all interactions with the applications cancel the render operation.
Vector shapes unfortunately only support plain vector outline strokes instead of allowing the user to apply any of the brush presets (or even use any of the settings inside the "Stroke Path" command, which would enable things like smearing using vector shapes). In my opinion, that is really the missed opportunity for additional usefulness that vector support in a pixel-based application can offer. I know the vector shapes feature is aimed at designers who don't want to switch between Photoshop and Illustrator for every single vector task, but that would have been a way to make that feature much more relevant for more than just the screen design demographic.
The beta doesn't ship with the Pixel Bender filter, which I hope is going to change with the final build. That filter needs some work compared to CS5 (supporting the AE user control fields, supporting high-resolution images at least in CPU mode, channels as input images, color management issues, etc.) The CS5 release still feels very much like Alpha software (Pixel Bender Toolkit is even worse).
The 3D camera has no on-screen widget to specify depth of field distance settings or even locking them to an object (similar to an aimed camera in compositing programs and 3D software). The sliders are also sometimes quite laggy, ideally all sliders should be completely interactive with only the render lagging behind. A slider that sticks jumps around while the software is rendering can be quite frustrating for a user (Lightroom has had that problem for a long time).
The "Sketch" render presets seem to give incorrect results (i.e. results that have nothing to do with the 3D object, just a bunch of semi-random shapes and rectangles. The render button is also completely disabled. There also seems to be no way to activate the "Sketch" setting except through the presets.
The fact that Content Aware Move allows the user to change the Adaptation setting after the fact is not very discoverable and inconsistent with both the other tools and apparently even the behavior of the Mode setting on the same tool. I'd suggest giving the tool a pseudo-modal state like the crop and free transform tools instead.
The lorem ipsum command is called "Paste Lorem Ipsum". The use of the term "Paste" here is potentially confusing since it has nothing to do with the system clipboard. "Insert" would be a better choice of words in my opinion. Also, the same command inside InDesign is called "Fill with Placeholder Text", so you may want to consider using that for cross-application consistency.
On the 2008 generation MacBook I was able to test this on, Liquify always launches in CPU mode (1 pixel black border around the preview image). Not sure if the GPU in that system is simply not supported. I suggest showing an unobtrusive information note somewhere (maybe below the settings), like "GPU acceleration for this filter is not supported on this hardware configuration". Like the "Efficiency" setting in the document window status bar, this would help users identify potential performance bottlenecks on their systems. The black border is just not very discoverable.
The improvements to text (paragraph/character styles etc.) would make a glyphs panel like in InDesign and Illustrator a logical addition (saves unnecessary copy & paste operations).
It seems that multiple clips in the Animation Timeline cannot be trimmed at the same time, even if they are both selected.
The "Show Asian Text Options" checkbox seems to have disappeared from Preferences. Things like the Warichu option still seems to be Illustrator-only, even though it is incredibly useful for other things beyond what it was intended for (movie poster-style credits are the most popular example, but there are many more). Also, it seems illogical that you would have to choose between either of the text engines available, but I guess this is required by historical engineering decisions.
Panels still can only be docked to the edges of the primary monitor. Docking is not available on secondary monitors. On Windows, docking only works inside the main window, no matter on which screen. I know this is standard behavior, but I never really understood the logic behind that.
Hope this is useful.

First 'impression' of Safari 3.0 Beta in the first 5 minuites of use.

I'm using Windows Vista Home Premium and just downloaded Safari 3.0 for Windows Public Beta (Not included Quicktime)
The installation is processed smoothly.
I used it 5 minuites and my first impression is nothing but BUGs BUGs BUGs.
Alway Crash:
1. When click anything concerning Bookmarks, Safari crashes. (In other word, cannot use Bookmarks.)
2. When fill in any form, Safari crashes.
3. When access any pages with Javascript, Safari crashes.
Sometime Crash:
1. When access some pages, Safari randomly crashes. Ordinary pages such as this website itself. The symtom is both CPU core work reach 100% and needed to restart computer.
2. Randomly show message like "file not found, need reinstall." in any page, of course, even this page.
Bugs:
1. Cannot click on the button on the taskbar to minimize.
2. When minimize and restore, the Safari window going in restore down state.
3. Memory leak as I monitering RAM usage: increases more than 100MB when open Safari.
4. Font smoothing shows almost illegible.
Let down function:
1. Safari 3.0 for Windows Public Beta is the slowest web browser among all of browsers in my notebook. (IE7, Firefox, Opera, Cameleon Browser.)
STOP! saying "This is just a BETA!".
I love to test beta software and report bugs. I'm not a techical geeks so my testing method is to use them just as I always use in everyday life. No tweak or special use I squeesh to the program. I understand the BETA is not FINAL and of course, have more bugs than FINAL.
But this is not what I call bugs. I call "cannot be used."
How can you guy call this "PUBLIC" Beta? Have your programmer even see it in action in Windows before release to public?
This application is the second Apple application I experienced. (The first is iTunes.) It totally let me down because when compare with Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 I tested last year, Safari 3.0 Public Beta is not in my sight.
How can you apply guy convince me that Apple is better than Microsoft since I compare just an essential small program and found no pros, even both are in beta state?
Hope to see Beta 2 with no major crash in the first 5 minuites usage.
ASUS W7F Windows Vista Intel Centrino Duo 2.00GHz 1.5GB DDRII Ram

Downgrading via Archive and install is notoriously unreliable. It is much safer to simply retrieve your backup you made before you installed the update after an erase and install. Of course you make at least two backups. Selective file recovery may be in order, such as found in migrating from PowerPC to Intel Macs:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0

CS-4 First Impressions

First impressions. I know, quite out of date but with all the apparent problems...
System is a Lenovo 3000 series AMD 64x2 3800+
Power supply upgraded
Memory 2 gig Crucial (maximum for the MB)
Video card is Nvidia GeForce 7300 GS - Latest drivers. Not on the supported list.
Display is 1280 x 1024.
Windows XP Home SP-3, Net Framework 3.5 SP 1, and other Forum recommended updates that aren't handled by Windows Update.
1.05 TB in three drives. (1 K=1024)
Working with a 6144x4111 pixel 16 bit ProPhoto digital photograph:
As installed, in the trial download, GUI settings, Photoshop swap file is NOT on the system drive.
The start up time is about the same as with CS-3. Faster than CS.
Top menu bar text is rough and appears broken until I put the curser over the text. Then it clears up.
Click & drag zoom works like a charm.
"Toss" has a quarter to half second delay before the image moves.
Lag behind brush is quite noticeable even when zoomed in.
Brush border is rough & jagged. An indicator that the brush smoothness slider is set to full smooth?
I saw no delay with typing. (I have to look at the keys and when I looked up after the last letter it was there and sharp.)
A new learning curve for the palates IS going to need to be climbed. Or is there a "Look like CS, CS2, CS3" toggle somewhere? (NOTE the "First Impressions" above!)
Now for the interesting part. This test showed the same results as a test, same file but reduced to 3074 pixels width and in 8-bit color. I was doing a "see if file size makes a difference" test.
There was no difference in behavior with the system running "free" or with ZoneAlarm Pro and BitDefender running in the background. I have BitDefender set to NOT load on computer boot.
With the stock Open GL settings and a below grade video card, the brief test gave better than expected results with the main down grade being brush lag.
Just my observations with a video card that may be pushed beyond what can be reasonably expected of it and settings not tuned as per recommendations here.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned before is the new ability to re-tune the settings in adjustment layers. There have been many times I would have wanted that ability in the past.
Bill

let me make sure I get this; the phone, it is a phone after all, does not have good signal, and it will not pair properly with bluetooth, but you are saying 'everything else is fine'!!!!!!! Why don't you return it, and go get yourself an itouch? You will have all the apps, etc. Then get a mifi from sprint/verizon and you are all set. Then, go get yourself a proper phone with a decent carrier and you will be all set.

Photoshop CS6 won´t recognize ACR after installing ACR 8.4 beta.

Hi all,
just today Adobe has relaeased the new ACR 8.4 beta. As usual I downloaded it, installed it to my Photoshop CS6 (running on a 2010 iMac/ OS is 10.6.8), and to my surprise PS no longer was able to find ACR at all. In other words: I could no longer open any RAW file.
I cranked up time machine, replaced the PS folders with those stored via time machine from a few days ago, restarted the computer and tried again, but the result is the same: PS seems unable to find Camera RAW.
Does anybody have an idea where the problem might lie? Any help is appreciated!

Hi there,
Very sorry for the inconvenience.
Camera Raw 8.4 is no longer supported on OS X 10.6.x (Snow Leopard). We first announced this back when Camera Raw 8.3 was released, here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2013/12/camera-8-3-for-photoshop-cc-and-photoshop- cs6-available-now.html
This notice was also posted at the top of the 8.4 RC download page on Labs, here:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cameraraw8-4/
You can either upgrade your OS to OS X 10.7 or higher or uninstall ACR 8.4 and reinstall 8.3.
Jeff

ACR 5.4 Beta shows up with Japanese Text

hi:
1. i just downloaded--> installed ACR 5.4 beta and DNG.
2. the DNG looks normal (ie just like the prior version etc...).
3. however, when i open up ACR, everything is in japanese text, including the photoshop headers etc... no big deal at this time, because i'm sure this is going to be fixed and i know what all the sliders are about etc...    but just an FYI.

thomas:
1. thanks for the info.
2. as per what the other person noted--> what you suggested isn't that easy (basically i'm stuck).
3. first of all, i was able to find--> download a prior version or ACR--> manually placed it in the correct spot--> fired up a RAW file--> everything looks normal (ie english text etc...).
4. i then downloaded ACR 5.4 and proceeded with the reinstall.   however at this point, the installer said that i couldn't install 5.4 because it was already installed in my cpu.    i manually looked as well as did a search for camera raw 5.4 in spotlight--> couldn't find it.    i also searched adobe photoshop help in re: unstalling things--> nothing.
5. thus the question is: how in the world do i uninstall camera raw 5.4 (i'm not even sure it's in my cpu but the installer thinks it is etc...).
thanks for your help.     harry shin
6. by the way, while i'm at it, in adobe bridge, 5.4 doesn't recognize my Olympus E-620 raw files (ie can't see the thumbnail image), but when i actually open up the image in ACR--> the image is there etc... thus, there's also funky going on with bridge.

Uninstall ACR 8.6 Beta?

How Do I uninstall ACR 8.6 Beta from Photoshop CS6 to add final ACR 8.6?

The official way to uninstall ACR is to uninstall Photoshop or whatever Adobe product ACR came with.
If you have not been offered the non-beta ACR since the first of August when it was first available then there is something wrong with what is tracking the versions of things and an uninstaller would not necessarily help with that. I mean, even if there was an uninstaller, you might uninstall ACR 8.6 RC and still not be offered any update and be stuck without any ACR. So the ultimate solution is to reset things enough that the Adobe version database and processes to make everything work like it should, again. I’m not sure exactly how to do this. On way is to uninstall all Adobe products then run the CC Cleaner and then reinstall all Adobe products.
Without fixing the underlying issue, it might also should work to use the manual installers you can download from an Adobe HELPX page with direct links:
http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/camera-raw-plug-in-installer.html

Galaxy S6 - First impressions.

I upgraded my Sim only deal to refresh deal and got myself a non edge version of the Galaxy S6 in the process - I am still playing with it but here are my first impressions. Build quality is excellent (even the packaging is very well made!), the phone feels very solid and very well made - I was worried that the glass back would make the phone 'slippery' in the hand, but the opposite seems to be the case - the phone fits very well in the hand and feels safe. The buttons are very well placed and the seperate volume buttons seem better than the rocker type. The phone did get quite warm during the initial setup and update phase, I put this down to a lot of updates and wifi activity - no sign of this since. The phone responds very quickly and is very smooth - I don't notice any lag at all. One thing I do find myself doing on this phone is catching the capactive buttons by accident, I am putting this down to me just getting used to a larger phone. Camera - I am no photographer but the camera is excellent, taking very good pictures. I took the dog out last night and took some photos see how it worked in low light and I was very impressed. Video is equally impressive and the Ultra HD video is simply excellent quality - one issue here is while the UHD video plays ok on the phone, my laptop is having issues playing the video without it breaking up - I am assuming this is a media player issue. I will try the UHD playback on the TV later to see how this works. Call quality seems much better than my A3 - and texts seem to send a lot quicker, I am assuming this is just because of the extra grunt of the S6. It came with Lollipop 5.0.2 and asked to do an update, which I did and it updated to 5.0.2! It appears O2 have rolled back the 5.1.1 update I was expecting it to update to, no doubt this will be addressed in time. Lollipop - this is the first time I have used this on a phone, and it seems pretty good - I especially the quick camera or dialer launch from the lock screen - from the lock screen simply drap the camera icon and the camera launches pretty much instantly, same for the dialer. I also like the improved notifications and the ability to do a quick reply to a text directly from the notification. It comes with a adaptive fast charger, and indeed does charge fast - while charging there is a notification of how long left - as a bit of a test today I was on about 50% and plugged it into a normal charger, it told me three and half hours to charge, when plugged into the fast charger it the notification said 48 mins! It appears you can get a full charge in about an hour and ten mins - impressive. Screen - it has to been seen to believed - I would say this is the best screen I have ever seen on a smartphone, it will be interesting to put it side by side with my friends Note 3 for comparison. One last thing that impressed me was the bundled earphones - they sound quite impressive! I will do a fuller review once I've used it for a few days but my initial opinion - everything I expected it would be, and then some!

I really like your first impressions ! Not too technical, everybody can understand it (even me!) and addressing details that are decisive for a lot of people when choosing a new mobile.I can tell that you have put "heart" in this review/first impressions....I can imagine you having like a "little" list, in your head,of things you are curious to know about the phone and trying them one by one... well done! I find it truly useful!

Got my mac mini intel singel core yesterday!! first impressions !

hi to all,yesterday i got my mac mini singel core 1,50 GHz 512 ram 60 s-ata, here are my first impressions:
of course it looks like the same;ir-sensor for the frontrow remote control is at the right side,inside the drive slot (very nice solution).It boots up faster than my old mac mini G4 1,25 Ghz 1GB ram.first of all i did a xbench test,here are my results:old mac mini g4 1,25 1 Gb ram xbench points=36,37; new mac mini intel single core xbench points=63,37 !!!Very nice and smooth system import from the old ppc os x was no problem using firewire. virtual pc 7 does not work any more.
overall rating after 1 day, very good outstanding product
greetings tobias
mac mini / pb G3 wallstreet Mac OS X (10.4.5) mac mini single core 1,5 GHZ

I also got the Core Solo and so far am very much satisfied with it. One of my highest Xbench scores was 65.40, twice as fast the score of the lowerend G4 Mac Mini. The feel of the system's respondsiveness is certainly on par with other Intel based Macs I tried at the local Apple stores. Boot time is under 30 seconds most of the time. One weird thing I noticed is that when open " About This Mac", the system identifies the processor as a 1.5GHz Intel Core Duo. However, System Profiler says it's a Core Solo. Well, I will only open "About This Mac" from now on
To answer your question, Tobias, 720p plays awesome but 1080p not looking good. The new graphic eventhough integrated is still an improvement over the graphic of the old model. Why? It supports Core Image and you get all the nice effects in Dashboard, also HD contents play much better obviously.
512MB of RAM is not enough. I'm glad that I didn't buy the Core Duo because with that $200 in difference, I can up the fund to buy a pair of 1GB DDR2 memory and a 7200RPM hard drive for upgrades. The hard drive on the Mac Mini has always been a weak link. SATA is supposed to be faster than the old IDE ATA, but from what I've seen so far, it's pretty much the same.
Powerbook 12' 1.5 | Mac Mini 1.25 | iPod Nano Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Merry Christmas, My "New" PB, First Impressions...

My first post and first Mac:
Not new to computers, but new to Macs. As a rule, I try to help other users as at least as much as the help I receive. That won't be the case on this forum, as I'm a total Mac noob. Perhaps, as time passes, I'll be able to field simple questions, but that may take a while.
This Christmas we replaced our son's two year old PB with an MBP. We got the hand-me-down. We wouldn't even own a Mac, except it's required by his college for digital design. This is also my first notebook, so I guess many issues are unique to that fact.
After one day of ownership, I've had the following observations:
1. During file transfer over airport, application "locked up", or was "unresponsive". My son used the equivalent of the Windows Task Manager to close it.
2. iTunes was unusable because, "The folder iTunes is on a locked disk or you do not have write permissions for this folder." Resolved by changing properties of... something, didn't get the full story yet, but it has to do with changing administrator of the computer.
3. Bluetooth does not have A2DP protocol... bummer!
4. Saw the DVD unable to be ejected from his MBP during OS installation. Sheesh!
Well, that's it so far. I will be back with questions, because he'll be going back to school in a couple weeks. I generally find answers via Google, but sometimes that's not enough. My first impressions are a little disappointing, but maybe that's because I've heard too much hype, such as "It Just Works", and "Switch to a Mac and You'll Never Go Back". I own it, now I'm gonna use it by hook or by crook!

0rnery wrote:
One other point I forgot to mention was regarding the rubber feet on the bottom. One was lost, so my son removed a second in order for it to sit level. Online, I found the price of replacements at $20.00! I'm using a couple old mouse feet in the mean time, but is there not an aftermarket source for such items at a reasonable price?
Probably not, but who cares? If you can let go of having to have the exact size, thickness, and material, you can do what I've done for years: Go to your neighborhood hardware store or drugstore and pick up a $1 sheet of little self-adhesive rubber feet. There are many kinds, of course, mostly hovering around one dollar for more than you'll ever need. The ones I picked are clear, so no one notices they don't quite match, and thicker, so they absorb shock better and raise the back another millimeter or two for better bottom ventilation, and they "grab" better so the laptop no longer slides around with a slight nudge. These are actually better than the original equipment feet.
0rnery wrote:
...I can't wait to see what iTunes does with this 4GB of MP3's.
My PowerBook G4 has 13.29GB of music in iTunes, doesn't seem to be any problem. On the Mac Pro I've got 30GB of audio and video.

17" MBP - First Impressions

I'm not really a review geek, but as I've been interested in the performance of this model (as are others) and since I already own a MBP 2G and a 20" iMac, I figured I'd just give you peeps a quick first impression.
I got my hands on a 17" MBP last night. I should have written this fresh last evening, but I was dead tired. Anyway, here's what I recall:
Config was 2G RAM, 120GB HD. I had an opportunity to do a few things with it. This was a social setting and an iPod swap, so I didn't really have an opportunity to run everything through it's paces.
As it wasn't my machine, I didn't have a copy of anything graphic/CPU intensive (like a nice nasty PPC photoshop session) to install and really give it a beating, however I put a copy of Handbrake on it and did a DVD conversion while also on Safari, with iTunes open and using iSquint to convert the video output of a recent surf session to H.264 for iPod.
I had it side-by-side with my old G4 17" (did not have my 2G MBP with me at the time, so this review is a bit slanted and it's not fair for me to try and "remember" last night's thoughts and compare now with my current MBP except in a few instances (and hey, I'd been drinking).
It connected via the home ethernet seemlessly, instantly and connection speeds were on par with every other machine running in the house.
I found the screen res and overall appearance to be much better than my G4 17."
Encoding FPS versus what I get for my 20" iMac were on par - with all apps running as outlined above.
I tested all the standard iLife apps, everything was snappy off the dock and worked well.
Speaker sound was superior to my G4.
No sticky keys. When prompted, paired with a wireless mouse with no issues.
Heat? What heat. My G4 was hotter just sitting there. I picked them both up a few times and did the lap test. The total time both were running (both idle and testing) was about 2 hours. Both machines were on a wooden kitchen table. Home temp was around 62 degrees give or take.
Battery life was not tested, as we were plugged in.
Whine? Silent as a Church mouse. Typical drive noise when inserting a DVD, but nothing abnormal. I honestly could not hear the fans or drives at all. My G4 is pretty silent and the MBP was no different.
Overall quality? It seems better constructed than my current MBP, but that comment might be skewed as I was just happy to play around with it. But I did open and close the screen, walked around with it a bit, and it seems more "solid" than my current MBP.
Not sure what else anyone wants to know.

—"I would like to know more about the heat - underneath? top? keyboard? You say that your G4 17" was hotter just sitting there - were the 17" G4s considered hot? Just trying to get a sense of it...."—
I've tested my latest 17" PB after this thread... the processor bottomside was 40 C when idle, and went up to 61.8 C after 10 mins at max processor load.
I guess that's OK if you ask me...

IPad 2 first impressions

First off I would like to state that I have no question.
I got my iPad today and have been setting it up and playing with it on/off for the last 5 to 6 hours. I actually had wanted to buy an iPad since it was introduced a year ago. I waited because of the experience that I had with purchasing the 1st generation MacBook Air, which was a in my opinion was a disaster. Even though the 1st gen iPad is a fine tablet, I am glad that I had waited.
Everything seems to be fine with this iPad.
No WiFi problems
No display issues
No AirPrint problems
No AirPlay problems (to AppleTV 2)
No Home Sharing problems
I haven't tried the 3G service yet, but I have tried pretty much everything else.
Photos look great, video is great, and Netflix works really well.
I really like the looks, feel and functionality of this tablet.
The only thing I would like to see upgraded is the cameras.
They don't have to be great, but they should be better than what they are currently.
Now if we could get all the websites to convert their flash to html5 all would be great.
Then I could get rid of my laptop and just have a tablet and a desktop.

My first impression of the iFad II was dismal. Stuck pixels and lots of light bleeding around the edges, even with the level at or below 50%.
I did not like the design of the unit - it's light weight, and the distribution of that weight makes the unit "feel" like with will fall out of your hands very easily.
I took mine back and got a refund for the quality control issues, and then I went to Verizon Store and bought an iFad I - 32g Wifi for $399. The 16g was $299. ATT has a sale for the 64g model at $529 (on-line only).
Those prices listed above make the unit finally worth buying given the functionality.
I am not an Apple basher, been here since 85', but the new iFad II leaves a lot to be desired in many areas....
Also spoke with someone at Apple Care and in the Tech department, and they said that Apple has ceased production of the iFad II model because of the quality control issues I listed above. They said that the factory will resume shipping on April 21st after these issue are fixed.
Just reporting what was said to me . . . .

Time Capsule - First Impressions

Hope this can help someone...
TC First Impressions:
=====================
-> Relatively easy to set-up a wireless-n-only 5ghz network next to an existing wireless a/g network with TC as the router and Linksys a/g as a gateway plugged into the TC via ethernet.
-> Able to access Seagate 250 GB external drive plugged into the TC USB without problem.
-> Can see both the TC drive and Seagate drive from XP/Vista/Mac and add/remove files. This is also true from Vista running on the boot camp partition or as a virtual machine.
-> Time Machine set-up and backup was relatively simple.
-> TC wireless-n/a (5 ghz) is not visible by the Xbox 360. Linksys wireless-a network still worked with open NAT.
-> TC wireless-n/g (2.4 ghz) is accessible by the PS3, but without UPnP. Linksys wireless-g network still worked with UPnP.
-> Airport Utility restart of the TC has some issues. If wireless from the iMac, the wireless-n network signal would degrade and become unusable -- needed to unplug TC for restart and then everything was fine. If wired through the ethernet port via XP, the Airport Utility sometimes won't see the TC after a restart -- necessitating logging out and back into XP, then the TC was visible.
-> Internet performance on the wireless-n network is better than wireless a/g (about 30 feet away), but not significantly. Signal is 'very strong'.
-> Wireless-n access through Window Vista on the boot camp partition is much slower (really unusable) for unknown reasons. However, access through the boot camp partition as a virtual machine (VMWare) is much better -- but still a little slower that Mac OS X.
-> TC runs warm, but not hot. No smell or odor.
-> TC runs quiet to me.
My lessons learned:
===================
-> Plug the power cord into the TC before the outlet. The fit of the plug on the back of the TC is tight and needs a little extra force to set.
-> The initial wireless Time Machine backup does take a long time.
-> If the initial Time Machine backup is interrupted....when restarted TM performs an integrity check of the disk. This will look like the backup is hung at 21KB or something like that. Just need to let it run. The backup will be fine.
-> You can keep your existing router by making it a gateway and plugging it into the TC. No real impact on performance that I can see.
-> Plugging in a external drive formatted as FAT32 under Windows Vista and containing no files caused the TC to blink amber on startup. Once files were loaded, problem solved.
Message was edited by: Jeffrey Gardner1

Max(IT) -> From what I know, the xbox 360 only uses 802.11a (wireless-a) which is a 5ghz spectrum, so I didn't try the 2.4ghz.
R. Berardi -> You can definitely plug your existing router into the TC being as a gateway, or vice-versa. Either way you'd have wireless-n, you just have to decide which router you want to be the gateway (or connect to the modem). Both can be given a range of IPs to assign as DHCP that don't overlap, and you should be able to reach router admin page and TC Airport Utility from either network (access is by IP). If you wanted to run ethernet upstairs, this would work as well - but the routers have to be connected via ethernet. I've set-up the TC as the gateway with a Linksys a+g router, and this is my experience/understanding.
Thanks.

ITunes 11.0 First Impressions

1. My first impression of the user interface is that it's "square" and "flat".
   Esthetically I don't see it as an improvement. To the contrary, I think
   the former interface is nicer.
2. After starting iTunes 11.0 it sat there for 1/2 an hour with the message
   "Sending Information to Apple", then a dialog box displayed with:
   We cannot complete your iTunes Store request
   An unknown error occurred (4002)
   Note that three subsequent attempts resulted in the same iTunes match error.
3. Could not find a way to change the BRIGHT WHITE background. I hate the white
   background for various reasons. I'm sure many other customers preferred the dark
    background as well.
4. Tried syncing my iPhone and had to cancel. It was copying 49 apps, I believe
   some of these were from my iPad. Had to then restart iTunes.
5. Movies in grid view have large gaps in between the rows of movies.
   It is UGLY! Is it just me, or do others have these huge gaps?
6. Looking at my music, I see no way to view the songs in a list view.
   Where are the convenient buttons which quickly allowed changing views?
   Now there is just unused space where they used to be. And all of
   the menu items under View -> Column Browser are disabled.
   Why???
7. Hey, at least they brought back color icons, which Apple deemed that
   no one liked! (That was sarcasm).
Overall I am extremely dissapointed with this update, and it has me wondering how the
most valuable company in the world could release something that looks more at home
on a Linux desktop.

It's terrible. There is no symmetry in the views anymore. It is so bad, that it will take a lot of testing for me to figure out what is wrong with it. The only view that allows different views is the playlist view. I can't get an "artist list" for all my music. I can only get it for the currently selected playlist. I suppose I could make a playlist with all music. Where did sort by album by artist/year go? That's the view I used the most. I found it in the songs view. But there I can't see the album covers. It's so unsymmetrical now. Where did the status bar go that told me how many songs I selected and what the total play time is? I don't know if all my songs are there. The albums view and the videos views are worthless if you have 15,000 songs and videos. They just rearranged things. There's nothing new. There are things missing. The thing that needed fixing was synchronization. All that should be removed from iTunes, but they didn't make any changes to that. Can I go back to iTunes 10?

ACR 7.1 Beta & Photoshop CS6 Lens Profiles

If I open a Nikon RAW (NEF) file in ACR 7.1 Beta it correctly finds my Camera and Lens Combination Nikon D3 with the Nikon 24-70m f2,8 with the Adobe Lens Profile. However, when I leave ACR and the image is open in Photoshop, go to Filter, Lens Correction it does not automatically detect the correct camera and lens combination.
It shows the Camera Make as NIKON CORPORATION, but the Camera Model and Lens Model are not detected and I am asked to choose. In the Lens Profiles I see two choices, one for a Nikon D3x with the correct lens, the other for a generic Nikon Camera with a Sigma 24-70 F2.8.
I would have thought the detection process would have been the same?
MK

I was just curious and hunting around ACR 7.1 and Photoshop trying our the features. Also I have found that LR4 RC2 has follows ACR 7.1 as far as lens profiles go working with RAW images, so there is some consistency.
Wonder what the difference is between a RAW rendered image in ACR versus a Photoshop rendered image. Given, I could be wrong here, that Lens Correction is based on the optics of the lens, focal length, and the characteristics of the sensor, so would they not be the same in ACR and Photoshop?
I think I need to go check out a lens profiler
Cheers
Mike
There is one reason that I may go back into the Lens Correction Filter and that might be to fine tune some of the persective tools. With a large panorama much easier to see what needs to be done rather than view seperate images, and i have done that in the past. did not come to me until after I had hit the Send Button

ACR 6.1 Beta first impressions

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