Adobe Photoshop CC 14.2: Perspective warp, linked Smart Objects, 3D printing, better Mac performance

Photoshop CC iconAdobe Creative Cloud icon

Adobe Photoshop CC 14.2 is an update not to be ignored, especially if you use it on a Mac. You’ll get it either for the features or for the performance. The new features include Perspective Warp, linked Smart Objects, and 3D printing support. Performance enhancements include initial support for the GPU in the 2013 Mac Pro, and a fix that prevents OS X App Nap from slowing down Photoshop when it’s in the background.

This article covers some of the highlights from my point of view. For a link to several informative Adobe articles with videos, to learn how Adobe is resetting the clock on the trial version, and to learn how to get the update, skip down to the end of this post.

Adobe Illustrator CC and Adobe InDesign CC also received updates today.

Perspective Warp

Already demonstrated by Adobe in a “sneak peek” without being tied to a specific future version, Perspective Warp is officially part of Photoshop CC 14.2. Photoshop already has several ways to handle perspective. For many years people simulated perspective using the Crop tool to create a crude 2D warp. More recently, the Lens Correction filter lets you alter perspective of an entire image. But where the point of Lens Correction is to compensate for unwanted distortion, Perspective Warp is more of a creative tool that you can use to alter the perspective of parts of an image instead of the whole thing while keeping it believable. For example, it you want to composite two images in one document but their perspectives are different, you could use Perspective Warp to make the perspective of both images consistent. Here’s an Adobe video demonstrating Perspective Warp.

Linked Smart Objects

While Smart Objects bring a lot of power and flexibility to image editing, there’s always been the potential to use them for the types of documents you can build with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign, where imported content can be linked (to a file outside the document) instead of embedded in the document, and that content is easily replaced by pointing the link to a different file on disk. But up until now that potential has not been realized because Smart Objects could only be embedded.

The new File > Place Linked command in Photoshop 14.2 changes all that. Using that command adds the content to a Photoshop document as a linked Smart Object. It has the usual attributes of a Smart Object, but it lives outside the Photoshop file and is easy to manage. There is no Links panel as you would find in InDesign or Illustrator, but  the Layers panel now displays the status of linked Smart Objects. When a linked Smart Object layer is selected, the Properties panel gives you information about that object along with options for managing it, including a Reveal command so you can find the file on the desktop, update the content if the disk file has been modified, and replace the contents with a different file.

There are those who may wish for a full Links panel, but I can understand why Adobe didn’t add one. A Photoshop document is only one page, so typically there are relatively few Smart Objects to manage. Illustrator can have multiple artboards and InDesign can have up to hundreds of pages, so a full Links panel for those two applications makes more sense because many more objects are likely to be imported into them.

If you use a lot of Smart Objects, linked Smart Objects could potentially reduce the size of a Photoshop file by a significant amount compared to embedded Smart Objects. Photoshop templates that use placeholders are going to be a lot easier to work with now. In addition, if you manage photos or other files using LIghtroom or Bridge and place them as linked Smart Objects in Photoshop, when you edit those files outside of Photoshop (e.g., in Lightroom) you will now find it much easier to update them inside a Photoshop document. That’s a big reason that Linked Smart Objects is my favorite new feature in Photoshop 14.2.

3D printing support

I don’t do much with 3D but another major feature in Photoshop 14.2 is the introduction of support for 3D printing. If you bring 3D models into Photoshop to touch them up, you can print them to devices such as the MakerBot Replicator or to the Shapeways printing service. Adobe talks about it in more detail in the following article.

Photoshop CC Gets Physical: 3D Printing in Just One Click

Mac Pro (2013) support and OS X performance optimization

Adobe claims that Photoshop CC 14.2 supports the powerful GPUs in that mysterious black cylinder, the 2013 Mac Pro. Before you get too excited, read the fine print in Jeff Tranberry’s article (Photoshop CC 14.2 Update). Photoshop 14.2 can fully use one of the two FirePro GPUs in the Mac Pro, but not both (yet). Note that not everything in Photoshop lends itself to GPU acceleration, and some operations can be accelerated more than others. Adobe points out that even just one of the Mac Pro GPUs is more powerful than the GPU in any other Mac. (Similarly, while Adobe Premiere Pro CC now supports both 2013 Mac Pro GPUs for rendering, it doesn’t yet support both for previewing.)

Another performance optimization in Photoshop 14.2 has to do with OS X App Nap, a technology that tries to halt background processes to save battery life and hand over more resources to a foreground application. Unfortunately, as reported by Mac Performance Guide, App Nap was slowing down Photoshop when it was not in the foreground. Adobe now suppresses App Nap for Photoshop so that it runs at full speed at all times. They do not mention whether this is switchable.

Other (but not all) new features and enhancements

Adobe claims that Smart Sharpen is accelerated by supported GPUs more than it was before.

When you choose Edit > Fill, try some of the new additions to the Scripted Patterns option at the bottom of the Fill dialog box. For example, you can generate a range of trees by choosing the Tree script and playing with the settings.

Scripted fill: Tree

When I first wrote about Adobe Generator, I mentioned that there was no way to specify padding or export the entire canvas of a layer. Adobe notes that in 14.2 “Generator can export padding in image assets by using layer masks. Sounds promising, I just haven’t tried it out yet.

You now get up to 10 color samplers, the ability to edit all color samples in the Info panel at once, and a new Clear All option to remove them all at once.

Now there’s a one-click way to unlock a background layer. Just click the lock icon on it!

More details from Adobe

Adobe just published several articles about the new features in Photoshop CC 14.2. Here are links to them. The first two are the most important if you want a complete list of what’s in the update.

Introducing New Features in Photoshop CC (14.2)

Photoshop CC 14.2 Update – JDI features, Mac Pro/OS X 10.9 compatibility and notable bug fixes

How to adjust perspective in a photo (Perspective Warp)

Photoshop CC Gets Physical: 3D Printing in Just One Click

Photoshop Help / What’s New in Photoshop CC (January 2014)

How to get the update

To update from Photoshop, start Photoshop CC and choose Help > Updates.

or:

To update through Adobe Creative Cloud: Start Adobe Creative Cloud if it isn’t running, and it should indicate that an update is available for Adobe Photoshop CC.

Bonus! Trial version reset

In the Introducing New Features article by Adobe that’s linked above, Adobe mentions that they are resetting the trial period for Photoshop. This is pretty significant for those who haven’t tried Photoshop in a while. Normally, once you’ve used a trial version you can never use it again on the same computer after the trial period is up. With Photoshop 14.2, anyone can now use it for 30 days even if they had already tried it before. From the article (bold formatting is by Adobe):

We want everyone to have a chance to try out these new features, as well as other features like Adobe Generator, which was introduced last September with the release of Photoshop CC version 14.1, and those released in the first version of Photoshop CC (version 14). We are excited to announce that we are resetting the trial clock for everyone today. Even if you have previously tried Photoshop CC and your trial has expired, now you can try the latest version of Photoshop CC for an additional 30 days and test-drive these awesome new features.

Accelerate Graphics Production Using Metadata Filters in Adobe Bridge and Lightroom — CreativePro.com article

Accelerate Graphics Production Using Metadata Filters in Adobe Bridge and Lightroom on CreativePro.com

You’ve got a folder full of images and you need to run some production chores on them, like converting formats or applying noise reduction. How can you quickly tell which images need work? In an article I wrote for CreativePro.com, I talk about how the filtering features in Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom can save you lots of production time by helping you quickly target files you need to work on, and tracking your progress.

Click the link below to read the article at CreativePro.com:
Accelerate Graphics Production Using Metadata Filters in Adobe Bridge and Lightroom

Create photo layouts faster with my article in the Photography Issue of InDesign Magazine

InDesign Magazine, Issue 57: The Photography Issue

Want to create photo layouts faster? I just wrote an article, “Import More Images in Less Time,” for the Photography Issue of InDesign Magazine (December/January 2014). If you use Adobe InDesign to create photo-intensive publications like catalogs, yearbooks, or magazines, you already know that it takes too long to import images one at a time using the Place command. But what are the faster alternatives that can save you hours of time? In this article I tell you about several ways to quickly import and place multiple images in a single pass using InDesign.

Click the link below to read the article (co-authored with Bart Van de Wiele) at InDesign Magazine:
InDesign Magazine, Issue 57: The Photography Issue

The article is part of an issue of InDesign Magazine that’s available for purchase as a single issue or as part of a subscription. InDesign Magazine is a bimonthly periodical devoted entirely to Adobe InDesign and to the thriving community of InDesign professionals. With editorial direction by page-layout guru and author David Blatner and CreativePro.com editor in chief Mike Rankin, InDesign Magazine brings you the in-depth features, reviews, and tutorials you need to master Adobe InDesign. You can download a free trial issue.

Lightroom 5.3 and Adobe Camera Raw 8.3 released

Photoshop CC iconAdobe Lightroom 5 iconAdobe Creative Cloud icon

Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.3 and Adobe Camera Raw 8.3 with the same raw processing updates for both, and with a corresponding DNG Converter 8.3 update. All are free updates for current licenses of the software. The updates also include the usual bug fixes, adds support for new cameras including the Nikon Df, Pentax K-3, Sony A7/A7r, and the Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone; and also add new lens correction profiles including one for the iPhone 5s. For more details, go to:

If you’ve been using the Release Candidate (RC) versions that were released by Adobe Labs earlier for public testing, you should install these final versions because there have been some changes from the RC versions.

New features in Camera Raw

The Adobe Camera Raw 8.3 blog post I linked above describes new features for Camera Raw including:

  • Auto-straighten with the Straighten tool.
  • Apply auto-levels-like adjustment for the Whites and Blacks sliders (Shift-double-click).
  • Apply Auto Temperature and Auto Tint separately (Shift-double-click). Previously, you could only choose Auto white balance which always adjusted both sliders.
  • Control background color of work area and toggle the border around the image.
  • In the dialog boxes for synchronizing settings and creating presets, Option/Alt-clicking a checkbox is a shortcut for selecting that checkbox only, and toggling back to the previous set of selected checkboxes.

Should Lightroom users be concerned that Lightroom 5.3 doesn’t have new features? No, because some of those features appeared in Lightroom first. Adobe continues to add features to Camera Raw to bring it closer to Lightroom, as I wrote about in my article “Camera Raw 8.2 vs Lightroom 5.2: Latest releases shift the balance.” But the border toggle and sync checkbox features are unique to Camera Raw.

As you can see in the updater screen shot below, Camera Raw 8.3 is available for both Photoshop CC and Photoshop CS6 (as well as Adobe Bridge CS6 and CC). Consistent with current Adobe policy, Photoshop and Bridge CS6 get Camera Raw 8.3 bug fixes and support for new cameras, but not the new features.

Creative Cloud updater showing Camera Raw 8.3 update

End of the line for older OSs (Camera Raw and DNG Converter)

If you’re using Photoshop CS6 with an older Mac or Windows operating system, you’ll want to understand this excerpt from the Camera Raw 8.3 blog post I linked earlier:

Please note that this is the final version of Camera Raw 8 and DNG Converter 8 that will be available for Photoshop CS6 customers on Windows XP, Windows Vista or Mac OSX 10.6. Impacted customers can continue either update to compatible operating system (sic) or continue to use Camera Raw 8.3 for Photoshop CS6.

The Adobe note goes on to say that newer OS versions will keep getting updates.

How to get the updates

To update Camera Raw from Photoshop, start Photoshop and choose Help > Updates.

To update Lighroom, start Lightroom, choose Help > Updates, download the installer, and run the installer.

or:

To update both Camera Raw and Lightroom through Adobe Creative Cloud: Start Adobe Creative Cloud if it isn’t running, and it should indicate that an update is available for Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom.

You can also download standalone installers for Lightroom 5.3 and DNG Converter 7.3 from the Adobe Product Updates page.

Lightroom updater

OS X 10.9 Mavericks: Will Adobe software work?

OS X 10.9 logo, courtesy Apple Inc.

Now that OS X 10.9 Mavericks is available from the Mac App Store for free (no refunds!), you’re probably wondering how well your Adobe software and other Mac apps will run on it. Below is a summary of various reports I’ve read on Adobe.com and around the web. I will continue to update this article as I find out more.

Adobe Creative Cloud, current versions: It isn’t possible to install or run these on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks. As of 2019, the only versions of Creative Cloud applications available for installation are the current version and one previous major version, and those won’t work because support for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks was dropped several years ago. If you want to know the current system requirements, look them up for the specific Adobe application you would like to use.

[Note: The rest of this section was originally written about the Adobe software available at the time Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks was released.]

Adobe FAQs: Adobe has published a tech note, OS Compatibility and FAQs for Mac OS Mavericks (v10.9). It contains links to additional information, so be sure to expand each of the FAQ questions on that page to get to the links for important information about Flash Player and sandbox restrictions, an “incompatible software” error you might see, and a problem viewing Adobe PDF files in Safari.

In that FAQ, Adobe claims:

“All Adobe CC and CS6 products are compatible, but a few products require updates to the latest builds to work properly. Adobe Photoshop® CS5, CS4 and CS3 were also tested with Mac OS X Mavericks and there are currently no major issues known.”

I’ve been able to install and run some Creative Suite apps on Mavericks, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Photoshop CS3 and CS4 installed and started up successfully, but I didn’t work in them intensively. (Note that CS2 applications, including Photoshop, were written for Macs with PowerPC CPUs. Mavericks only runs Intel CPU-compatible software, so Mavericks will not allow CS2 to run or install.)

While the Adobe FAQ says there are “no major issues known” with CS3 through CS6, there seem to be a few that are at least minor. I cover some in the rest of this article, and there are also discussions happening on Adobe forums and blogs (a good one is Creative Cloud, Creative Suite 6, and Mavericks (10.9)). If you find a repeatable problem, you can send it in using the official Adobe Feature Request/Bug Report Form, but it’s always a good idea to first check the Adobe Community forum for the software in case it’s already being discussed.

An application won’t start: The two most common reasons for pre-CC versions to not launch in Mavericks are Java not being available, and having non-Adobe plug-ins that aren’t compatible with Mavericks. See the topics Java requirement and Plug-ins below.

Photoshop: Menus may appear blank. This is not happening to everyone, but there is a long thread on the official Photoshop forum about it: Drop Down Menus in Photoshop CS 6 Goes Blank In Mavericks. Update: This was caused by a bug in OS X, which Apple fixed in OS X 10.9.3. If you are running an earlier version of OS X you can download an Adobe plug-in to work around the problem.

Mac Performance Guide reports that the App Nap feature in Mavericks may slow down Photoshop scripts, but Adobe claims to have worked around this in Photoshop CC 14.2.

An Apple bug in OS X 10.9.2 driver software for OpenCL running on AMD/ATI GPU hardware caused crashes in some features in Photoshop if OpenCL is enabled, and can reportedly affect performance on the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple fixed their bug in OS X 10.9.3, so make sure you’re up to date.

Lightroom: For Mavericks compatibility, make sure you have upgraded to Lightroom 5.2. This version resolves a Mavericks-related issue involving sliders. Lightroom Queen Victoria Bampton has her own tech note that covers a few other minor Mavericks issues: Is Lightroom compatible with OS X Mavericks?

Premiere Pro: Users are reporting some issues, Adobe is investigating according to their Oct 23, 2013 blog post: Premiere Pro and Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)

After Effects: If you’re crashing, get the After Effects 12.1 update. If you can’t reassign keyboard shortcuts by using TextEdit to edit the shortcuts file, you need to turn off the default TextEdit behavior in Mavericks that turns on Smart Quotes.

Java requirement: When launching some older Adobe software for the first time in OS X, OS X may say that a Java runtime needs to be installed. If a button is provided, click it; if not, download the latest Java from Apple and install that. Some users have reported that the Adobe launch issue is not fixed until you reboot a second time after the Java installation.

Some are wary of Java security issues, but OS X won’t let some Adobe applications launch without it. In the case of Photoshop, Adobe says Photoshop doesn’t need Java at all, but OS X puts up the message anyway.

Plug-ins: If you rely on any non-Adobe plug-ins, make sure those plug-ins are compatible with Mavericks. A plug-in that is not compatible with Mavericks may prevent its host Adobe app from starting up.

Multiple displays: If you put panels (including the Tools panel) on a secondary display and then switch applications, those panels may snap back to the primary display when you switch back. To avoid this, open System Preferences, click Mission Control, and turn off Displays Have Separate Spaces. Mavericks ships with that option on, so if you want to position Adobe application panels and windows on multiple displays you should turn off that option. The Lightroom secondary display panel seems to work fine either way though.

Displays Have Separate Spaces system preference in Mavericks

Another reason (this applies to all Mac apps) why you might want to turn off Displays Have Separate Spaces is that if it’s on, you can’t span a window across two displays. What’s a reason to turn it on? There are at least three: If you want Spaces to switch on only the display you’re using (the one with the pointer), if you want to see the menu bar on all displays, and if you want to be able to see more than one application when using OS X full screen mode with multiple displays.

Photoshop CC seems to work properly with panels and windows spread across two monitors, including a single window extended across two monitors, as long as the Displays Have Separate Spaces option is turned off.

Open/Save dialog box CoverFlow crash: If an application crashes when you’re using the CoverFlow view in the Open/Save dialog box, this looks like a bug observed in Mavericks. Adobe has a tech note about it: Freeze or Crash when using Open or Save dialog box.

OS X Gatekeeper may prevent older Adobe software from starting: Gatekeeper is an Apple security feature (added in Mountain Lion) that helps protect you from running malicious applications. If you run Adobe software released before Gatekeeper, you should know what to do if Gatekeeper prevents Adobe software from starting. Adobe covers that in this tech note: Error “has not been signed by a recognized distributor” | Launch Adobe applications | Mac OS. The short answer is to bypass the error by right-clicking the application icon, then choose Open from the context menu.

Adobe software released after Gatekeeper was introduced properly conforms to Gatekeeper requirements, so no adjustments are needed for them.

Old Adobe software part II: Intel compatibility required: If your Adobe software is earlier than CS5, to run under Mavericks at all it must support Intel processors. After Apple switched to Intel-based Macs, Apple started phasing out support for running software based on the older PowerPC processors. Starting with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X no longer runs PowerPC-based software. You’ll have to check compatibility for each of the Adobe applications you want to run; for example, Photoshop CS3 was the first version of Photoshop that ran on Intel-based Macs. But even if your software older than CS5 runs on Mavericks, it may still have other issues because OS X has changed a lot since then.

Upgrading from Mac OS X 10.6 or earlier: You may also want to read my blog post “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Will Adobe apps and other software work?”, so that you can also be up to date on the more dramatic changes that were introduced in Lion, such as the end of OS X support for PowerPC-based software.

To learn about OS X software compatibility of Mac software in general, a great resource is the Roaring Apps database. It lists OS X software and its reported compatibility with the last few versions of OS X. For mission-critical software, you should also check each company’s support website to verify that it works.

Wondering what Mavericks is all about? For the most in-depth Mavericks review you’ll probably find anywhere, read John Siracusa’s review at Ars Technica. As with every major release of OS X, Siracusa not only reviews the visible features that Apple promotes, but goes under the surface to explain changes to some of the underlying technologies in OS X and how they affect your Mac experience.

Full screen mode on multiple monitors: In Lion and Mountain Lion, if an application used the OS X native full screen mode, all other monitors would display only the gray linen background pattern, preventing you from seeing any other applications. Mavericks finally fixes this; I can now put an application into OS X full screen mode and continue to see other applications on other monitors. However, to achieve this the Displays Have Separate Spaces option must be turned on. But as discussed earlier in this article, you want to turn off that option if you want to be able to keep Adobe windows and panels on another monitor and not lose those positions when switching applications.

Adobe continues to use the traditional Adobe full screen modes in their apps such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator instead of the OS X-native full screen mode. It’s still unclear whether Adobe will adopt OS X full screen mode, but I don’t necessarily mind, because Adobe continues to offer more and sometimes more practical full screen modes than Apple does. Adobe applications were free of the full screen limitations of Lion and Mountain Lion because they don’t use OS X full screen mode.

10-bit video displays: Photoshop users and other graphics professionals have wanted proper support for 10-bits-per-channel video displays on Macs. (This isn’t about the file format, but the data path to the video monitor.) While 10-bit-capable displays, graphics cards, cables, and software (such as Photoshop) have been ready for some time, Apple has not provided the necessary APIs to complete the chain. I had not heard that this is changing in Mavericks, but a reader sent me a link to an article on Native Digital that indicates possible support for 10-bit video. (Update: The linked article now says it was a false alarm; still no 10-bit support in Mavericks.) If you know any more about this, please post in the comments.