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Updates: Adobe Photoshop CS6 13.0.1, and more Retina display details

Photoshop CS6, Camera Raw 7, and Lightroom 4 icons

[Update, December 11, 2012: Photoshop CS6 13.0.2/13.1 and Illustrator CS6 16.0.3 now include Retina Display support. I’ve written a blog article with links and analysis.]

[Update, September 6, 2012: Premiere Pro CS6 6.0.2 now includes Retina Display support.]

Photoshop CS6 13.0.1 released

Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop CS6 13.0.1, which brings a security update and a number of bug fixes, including “31 crashing fixes.” You can read more about it on the Photoshop.com blog.

To download the update, go to:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

or:

To update Photoshop directly, start Photoshop CS6 and choose Help > Updates.

More details on support for the MacBook Pro with Retina display

When the MacBook Pro with Retina display came out, Adobe said that its software such as Photoshop would eventually support the high resolution of that display, also known as HiDPI, but they didn’t provide further details. Today Adobe provided more information about Adobe software support for the Retina display. In a post on their Creative Layer blog, Adobe listed software that will receive HiDPI updates “over the next few months.” Presumably, the applications that aren’t on the list are on a longer update timeline.

Digital photographers should note that Photoshop and Lightroom are both on the list. Some wonder why it takes so long, but keep in mind that assets like icons need to be updated (over 2500 according to Adobe), and any changes that affect the rendering of graphics and type need to be not only coded, but also tested and verified.

Canon EOS 7D firmware version 2 update (August 2012)

Canon EOS 7D product photograph, courtesy Canon Inc.

If you’ve got a Canon EOS 7D, you might have read Canon’s earlier announcement that they were working on a firmware update that would add quite a few new features to this good old workhorse. The final version of that firmware update is now available, and it’s called version 2.0.0. Download 7D Firmware Update Version 2.0.0 at Canon.com.

After you get to the Drivers and Software page choose from the Operating System and OS Version menus, and then you must click the Firmware heading to expand the listing. There’s no installer; as usual, you simply copy the firmware update to a compact flash card that you formatted with the 7D, and then use the 7D menus to load it from there. Detailed installation instructions are included with the download.

New feature highlights

Looking through the release notes on the Canon page, these new features jump out at me (not a complete list, see the release notes for that):

  • Shoot up to 25 images in raw burst mode, a nice bump up from the old limit of 15.
  • Maximum Auto ISO setting. This means I’ll finally be willing to use Auto ISO, since I thought the existing Auto ISO feature had a tendency to crank up ISO further than I would normally like.
  • Rating function. This could be great for marking images before I get them back to the computer. However, when I tried it, would not let me rate a raw image in camera unless I had captured it as Raw+JPEG. In other words, rating works with JPEG and Raw+JPEG, but not raw alone. This is possibly because it doesn’t want to write the rating directly into the raw file (Adobe has the same philosophy). JPEG is a standard format that can store the rating into an IPTC header. The rating I applied did successfully transfer to Lightroom 4.
  • Audio recording level manual setting. While most who shoot video for serious projects will still record to a separate, higher-quality audio capture device, being able to set a manual recording level will help simplify more casual video productions. I haven’t tried it out yet, but reports are that you can adjust the audio level only before you hit the video record button, not during recording. So make sure the audio level is correct before you start recording. I noticed that there’s also a “Disable” option in case you don’t want the camera to record audio at all.
  • Time zone function. This could be a good feature, although my understanding is that there is no industry metadata standard for recording the time zone. I’m still thinking of just setting all my cameras to UTC…
  • Support for the GP-E2 GPS receiver, if you need to capture location data.
  • In-camera raw processing and JPEG resizing, if you ever need to process images without a computer. Not a big deal to me.

The directions for installation are included with the firmware download. After this firmware update is installed successfully, the 7D will ask you to enter the date, time, time zone, and whether daylight saving time is in effect. This is probably because of the time zone feature.

Canon also recommends that if you’re going to update the 7D firmware, update your other Canon utilities too, from the same Canon EOS 7D download page.

That Canon would provide this level of support for a camera that’s been out for so long is commendable (new features for free!). But it might also be a sign that Canon isn’t going to replace the 7D any time soon.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: Will Adobe software work?

Now that OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is available from the Mac App Store for a mere USD$19.99, 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.

Adobe Creative Cloud, current versions: It isn’t possible to install or run these on Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. 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 10.8 Mountain Lion 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 10.8 Mountain Lion was released.]

Adobe FAQ: Adobe had published a Mountain Lion FAQ when this post was originally written, but it seems to have been replaced with a new document after the Creative Cloud launch in May 2013. The former Mountain Lion FAQ said:

At this time, none of the CS5, 5.5 or CS6 applications require updates to be compatible with Mountain Lion. However, we do recommend that all users download the latest version of the Adobe Flash® Player runtime…In our testing we have found no significant issues with running CS5, 5.5, CS6 or Acrobat products with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

A post at the Photoshop.com blog does talk about Creative Suite versions and Lion, and says:

We have worked closely with Apple to review Adobe Creative Suite 5, 5.5 and CS6 editions and individual products for impact on reliability, performance and user experience. Earlier versions of Adobe Photoshop® (CS3 and CS4), Lightroom 4.1, 4.0 and earlier software were also tested and there are currently no known issues.

If your Adobe software is earlier than CS5, to run under Mountain Lion 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, so Mountain Lion will not allow Photoshop CS2 to run or even install. But even if your software older than CS5 runs on Mountain Lion, it may still have other issues because OS X has changed a lot since then.

Flash: Apple has changed how Adobe Flash Player is allowed to work in OS X. If you aren’t on the latest version of Flash, OS X may display a “Blocked Plug-in” message because Apple wants you to have the latest Flash security fixes. All you have to do is go into the Flash Player system preference and update it from there, or download the latest version of Flash from the link above and run the installer. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to view Flash content again.

Flash Player system preference

Premiere Pro: John Nack of Adobe, whose blog clued me in to the Adobe FAQ for Mountain Lion, reports that according to Adobe Premiere Pro team member Todd Kopriva:

Mountain Lion (Mac OS v10.8) upgrade improves performance and stability with Premiere Pro.

I’m guessing that this may be because of new code in Mountain Lion that Premiere Pro can take advantage of, because this isn’t the first time that happened: Premiere Pro also ran better after Apple added OpenCL improvements to the OS X 10.7.4 update.

Update: Adobe has posted a Premiere Pro tech note about AVCHD video issues related to a change Apple made in Mountain Lion.

OS X Gatekeeper and older Adobe software: Gatekeeper is a new security feature Apple added in Mountain Lion that helps make sure that you aren’t running malicious applications. In the Mountain Lion FAQ linked above, Adobe says:

Adobe has added the Gatekeeper signing requirements to our currently shipping applications. However, our legacy products created before Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper feature was available are not signed. If you download one of those legacy (unsigned) applications, the Gatekeeper security feature may pop-up a security dialog…

Because Adobe only updated currently shipping software for Gatekeeper, if you run older versions of Adobe software you should review that section of the FAQ.

Full-screen mode on multiple monitors: Since Lion, when a Mac application goes into the OS-native full-screen mode, all other connected monitors go blank, displaying only the gray “linen” desktop so that you can’t see your other apps. No one is able to explain why this is a good thing. The only change in Mountain Lion is that you can display the active application on any connected display…but you still can’t see any other apps.

Adobe continues to use the traditional Adobe full screen modes in their apps such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator. While some Mac users might complain that the Adobe way makes those apps “non-standard,” as a long-time Mac user trying to get things done with multiple apps on multiple monitors I find the Adobe full screen mode to be much more productive than the OS X implementation.

(If you want to turn on the Adobe full screen mode, in OS X or Windows press the F key…just the letter F, not a function key. That shortcut will cycle through the View > Screen Mode commands in Photoshop, the Window > Screen Mode commands in Lightroom, and the Change Screen Mode button in Illustrator. Adobe full screen mode is available in some, but not all, Adobe software.)

Note: In OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple is changing how full screen apps work on multiple monitors. This may solve the current issues.

10-bit video displays: Photoshop users and other graphics professionals have been interested in properly supporting 10-bits-per-channel video displays on Macs. (This isn’t about the file format, but the data path to the video monitor. Most displays support 8 bits per channel of color, but some high-end monitors support 10 bits per pixel for smoother gradations and better color accuracy.) To support 10-bit video requires an unbroken chain of components: The monitor, the graphics card, the cable, the application, and the operating system and its graphics driver software. If any part of the chain doesn’t support 10-bit video, it won’t work. And it might not work on the Mac any time soon, due to Apple’s continuing lack of 10-bit video APIs in OS X. The displays are ready, the graphics cards are ready, compatible DisplayPort cables are ready, Photoshop is ready…OS X remains the one broken link in the chain.

MacBook Pro with Retina Display [updated August 29, 2012]: Adobe has published a list of the first wave of their software that will support the high resolution of the MacBook Pro with Retina Display “over the next few months;” you can read about it in an Adobe blog post. Photoshop and Lightroom are both on that list. Presumably, the rest will follow a little later.

Update: Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6 received Retina Display support in the update released December 11, 2012. Run Adobe Updater to get them (choose Help > Updates in the 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 OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion. For mission-critical software, you should also check each company’s support website to verify that it works.

If you’re updating 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 support for PowerPC-based software.

Wondering what Mountain Lion is all about? For the most in-depth Mountain Lion 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.

Updates: Adobe Camera Raw 7.1 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.1

Photoshop CS6, Camera Raw 7, and Lightroom 4 icons

Adobe has released Camera Raw 7.1 and Lightroom 4.1 with the same raw processing updates for both, and with a corresponding update to DNG Converter, the utility that among other things can bring the latest camera raw support to versions of Photoshop before Photoshop CS6. All are free updates for current licenses of the software.

Along with the usual bug fixes and added support for new cameras (including the Canon EOS 5D Mark III and EOS 1D X, Fuji X-Pro1, and Nikon D4/D800/D800E) and new lens correction profiles, there are several new features that you can read about in a post at the official Lightroom Journal.

Probably the biggest new feature is the powerful new set of color fringe correction controls. You’ll find them in the Defringe section of the Color tab under the Lens Corrections tab, and you can learn how to use them in a very informative blog post at the Lightroom Journal.

New color fringe removal options in Camera Raw 7.1

In the release candidate version of Lightroom 4.1 I had experienced a problem with edges looking jagged when profile corrections were turned on, a problem discussed in the forums. After I installed this final version of Lightroom 4.1, the files with that problem appear to be fixed.

To download the update, go to:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

or:

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

To update Lightroom, start Lightroom and choose Help > Check for Updates. If you bought Lightroom through the Mac App Store, the update may take a longer to become available there because it has to wait for Apple approval.

Updates: Adobe Camera Raw 6.7 and DNG Converter 6.7

Adobe has released Camera Raw 6.7 and DNG Converter 6.7. This release is important for Photoshop CS5 users who use Lightroom 4. What’s notable in this release:

  • You can preserve edits made using Process Version 2012 in Lightroom 4 in a raw file you’ve imported into Photoshop CS5 as a Smart Object. However, you won’t be able to change Basic panel develop settings unless you switch back to Process Version 2010, as shown in the figure below. If you want to import Lightroom 4 raw files as Smart Objects into Photoshop and then edit them using Process Version 2012, you’ll need Adobe Camera Raw 7, which is available only with Photoshop CS6.

Raw image from Lightroom 4 as Smart Object in Photoshop CS5 with Adobe Camera Raw 6.7

  • You can import raw formats from new cameras such as the Canon EOS 1D X, Canon EOS 5D Mk III, Nikon D4, Nikon D800, Nikon D800E
  • More lenses have been added to the list of lens correction profiles.

For more information about new features and bug fixes, read the blog post by Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty:

Lightroom Journal: Adobe Camera Raw 6.7 and DNG Convertor 6.7 Now Available on Adobe.com

As usual, you can read the release notes and download the installers from

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

or:

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

Also as usual, DNG Converter is useful for bringing the latest camera raw support to versions of Photoshop before Photoshop CS5.