Quote from: G_Town on April 16, 2008, 06:11:01 PMSo I did the E technique and it worked much better than masking/making correction but the problem I'm having now is I'm taking a darker image and trying to match it to a supplied proof (not the same image just a general color target) and the the darker image has shadows that are considerably darker (im talking actual shadow areas here) and are pretty much flat and devoid of any detail, lightening them looks like crap and leaving them looks like shes got a bad die job.

Similar to the history brush, and brushing back in the adjustments you made, if you use an adjustment layer(applying curves,or levels, or whatever) from the layers palette, you can then under the layers menu add a layer mask and hide your adjustments.  Then you just use the brush to unmask the areas that you want to have affected by your adjustment.  You can make the edge as hard or soft as you want easily enough.

As for getting more detail from the shadow areas, you can try taking the color channel with the most contrast/shape and make a duplicate, then crank up the contrast using curves so that the background washes out, and details just start to fill in. Then Apple click on your new ultra contrast channel to make a selection, do curves again and just do an S curve to boost the contrast a bit(it should only do the areas that were selected).  You should be able to get some of the natural detail to come out that way.

Just some thoughts...
-MC

At the last place I worked we used the Sword plates exclusively.  They were really touchy.  The chemistry needed to be "just right", and we never got plates to last as long as Kodak claimed.  True, the chemistry on press had a lot to do with that, but it was a lot of work to get consistent plate results.  From what I remember, they are Kodak's standard for long run heat set plates and they did work fine for Staccato which was about 90% of what we were printing.

Bottom line though, if you have other options, I would check them out first.

I got this second hand from a chiropractor...

Hold your arm straight out with your palm up and stretch your little and ring finger down(back) gently and hold for a few seconds. Repeat with your ring and middle finger, then middle and index finger.  Lastly stretch your thumb.  You will feel the stretch in your tendons right where you need it.  I can feel the stretch all the way up my arm.

-MC

Quote from: delooch on September 13, 2007, 09:26:05 PMif they would just build in a feature to make spreads without purchasing a plugin...

Ha, our biggest customer builds all their pages as spreads and we end up having to go through and split them.

...Using Acrobat 7 and 8 here. It just depends on what is loaded on the system.

Quote from: Joe on September 17, 2007, 09:49:10 PMPersonally I would not get the G5. It will be a dead platform in the not too distant future. Unless you have to upgrade and still need to use classic I would go with the new Intel Macs.

I agree.  Get the Intel Mac.  We are still using mostly CS, and have the minimum RAM in ours so the speed sucks, but as long as you have enough RAM you shouldn't have a problem.  Besides, CS3 is optimized for the Intels anyway.

-MC

I would get a bunch of RAM.  We have 2 Intel Macs here with the minimum 1GB of RAM (thanks tech department), and they are very very sloooooow.  We have G4s that are faster.  Still running CS2 on them, but 1GB would not be enough even running CS3.  Waiting 5 minutes just to open a file in Photoshop is rather rediculus.  Lucky for me I am still working on one of the G5s.