Orbita Mouse Offers Unique Rotational Controls

The soon-to-be-released Orbita Mouse is designed to change the way pointing devices are used, while bringing ergonomic benefits.

The Orbita Mouse, designed by the somewhat ridiculously named Cyber E Sport company, is a new take on the mostly unchanging mouse that promises to lower hand-strain on the user and offer an easier and more intuitive way to scroll.

The circular mouse works at any angle and rotates freely. This rotation can act as both vertical and horizontal scrolling, making the Orbita function almost like a dial.

This unique approach to scrolling allows constant, smooth scrolling for the user, instead of the jerky, staggered sort of scrolling that results from using a scroll wheel. Further, users of 3D modeling programs and music-recording software will see unique benefits as well: the Optima’s rotation acts as a 3^rd axis, allowing more robust manipulation of 3D objects in rendering programs, and the circular scrolling motion provides more intuitive rotation of knobs and dials in recording software.

The Orbita also comes with the traditional left and right click buttons, albeit in a slightly un-traditional arrangement. The left click comes in the form of a normal push-button, but a right click is executed by squeezing the mouse at any point; the right click squeeze feature encompasses the entire radius of the mouse, meaning it doesn’t matter what angle you squeeze at.

I must admit, at first I was skeptical that the Orbita mouse was worth looking at, because to me it looked just like a gimmicky rehash of a normal mouse. But after seeing how the rotational scrolling works, I think I’m sold.

I find that one of the most annoying things about using most recording software is manipulating the digital dials and switches most of them have. The simple act of rotating a knob does not translate well into normal mouse gestures. But the Orbita looks like it allows for intuitive and satisfying rotation, making a lot of scrolling actions easier.

Plus the thing is downright cute looking.

The Orbita is scheduled to be released in January of 2009, comes with a wireless USB base that also charges, and will cost $98.50.

Check out the embedded video of it in action below, or check out Orbita’s website for some demonstrations.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qCwlw9DO7g[/youtube]

Should You Upgrade to Photoshop CS4?

Photoshop Creative Suite 4 adds quite a few new features, some of which are very impressive. We’ll take a look at some of them and find out whether they’re worth the upgrade.

With CS 4 comes a myriad of new features and improvements. So many in fact, that it’s difficult to assess them all. This also makes it difficult to decide whether it is worth the upgrade, so we’re going to look at some of the most relevant changes.

The most significant change is that Photoshop CS4 is now available in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. For Windows users this may be a significant advantage, allowing Photoshop to make full use of your processor, and also allowing Photoshop to access more RAM if you use the 64 bit version. Users will be able to load significantly larger images in their RAM, assuming their computer is equipped with a great deal of RAM, rather than forcing their computer to swap the images back and forth from the hard drive. Photographers who use large format cameras will find this particularly useful; a 40 megapixel picture takes up a significant amount of space, and loading one from the harddrive, which is considerably slower than RAM, could result in noticeable slow-down with Photoshop.

Another new feature relevant to photographers is a new depth of field tool. Using this tool, CS4 users can combine multiple photographs that have different subjects in focus so that they become one photograph with every subject in focus. A tool like this may well be very useful for magazine photographers, who often use this effect to get multiple subjects in the same photo at different distances from the camera, while keeping them all in focus.

But there are features that will be useful to everyone as well, not just photographers. The new zoom features makes zooming in on a picture easier and visually smoother. A new hotkey allows users to temporarily zoom out to view the whole picture, and zoom back in by releasing the key. This makes finding the area you want to zoom in to much easier, especially when working at very high zoom levels. Further, with the proper graphics equipment, CS4 will keep all lines smooth no matter how far in you zoom. This new infinite zoom feature reduces the “jagginess” that is experienced as you zoom closer and closer to an image.

The most incredible new feature is the context-sensitive resize tool. Traditionally, resizing has been mostly a pointless affair when working with complex images, unless the proportions were constrained so that the width and height changed relative to one another. When you needed to make an image thinner or shorter, the resize tool would mangle the proportions, squishing the subjects noticeably.

The new context-sensitive resize eliminates this problem. The resize tool can now determine which subject in the foreground are most important and keep all their detail and sizing, while squishing the background. This makes resizing images very simple, and works surprisingly well. This has obvious application for photographers who want to modify the composition of a photograph quickly while not ruining the subjects, but web designers may find this very useful as well. Resizing images on the web often results in squished and aesthetically unpleasing images, and sometimes an image is simply too big to put on the page. With context-sensitive resize, web designers can quickly and easily make an image fit their page without ruining its quality.

Another neat graphical feature added to CS4 is the new image rotate option. With this new control, users can rotate a picture within its window, without actually editing the image. The process is akin to rotating your actual monitor, in that it gives you a new view of the picture without degrading or ruining it, allowing users to manipulate their images and determine how they will look at different angles.

All of this doesn’t include the myriad of small improvements. Adjustments made to images are no longer permanent, and instead automatically apply the changes to a new layer. This gets rid of the need to press Back one step then Forward one step repeatedly when you want to see what difference an edit makes; now the user need only toggle off the new added layer to see what changes were made, in a manner that is non-destructive to the image.

The interface has also been improved, making navigation smoother and easier. Images are now put into tabs, making switching between them simple and quick, along with many other small interface tweaks. Also, the addition of the new adjustments panel makes adjustments much more fluid now that users aren’t require to go into the main menu every time they want to make an adjustment. Many tools have been made easier to use as well, with hot keys that work in tandem with the mouse to resize brushes, and visual improvements to the Dodge, Burn and Brush tools.

Finally for our small review, CS4 adds 3D painting and composition tools. With these new tools users can paint 2D images onto 3D objects within Photoshop, broadening Photoshop’s applicability and usefulness greatly. But this feature is only available in the Extended edition.

CS4 is without a doubt a significant improvement over CS3, but do you need it? The performance improvements with the new 64 bit version are very important for users with a system that isn’t being used to its full potential, or users who simply work with very large images, and many of the new tools are innovative and useful to just about anyone who works with Photoshop. Finally, improvements to old features and the interface make the whole experience smoother and simpler.

Photoshop is clearly the number one professional image editing and manipulation software on the market, and it’s hard to say that it’s not worth getting the update. If you’re getting by fine with CS3, and can’t spare the money, then you might want to hold off. Cons are hard to come by; CS4 improves on CS3 in many ways and doesn’t seem to have messed anything up. From what I’ve read some people complain that the Bridge tool still doesn’t allow for serious comparison of photos. But I personally have very little experience with Bridge, and don’t use it in great enough detail to say.

If you’ve got the cash to spare and are looking for some very powerful new features and improvements, by all means upgrade to CS4. It is likely that over the next few years the majority of Photoshop users will be doing the same.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 costs $699, or $199 to upgrade from the earlier CS editions. Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended costs $999, or $349 to upgrade, and comes with the 3D editing tools. Photoshop CS4 Extended is also available in all four of the Creative Suite collections: Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium, and Masters Collection.

Photoshop Tutorial: Editing a Batch of Photos

I’m still learning new things about Photoshop every time I open the program or listen to another person talk about what things they do with it. I’m going to give you a short tutorial on how to edit a large number of images in very little time using the batch and actions features.

Go ahead and find yourself a group of pictures you want to edit and open up Photoshop. There have been times before I discovered this method that I chose not to edit my pictures because I didn’t want to spend hours (or in some cases days) going through and editing my pics one by one. With this method, whether you have two or two-thousand pictures to edit, you can set Photoshop to automatically perform a set path of tasks to perform on each picture and save them to wherever you want while you go get a coffee. This could be useful if you had bad lighting issues one day while shooting that you need to fix or if you want to put a stamp or effect on a number of images or whatever you can think of.

Before I start, I want to let you know that I am running Adobe Photoshop CS2 on a Mac. If you have another CS version or are on a PC, you should be able to follow along just fine. It’s mostly just a warning in case my screenshots look funny to you. Let’s begin!

1. Open up a photo, any photo you want to edit.

2. Go to the Windows tab up top and open up the Actions window. Windows > Actions

3.With the open Actions window, click the icon that looks like a folded piece of square paper. This creates a new action. You can name the action anything you want, but leave everything else the way it is and hit OK.

4.Now in the Actions window, the action you just created should be selected and a red circle below it should be pressed. The red circle button is the record button. Anything you do in Photoshop from this point forward will be recorded under your new action. You can pause and continue recording whenever you want by switching between the stop (square) button and record button.

5.With your actions recording, perform any changes you want to make to your picture. As you edit your pictures, you will see your actions being recorded under the action you created.

6.When you are done editing your photo, hit the stop (square) button in your actions window.

7.Now go to File and select Automate and then Batch. File > Automate > Batch

8.The Batch menu should now be open, this is where the magic happens. Mouse over to the Action pull down menu and select the new action you just made and recorded. Then select the Source pull down menu and select where the group of pictures is coming from you want to edit. Next, go to the Destination pull down menu and select where you want your edited pictures to be saved at.

I would recommend to look at the options presented to you and select skipping over the command and error prompts so your actions perform on all of the pictures without pausing at every one for you to select ‘save.’ Once you have done all of this, hit ok.

Now Photoshop should be running through all of the pictures you selected to edit, performing the exact same adjustments you did on the original picture. Depending on how many pictures you selected to edit, this could take a few minutes or a few hours to complete, but at least you’re not sitting at your computer and a slave to Photoshop during that time! Go get a snack or watch a show and let the magic happen.

I hope this helps you!