Ok Dell just got my system fixed after 5 days (4 weekday). Somehow my service request got put into the “inactive” queue. The person on the other end of the phone does not know how that happened, but I got a faster CPU (+200MHz) and HT on the CPU… granted I can’t tell a speed difference with that hack of a change. So anyways my D70 is still in the shop, thus I have been shooting with my Canon S30. It may be a crappy point and shoot with bad optics, a laughable sensor, and poor long exposure support, but it still makes images. It is not so much about the gear, it is seeing interesting things and maybe even having some images turn out. Having said that there are some great tools out there that can help the photographer out a great deal, I am currently writing up my work flow (including tips and tricks) on how to create panoramas with very high technical quality. But the true topic for tonight is Photoshop CS. This will be a two part post, the first is an image which came strait out of the S30. Because of the 15 second restriction on the S30 some of the images I was taking are darker then I would like them. Fire them up in Photoshop CS -> Image -> adjustments -> shadow highlight and all of a sudden you have a rescued image. Play around with the sliders a little and you can even pull some detail out of an image which was over exposed. I picked up CS just for this feature (well I got a student discount too). There are some grain problems, but still a very usable image. If anyone knows how to reduce the grain in PS please drop me a line.