Photoshop’s Count tool

The audience sat in stunned silence as 200 singers joined together to sing “O Premedia!” in a rousing finale…. (I’m making that up. It was actually a work by Jean Sibelius called A Song of Peace).

Singers in the California International Choral Festival & Competition at yesterday’s Grand Finale performance. I was guessing that there were 200 singers on stage. I was off by eleven. Photoshop settled the argument with its Count tool.
How many? 300, you say? In fact there were exactly 179 people in the choir. The reason I know is that I use Photoshop’s Count tool to put a number on the head of every member of the choir to get a precise count of the number of singers on the risers. No ambiguity; not a cell of indecision: 179, pure and simple.

In this enlarged image you can see the light blue count elements put on the image by the Photoshop Count tool. I’m not sure what my friend Dale (No. 42) is doing at this moment. Perhaps he noticed that his shoe was untied.
Originally designed to help cytologists to count cells in microphotos, the Count tool puts a readable number down on the photo each time you click your mouse on a subject. It’s very valuable for determining things like how many white cells are in a blood sample, how many trees in a forest photo… or how many singers are in a choir photo.

I use it from time to time to count people in a photo, as I did this morning to determine the exact count of singers in the big choir from yesterday’s California International Choral Festival. I have also used it to count lines in resolution targets and similar places where it’s easy to lose track (halftone dots come to mind), not that I do this often, mind you!

It’s another of those seldom-used but very valuable tools that Photoshop offers us from time to time.

One… two… three… four…. Once in a while you really need this tool.