by A.J. Wood

June 6 – Week Recap

Good morning everyone. Here’s a recap of this week’s shared content:

1. Ten More Things About Photoshop posted on TipSquirrel. Part of my Top Ten series, you can never have enough Photoshop tips.

2. Working with Nested Styles in InDesign posted on Layers Magazine. InDesign is definitely a “must know” app for designers, especially now in the era of ebooks & tablet computing.

3. Learning Digital Photography Podcast #59 posted on Canon Blogger. YES! It finally happened, I’m actually talking in real time LIVE with none other than Mr. Jason Anderson. I try to get serious, he makes me laugh, you won’t see any of it because it’s an audio podcast.

4. I’ve been helping Sonya Bowser with her children’s book “The Adventures of Zolie Z“. It’s been a fun project that I can share with my daughter.

5. I am VERY EXCITED to have written the featured Lightroom article in the June issue of Photoshop User magazine. I have to give credit to Mike Mackenzie whose editing expertise really makes my writing exemplary. It’s an honor to write for a magazine that I actually read each month and work with the outstanding folks at NAPP. Remember, as your NAPP Evangelist, you can use my name “ajwood” when you join NAPP to receive a free DVD & discount off your membership. NAPP has also been gracious enough to let me post a PDF of my article here are the website. Download A.J.’s Lightroom Article from PSU Magazine.

5. Changes to my YouTube channel. Starting next Monday, I’ll be posting videos three times a week on Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Tutorials will continue but future videos will include interviews, product/service reviews, and a few surprises for YOU my loyal viewers.

Well, that’s been my crazy week. Enjoy your weekend and I’ll catch you next week!

in Events / News / Photography / Tutorials 2 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Adobe Releases Creative Suite 5.5 Update

By now you’ve heard the news, Adobe released the Creative Suite 5.5 upgrade today. Yes, I said, “upgrade” as this is a paid release, not to be confused with an “update” typical of dot releases. While early buzz is a mixture of excitement and complaints, what people should focus on is Adobe’s commitment to staying current with industry trends. CS 5.5 addresses the needs of web developers and the importance of mobile technologies. The buzz is around HTML5, CSS3 & EPUB, making InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver and Adobe’s video production tools well worth a look. Another item worth noting is the subscription model for accessing the Creative Suite. This will be great for people who don’t want the upfront cost of Photoshop or the full Creative Suite. It will also work well for those that have short term projects or use temporary workers. Here are some videos from Adobe TV that demonstrate new features.

Overview of CS5.5 Design Premium

Overview of CS5.5 Production Premium

in Adobe / News 3 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Adobe Announces CS5

Today is the official Adobe CS5 launch event, and there are plenty of things to get the creative community excited. The web has been a buzz the past month as Adobe started releasing sneak peeks of features via social media sites. The most talked about feature has been Content Aware Fill inside of Photoshop CS5. The hype surrounding that feature has been GINORMOUS with speculation the feature was a stunt. Now we know it’s here, and let me tell you it’s going to be a game changer. In fact, the entire suite has much to offer aspiring creatives.

Here are some highlights from the launch event:

  • Native 64-bit processing Mac & PC
  • Introduction of Flash Catalyst bridging the gap between designers & developers
  • Omniture for business analytics
  • CS Review for online collaboration
  • New stroke options in Illustrator
  • Dreamweaver supports content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal & Joomla
  • Flash development port to the iPhone* (which looks to be blocked by Apple’s change to SDK)
  • Animation & interactive elements for InDesign
  • Automated roto-scoping with After Effects
  • HDR, Noise Reduction & Lens Correction for Photoshop (I already mentioned Content Aware Fill)
  • and too many features to list in a single blog post

CS5 will be offered in five different suite configurations:

Design Premium Web Premium Production Premium Master Collection Design Standard
$1,899 $1,799 $1,699 $2,599 $1,299

Upgrades start from $499.

To see all the new features coming with CS5 jump over to AdobeTV. To get your Photoshop fix in, visit the NAPP learning center. You can also join me and other Photoshop Nuts over at TipSquirrel where we’ll have our own take on CS5 the next two weeks.

in Adobe / News 0 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Canon Announces 7D Camera!

canon7dIf you missed the announcement (and really how could you), Canon announced the new 7D camera today. A step up from the 50D, and without full frame like the 5DMkII, I think this is the camera to get if you’re a Canon shooter. Shooting at 8fps will be great for action photos AND it has HD video which the 50D was lacking. Should be around $1700 for just the body. I’ll leave the detailed reviews to @Photo_John & Rob Galbraith. As I checked over at my favorite camera stores, target release should be sometime towards the end of this month.

in News 1 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Heard Around the Interwebs

A few quick hits for Wednesday:

Ritz Camera the world’s largest camera retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday. Ritz operates some of its stores under the name Wolf Camera, and its creditors include Nikon & Canon. According to a post in DPreview, “Court papers suggest that Ritz Cameras owes over $40 million to its two largest creditors: Nikon’s US subsidiary Nikon Inc. and Canon USA, with a further $8.4 million owed to Fujifilm USA, a subsidiary of which owns around a third of the company. To put the $26.6 million owed to Nikon Inc. into perspective, it would represent somewhere in the region of 20% of Nikon Inc’s expected annual operating income.”

Discovered some great macro photography this morning via Twitter. Paul Burwell snaps snowflakes up close. Really close.

Scott Kelby’s guest  blogger today is Syl Arena.

Photoshop CS4 Update AND Plugin. Found via Rufus Deuchler’s blog, get the latest PS update, and for the Mac faithful download the plugin for disabling track pad gestures that rotate your canvas unexpectedly.

Until tomorrow…

in Adobe / Arts/Media / News 0 comments