I am speaking for the Dallas Digital Photography Group on using Lightroom vs. Bridge, Photoshop vs. Photoshop Elements.
Anyone with an interest in photography is welcome, beginner or advanced. Bring your camera, gadgets, and photos! The event will be at:
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Venue Information:
Attendees may bring in outside food and drinks into the meeting room. There will be NO food or drinks provided, so please come prepared.
I have had the privilege to meet a few folks while growing my business, and traveling the country. Many of them are gurus in the industry, authors, well-respected educators within the Adobe community. One such person is Scott Citron.
While I don’t know Scott very well, I appreciated his dry sense of humor & wit the few times I heard him speak during gatherings of Adobe InDesign chapter leaders. I found him easy to talk to, and we swapped a few stories about clients we had in common.
Recently, Scott was in a very serious car accident. He suffered a number of injuries, was admitted to ICU, and just last week was brought out of sedation after multiple surgeries. One of the first things Scott said upon regaining consciousness was “This sucks.” Sandee Cohen has immortalized those words with a design in support of Scott’s recovery.
Please take a moment to read Scott’s story, leave some get well comments, and purchase some “This Sucks” gear.
UPDATE – 08/07/2008 – Scott is awake & waving.
This week Scott Kelby announced the Worldwide Photowalk on his blog. This GINORMOUS event will be held in cities around the world on Saturday, August 23rd. I have the honor of being the city leader here in Dallas, and I’m excited to join in on the festivities. This is an open event, meaning you don’t have to be a professional to attend. DSLR cameras are not required, in fact I’ve read that some folks just use their cellphone cameras. However, attendance is limited to 50 people so be sure to register right away.
Here’s some additional information for those folks interested in signing up:
What is a Photowalk? Jeff Revell was a guest blogger on Scott’s site, and put together this great article on what to expect on a photowalk. It’s a good read if you’ve never gathered with other photographers like paparazzi. *chuckle*
Official Photowalk Website – Scott Kelby gives you an introduction to this gathering of photo enthusiasts. This is a FREE social event, but given Scott’s generous nature there will be a handful of prizes to win. Visit the Dallas city page to register for the photowalk.
Scott’s Photowalk Q&A – Scott answers additional questions that have come up since announcing the Photowalk event.
Dallas was just added last night, and I’m putting together the plans for our city photowalk. Feel free to leave any questions/comments, and I will be updating information on the Dallas city page as well as here on the blog.
REGISTRATION UPDATE 08/01/2008 – Just got the word from John Hays that you need to be sure you pick your city BEFORE submitting the registration form. If you miss that, your email address will get eaten, and you’ll have to register with a different address.
Adobe has released Lightroom 2. Information Week has a summary of all the new Lightroom 2 features for anyone who did not download the beta. Eric Bernskiold has a blog post with links to learning resources for Lightroom. Go visit the Lightroom Community education center where you can chat with Dallas’s resident expert Gene McCullagh.
As with the CS3 suite, I would recommend this upgrade to anyone looking to improve their Adobe digital workflow. The improved Library support, and targeted adjustment brush in the Develop module expand both the function and creativity of Lightroom. Look for a more detailed review on this blog in the upcoming weeks.
“The great thing about InDesign is that preferences live with the document.”
“The worst thing about InDesign is that preferences live with the document.”
Top on my wish list for updates to InDesign would be a “Reset to Default” option for preferences. If you weren’t aware, preferences for InDesign reside within the created document. This means you could have one document where Arial is the default font, another document that defaults to Times New Roman, and yet every new document created sets up Georgia as the font. Do not confuse preferences with workspaces–which reside with the computer NOT the document itself.
At first glance, this doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. In fact, for the freelancer or rogue designer, I would suspect InDesign preferences rarely cause an incident. It’s those of you out there handling documents from multiple sources, or collaborating with others that may have thought gremlins had possessed your document on occasion. This is especially true if someone changed a preference that was not familiar to you. A good example is “Hide Frame Edges” under the View menu. Hide the frame edges, save the document, have an inexperienced InDesign user open it, and see how long it takes for them to ask you why the Frame Tool doesn’t draw anything.
Here are some things to remember in regards to preferences:
There are three preference areas in InDesign — the Menus, Toolbar, and the Preferences Dialogue box.
Preference Area #1 – The Menu Bar
Items you may wish to setup here include Show Frame Edges & Show Text Threads (found under the View), Ruler Guides (under Layout), Show Hidden Characters (under Type).Preference Area #2 – The Tool Bar
The Type Tool is a good item to setup. The best way to update the Type Tool is to edit the Basic Paragraph style in the Paragraph Styles Panel. If you do not use styles at all, then you can choose the Type Tool, pick the options in the Control Panel, then click on another tool in the Toolbar to save your options.Preference Area #3 – The Preferences Dialogue box.
CMD+K (CTRL+K on Windows) will open the Preferences Dialogue. You can also select it from the InDesign menu (Edit under Windows). There are several items that can be modified here, and you may choose to test them out with a document open first just to see which settings you prefer.
New Document Preference
Are you tired of changing the unit of measurement to inches EVERY time you create a new document? Change that preference when no documents are open, and it becomes the “new document” preference.
In summary: