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
 by A.J. Wood

Monday Madness

Good morning dear readers. Hope your weekend was swell, and Monday hasn’t caught you by surprise just yet.

Well, 2009 has started with the best of intentions, and like my workout schedule, I’m trying to be a bit more consistent here on the blog. I’ve managed to keep the daily Adobe tips going via Twitter & RSS. Be sure to sign up for either service, I post via Twitter at 9AM & again at 9PM, and the RSS feed is updated in the morning. I will be expanding those tips here, and hope to have some articles & videos up on the site very soon. I’ve been working a lot behind the scenes to get everything going, and the toughest part has been filling the blog pipe with content. I have been mulling over the idea of themed days, much like Scott Kelby, Firgs or Erik do, but I don’t know how long I could keep up the format. Regardless, I’ll continue to plug away, and do my best to keep you educated & entertained.

That’s the news for now. Alrighty, back to work you go.

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

Your Newest Adobe Community Expert

I am excited to announce that this week I joined the 2009 class of Adobe Community Experts. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! to Dee Sadler, Stacy Sison & Lynly Schambers-Lenox for nominating me. It is a privilege & honor to be considered worthy of such a great community of talent. I hope I can share as much information as I am certain to learn from my peers in the Adobesphere. This year’s class included my good friend & Lightroom guru Gene McCullagh. Congratulations to you sir! And thanks for taking all the pressure off me in representing Dallas to the global community. *grin*

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

Backup Like Nike – Just Do It

Today was a rather worrisome day. Not because I’ve a mountain of work to catch up on (I do), but due to my Mac Pro crashing, downing not one, but two of my external drives. Anyone who’s attended a class with me knows I preach backups, and you’re not truly backing anything up without redundancy. In this case, I was doubly screwed. I had just moved all my image collections to a new WD terabyte drive about a week ago. I had a GINORMOUS number of images spread over several drives/machines with the most important going to my backup Lacie 150GB. I had a number of images crowding space on my laptop, and I’ve been meaning to prune my folder sets for some time. The problem with the terabyte drive reminded me of why I don’t use high capacity compact flash cards in my camera. I was looking at a potentially dead drive with several years worth of images on it. Here is how my afternoon played out:

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in Adobe / Editorial / Technology 0 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Linky Love aka Social Net 2.0

Dear readers, I’m posting a blog entry for the second night in a row. OMG! WTF! CYFBLI? Before we begin, let me just say that I’ve already thought about the conversation with my daughter, you know, the one where I tell her she shouldn’t text the Lord’s name in vain. Wait for it…

OK.

Yesterday I threw up a post about the Bloggers I linked to in a previous domain. Today, I’m throwin’ up some mad links for new folks. In no particular order, here goes some link love:

Bernskiold Media – I have a feeling that if I had any idea what I was doing when I was younger, I would have been Erik. His website easily surpasses anything I ever did with Azarok.com, and it’s much more relevant to the times. Make his blog a daily read, and buy his photographs.

Design by Firgs – This site is a few days old, in its infancy and already has 119 subscribers. That tells you something about the power of Twitter, and the appeal of content. And really, who doesn’t love free stuff for Photoshop? You better hurry up and comment before she starts chargin’ for the party.

Pursuing Photoshop – Mitzs reminds me why I love teaching Photoshop so much. No matter how many times I demonstrate the same features over AND over again, for beginners each lesson is a creative discovery. Tell me Mitzs, do I dazzle you?

Janinealogy – Just discovered the blog via Twitter, but I’ve seen Janine’s work at Landailyn R&R. Just across the way in Ft. Worth, I’m always happy to promote local Photoshop services around the metroplex.

Sage Family Studios – Lisa just hopped on Twitter today, which is groovy because more people need to know about her excellent portfolio.

If you checkout the Photoshop User website you can see the NAPP Portfolios of Erik, Firgs, Mitzs, Janine & Lisa. You’re sure to be impressed, and certainly inspired.

UPDATE – I missed a couple of sites. Color Me Badd. That’s what happens when I blog two nights in a row.

My Home Sweet Home – I missed Dawn at Photoshop World this past September, which was funny given she was twittering about the event just like me. Dawn recently debuted her first screencast on her blog. Be sure to check it out and give her some feedback.

Antique Mommy – Dawn’s friend Tina writes some good stuff on her blog, and I was especially fond of her Bailout entries. This is a blog I read, and hope to read more often.

in Adobe / Arts/Media 4 comments