Five reasons to try Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Link via ITworld

Photoshop Lightroom 2Adobe Photoshop Lightroom–particularly the new Lightroom 2–feels more like my living room. I am happy to stay there all the time, viewing and organize my photos from within its comfortable and logical interface.

You might wonder how Lightroom is different from more traditional photo editors like Photoshop. You can think of Lightroom as a photo editing program designed from the ground up for digital photographers, freed from the somewhat arcane graphical design roots of older programs like Photoshop and Corel Paint Shop Pro. Indeed, Photoshop and its peers are intimidating to learn because of their dense assortment of tools selection brushes, erasers, text and shape stamps, dodge and burn tools, and more. Lightroom dispenses with all that stuff. Of course, that means Lightroom doesn’t have high-end features like sophisticated multiphoto compositing. But by the same token, exposure adjustments are such a natural process in Lightroom, you don’t have to understand anything about the image masks that happen invisibly behind the scenes.

You can read PC World’s complete review for details, but this week I thought I’ll focus on the five aspects of this program that will interest any serious photographer.

Photoshop Lightroom 2 is available at an academic discount price of $98.

Brushing up your Creative Suite skills

Link via Macworld

CS4 Design PremiumWith the recent announcement of Adobe Creative Suite 4, users may find themselves looking to brush-up on their application skills before diving in to all the new features of CS4 apps—especially now that the updated apps are available for download, with boxed copies shipping soon.

I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite sites which offer tutorials, tips and news for the applications comprised in the Creative Suite Design Premium package. My list is by no means complete, so if you wish to add your favorites, please do so in the forum thread below.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium is available at an academic discount price of $599.

Stop Motion Pro v6.5 Now Shipping!

Stop Motion Pro v6.5 Now Shipping!

Wallace & Gromit

Developed with input from Aardman Animations (the makers of Wallace and Gromit), Stop Motion Pro version 6.5 offers students, animators and animation producers the most comprehensive and easy to use toolset yet.

What is new in version 6.5:

* Multilingual – switch between English, French, Spanish and German.
* Improved playback – new rendering engine give even smoother playback.
* More cameras – greater connectivity to cameras and capture cards
* HD Edu (Education) Edition – full resolution and extra functionality for under $400!
* Open existing projects faster
* HDV support (contact us for information)
* Extra functionality in HD studio version
* Bundled with over 20 soundtracks and images for chromakey and rotoscope tools
Stop Motion Pro 6.5 includes all the tools for Schools and those new to animation:

New audio recorder , giving you the power to record live over your animation.

New easy to use editor, with preview player.

Browse projects with a thumbnail image and preview player. Find your projects fast.

MSI rollout for easy network distribution.

WMV export options – share and edit films easily

For professionals:

Nikon DSLR support (SMP SD, HD and HD Studio only).

Support for Canon “Live View” DSLR cameras (100D, 450D, 40D, 1D MkIII and 1Ds MkIII), the ultimate video assist.

Support for BlackMagic HD video capture cards (Intensity and Extreme).

New looping modes for more precise feedback.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) image capture compatibility for film-like latitude.

Checkerboarding for difficult lighting, 3D films and effects shots.

RAW image processing tools with import/export capabilities.

Download the free trial and give it a go!

Stop Motion Pro 6.5 is available at an academic discount price from Creation Engine.

Creative Suite 4 K-12 Site Licenses

Creative Suite 4 K-12 Site Licenses now available for ordering.

Adobe CS4 Bundles

The new Adobe Creative Suite 4 K-12 Site Licenses are specifically set up for schools and districts that offer career and technical education programs and integrate multimedia education throughout the curriculum. K-12 institutions can make the most of their software budgets and readily provide students, teachers, and administrators with access to Adobe’s industry-standard software.

Adobe Creative Suite K-12 Site Licenses include:
•Installation rights for up to 500 school-owned or school-leased computers
•Additional 50 teacher home-use rights licenses
•Adobe Digital Careers Teaching Resources DVD
•Adobe Creative Suite 4 Video Workshops DVD

Adobe Releases Flash Player 10

Link via eweek.com

Tom Barclay, senior product marketing manager, Platform Business Unit, Adobe Systems, said Adobe Flash Player 10 delivers enhancements and new features such as new support for custom filters and effects, native 3-D transformation and animation, advanced audio processing, and GPU hardware acceleration. In addition, the new release builds on Adobe’s expertise with text to deliver a new text engine that provides interactive designers and developers with more text layout options and better creative control.

Barclay said Flash Player 10 is being made available at the same time as Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4), which takes advantage of Flash Player 10 technology.

Flash CS4 Professional is available at an academic discount price of $249.

The Creative Suite 4 bundles are available at an academic discount price from Creation Engine.

one step until brilliant: ScreenFlow

Link via Lessig Blog

ScreenflowBut I’m now very hopeful utopia has been found. ScreenFlow is an elegant and powerful program that captures a presentation and synchronizes it flawlessly. It even has post-production editing built in. And while I’ve hit some flakiness with long presentations (I’m a lawyer, what do you expect?) with media (genuine flakiness — weird screen colors, apparent freezes for minutes at a time), almost always it has recovered and allowed me to save the sync.

Screenflow is available at an academic discount price of $79.

ZBrush 3.12 for Mac Now Shipping!

ZBrush 3ZBrush 3.12 for Mac is now available at an academic discount price of $390.

ZBrush 3.12 MAC OS X List of New Features:

-Posable Symmetry
-TransPose with topology masking
-HD Geometry
-SubTools with Project All, GroupSplit and Extract
-3D Layers
-MatCap
-Brush Palette with Many new brushes, Mesh Insert, Alpha Tiling and Wrap Mode, Gravity, Cavity Masking, Backface Masking and Color Masking
-Polypaint with or without UV’s: Real-time painting on the model
-Perspective while editing models
-Real-time Preview Shadows
-New Masking Options: Blur and Sharpen
-Most stroke types can be used with any sculpting brush, Lazy Mouse and Roll Mode
-Make 3D
-Disable/Enable UV’s, Switch U<>V, Cycle UV
-Movie creator with turntable capability and Quicktime export
-Tool Palette with a new organization of the pop-up window, new icons for the non-3D brushes
-Interface Customization with Custom Palettes and Menus, Wide or Narrow Buttons, Scalable Buttons, Gradient Canvas Background, Custom Hotkeys, Macros, Alpha, Material and Texture pre-loads, Color presets with easy selection buttons in the title bar and Title bar buttons for rotating between interface layouts
-Preferences Palette with Import material zones as polygroups, Group NSided Polygons and Support for over 100 processors/cores

Why Do You Need a Wacom Tablet with Adobe CS4?

Link via Wacom

Wacom pen tablets and pen displays have long been the tools of choice among professional users of the Adobe Creative Suite. And now, with the release of Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 (CS4), Wacom products have become indispensable for harnessing the full power of Adobe Photoshop®, Illustrator®, and the entire Adobe Creative Suite. The latest version of the Creative Suite features many new advancements, including 3D editing and compositing tools, improved integration with other Adobe applications, and even real-time collaboration. The improvements in Creative Suite 4, combined with the natural feel and lifelike performance of Wacom pen tablets and pen displays, offer a new level of productivity and performance.

Quite simply, Adobe Creative Suite 4 and Wacom pen tablets and pen displays are made for one another. Adobe has integrated many features into CS4 that take advantage of Wacom’s pressure-sensitive and tilt-sensitive pen technology. These features vary between applications, but options such as opacity, brush size and exposure can be controlled by how hard you physically press down on the tablet or display with the Wacom pen. Tilt sensitivity allows for directional brushes and effects created by tilting the pen. With the pen’s natural control, precision and ease-of-use, Wacom products provide the most intuitive way to unleash the creative power of CS4.

Wacom tablets can be purchased at an academic discount price from Creation Engine.

Save up to 80% on Adobe Creative Suite 4 products.

How to use Sorenson Squeeze 5 to create high quality video for YouTube

Link via Sorenson Media Blog

Sorenson Media products can be purchased at an academic discount price from Creation Engine.

Software Review: Sharpener Pro 3.0 from Nik Software

Link via The Enlightened Image

Nik Sharpener Pro 3.0 has not only been updated with a new interface, it also contains Nik’s premier U Point technology that gives you pin-point control over what you want sharpen. No longer are you limited to working with global changes and masking to accomplish your goals. Rather, now you can precisely control specific areas of your image with a couple clicks of your mouse.


Nik Sharpener Pro 3.0 is available at an academic discount price of $115.