Cameracraft magazine – Taking your practical photography further
The latest release of Adobe Lightroom, v2, handles all Sony Alpha and earlier KM digital camera raw formats including the Alpha 700, 200, 300 and 350. It is also updated, along with the final release of Adobe Camera Raw 4.5, to handle Nikon D700. Because Canon appears to have left their filetype identical to the A400, their new 1000D was recognised immediately by ACR even in 4.5 beta version. Continue reading »
Here’s a question which came in to my email just now:
“Could I process a RAW file in Photoshop to achieve a similar effect as if I had used a Polaroid lens filter?
Or would I be better just using the Polaroid filter?”
The answer is that you can never imitate the effect of polarizing light (which changes the way reflective surfaces look, and deepens or lightens the sky blue according to the zone of the sky relative to the sun’s position. But you can use Adobe Camera Raw (CS3 versions) to deepen skies you never thought could be rescued.
Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe TV, a free online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products, including the company’s Creative Suite 3 family of world-class creative tools. With multiple channels, original series programming, and content from Adobe, leading training organisations and the world’s leading subject matter experts, Adobe TV delivers a virtual library of entertaining and instructional videos. Designers, photographers, video professionals, and developers will find product deep-dives, innovative tips, techniques from luminaries, and behind-the-scenes tours of the hottest creative shops and Adobe product teams.
Designed to educate, inspire, and entertain the creative community, Adobe TV is immediately available online from the Adobe Web site at http://tv.adobe.com. “Adobe TV is the online video source for anyone with wants to see how Adobe tools are being used to create stunning work,” said Bob Donlon, executive producer for Adobe TV. “It brings together experts from Adobe and the creative community to inspire and teach how to get the most from the software that is empowering the delivery of high-impact print, online, video and mobile communications. It’s also the perfect showcase for Adobe’s broadcast video technologies in action.”
Videos on http://tv.adobe.com can be sorted by Most Recent, Most Popular and Top Rated to see what others in the community are watching. Additionally, viewers can easily share their favourite programs with others by posting them to their blogs or Web sites, or e-mailing links to friends. Adobe TV videos come with lightweight links that make it easy to spread the word about interesting content.
Rich Library of Video Content
Adobe TV features four channels, each targeting a specific audience: Photographers, Designers, Video Professionals, and Developers. Each channel features programming from Adobe evangelists, leading trainers, subject matter experts, and luminaries who pull in the crowds at industry events around the world. More than 200 videos are currently available on Adobe TV, with programming that mixes how-to information, case studies, personality-driven shows, and workflow deep-dives. The first set of videos offers secrets about Photoshop software, podcasts and design tips for Creative Suite, techniques for Photoshop Lightroom, tips on Adobe Flash Professional software for beginners, approaches to taming the Web, and information about video and audio production.
“The creative community instinctively turns to the Web as a primary resource for tutorials and information on how to use Adobe products, but before now this content was scattered and difficult to find,” said Joseph Princz, CEO of the interactive agency, Wrecking Ball Media Group. “Adobe TV makes it easier than ever to search for and subscribe to Adobe video content that not only inspires new creative ideas, but also helps us to refine our skill sets and dive further into the essential tools our business depends on every day.”
Creating and Delivering a Complete Online Video Experience
Adobe TV demonstrates the power of Adobe’s leading video technologies from creation to playback. Using components of Adobe Creative Suite 3, Adobe TV programming is scripted and storyboarded, and the graphics and imagery are developed. During production, Adobe OnLocation software monitors quality and records directly to disk. Visual effects are produced in Adobe After Effects software, the audio is cleaned up or created in Adobe Audition software and Adobe Soundbooth software, and then the programming is edited and output from Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe’s Emmy-award-wining Flash technology, the most widely used platform for delivering interactive experiences online today, and Adobe Flash Media Server then package and deliver Adobe TV.
Adobe has released updates to Photoshop Lightroom and the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, both available immediately as free upgrades for existing users. The releases provide added raw file support for nine additional digital cameras, including the Sony Alpha 200 (already supported by 4.3.2 whether they knew it or not), Alpha 300 and Alpha 350. Lightroom 1.4 also provides updated printer driver compatibility for Apple Leopard Mac OS X 10.5. Continue reading »
Apple’s Aperture 2.0 is a tedious program to test, with all its creation of ‘projects’ and ‘libraries’, ‘albums’, ‘vaults’ and nonstandard GUI, and it isn’t fast in processing files or passing them to Photoshop (which it does in 16-bit form, just another step to reverse before saving as far as I’m concerned). However, it’s handling Alpha 700 raw quite well. And it does things differently, with non-destructive raw editing, stacks of image versions, and so on. Continue reading »