Digital SLR Blog

The Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 5.4 Release Candidate is now available for download. The Camera Raw 5.4 Release Candidate extends raw file support to an additional 26 camera and camera back models including the Canon EOS 500D (EOS Rebel T1i), Nikon D5000, and 18 Hasselblad models. For more information and to download got tohttp://labs.adobe.com.

Additional Supported Camera and Camera Back Models
Canon EOS 500D (EOS Rebel T1i)
Epson R-D1x
Hasselblad CF-22, CF-22MS, CF-39, CF-39MS, CFH-22, CFH-39, CFV, 503CWD, H2D-22, H2D-39, H3D-22, H3D-31, H3D-39, H3DII-22, H3DII-31, H3DII-39, H3DII-39MS, H3DII-50
Kodak EasyShare Z980
Nikon D5000
Olympus E-450
Olympus E-620
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1
Sigma DP2

Ascend Training are offering online training courses in various Adobe programs like Photoshop, InDesign, Flash and Dreamweaver. "We are thrilled to be able to reach a broader audience by offering our classes online. Our new offerings will have the same instructor attentiveness and small class sizes, but delivered remotely." Said Jori Curry, President of Ascend Training.

[Via Imaging-Resource]

Adobe announced the Adobe Education Creative Lectures. The event that will put spotlight on the various Adobe products and  will also combine hands-on training days for lecturers, working in the Creative/Media HE colleges and universities, validated by industry certification.

“These lectures will enable students to make the transition from producing work as an undergraduate to meeting the demands of employers in the creative workplace.  Having a real understanding of CS4® and industry best-practice will enable students to hit the ground running.” Says Liz Wilkins, Adobe’s Marketing Manager for Education.

Further information on the Adobe Creative Lectures can be found at: http://www.adobe.com/uk/lectures/.

Adobe has launched its Photoshop Marketplace website that aims to be comprehensive collection of Photoshop related products, services, and communities. Photoshop Marketplace is an open community and one can also register to post their own creations. You can check it out here.

Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro is now compatible with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and higher. All current owners of Silver Efex Pro for Photoshop or owners of the Complete Collection for Photoshop are eligible to receive this brand new software update for free by registering their product.
 

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Camera Raw 5.3 are now available for immediate download. One can head over here to download the updates, which now provide raw file support for the newly released Nikon D3x and Olympus E-30 cameras. The Lightroom 2.3 update also provides support for eight additional languages and addresses several issues including a solution to a memory leak that affected some customers of the Lightroom 2.2 release.

Adobe has released a plug-in that disables the multitouch gesture for canvas rotation, as well as the gestures for zooming and flick panning on the MacBook Air and recent MacBook Pro systems. Sometimes the canvas gets rotated accidentally through inadvertent use of the gesture on the trackpad and hence Adobe has attempted to correct it.  You can download the plug-in from here.

The Photoshop CS4 11.0.1 update is now available for download courtesy Adobe. Mac users can download it from here and Window users should head over here.

Highlights of the update:

 A number of issues that could cause slow performance have been addressed.

• Pen barrel rotation with Wacom tablets now works correctly.

• Photoshop now correctly recognizes 3D textures edited by a plug-in.

• The quality of the results of Auto-Blend Layers (Stack Images) has been improved.

• A problem that could result in a crash when pasting formatted text has been fixed.

• A crash that could result from a corrupt font no longer occurs.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Photoshop Camera Raw 5.3 release candidates are now available for download and both provide additional raw file support for the Nikon D3X and Olympus E-30 cameras. In addition, the Lightroom 2.3 Release Candidate provides a solution to a memory leak that affected some customers of the Lightroom 2.2 release. For more information head over tohttp://labs.adobe.com/.

Photoshop Product Manager John Nack admitted in his blog that Adobe is developing a Photoshop CS4 update. This doesn’t surprise us since a number of CS4 users reported problems with the software and the Photoshop update will "improve the situation." Those experiencing problems can contact Adam Jerugim by email to test  "a small pre-release program that we're opening to public volunteers."

Shortcut to Brilliant: The Adobe Creative Suite 4 tour is a series of one-day seminars organized by MOGO Media. The three-city tour launches on January 16 in New York City and includes stops in Chicago on January 21 and Los Angeles on February 19. The tour will educate attendees on Adobe products and also provide in-depth product information, tips and tricks, and productivity enhancing techniques.

Registration is available for $49 per person online at www.mogoseminars.com or by calling 866-518-7200 and space is limited.

The Pixel Bender Contest encourages participants by writing Adobe Pixel Bender Kernels for Adobe Creative Suite 4. The grand prize is an Alienware Area-51 personal computer and category winners will receive a Nvidia Quadro CX graphics card. The categories are:

• Best artistist technique

• Most useful Pixel Bender kernel in the Adobe Photoshop workflow and

• Most technically compelling.



Contest entries will be accepted from January 1st 2009 – January 31st 2009. Afterwards, all entries will be open for viewing at nzone.com.

Portraiture 2, which is an upgrade to the Portraiture Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, is now available for download. The updated version supports latest versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Creative Suite, including full support for CS4 32 and 64-bit versions. Portraiture 2 supports both Mac OSX and Windows XP/Vista operating systems, and is fully compatible with Photoshop Elements 4/5/6/7, and Photoshop CS2/CS3/CS4 (32 and 64-bit versions), as well as Creative Suite Extended.

For more information, visit http://www.imagenomic.com.

Adobe has published Adobe Configurator 1.0 User Guide on its website. He guide gives step-by-step instructions on how to make us of the plug in and how to create Photoshop CS4 panels. You can download the 40 page PDF from here.

[Via Imaging Resource ]

Camera Raw 5.2 is now available courtesy Adobe. The latest version of the plug- in now includes RAW support for select new cameras including Canon EOS 5D Mark II.


The full list of newly-supported cameras:

    * Canon EOS 5D Mark II
    * Canon PowerShot G10
    * Panasonic DMC-G1
    * Panasonic DMC-FX150
    * Panasonic DMC-FZ28
    * Panasonic DMC LX3
    * Leica D-LUX 4


You can download it from here:

    * Camera Raw 5.2 for Mac
    * Camera Raw 5.2 for Windows

The  Adobe Configurator for Photoshop CS4 is now available for download. For the uninitiated, the Configurator is an open-source Adobe AIR-based application, which  makes it to snap together one’s own Photoshop panels (a.k.a. palettes). For more information go here.

The Adobe Pixel Bender plug-in is now available as a free download. According to Adobe, the plug-in provides “automatic runtime optimization on heterogeneous hardware" to run Photoshop filters faster.

Says Adobe:

"Pixel Bender is best suited for the kind of algorithms in which processing of any pixel has minimum dependence on the values of other pixels. For example, you can efficiently write a kernel to manipulate brightness of the image because brightness of each pixel can be changed independently. You would not want to use Pixel Bender to compute a histogram, because a histogram requires the values of all the pixels in an image."

Before splurging on Adobe Photoshop CS4, one can try it out for free. The 30-day try-out versions of all the new Adobe CS4 applications are now available online. All one needs to do is sign up for a free Adobe account and then download it from the website. Check out Adobe’s impressive repertoire of application here.

[Via Photography Blog ]