Thanks for Attending!

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I want to give out a thanks to those of you who attended my online Photoshop Essentials session last night. We had attendees from as far away as Norway (midnight their time) As promised for those that couldn't make it, here's the URL for the recording to watch at your leisure. I will definitely work on better audio (using a better mic) for the next one. Thanks again! Look for more of these in the future.

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Tuesday Tidbits

I have 3 tidbits for today:

Apple is slated to unveil iPhone 3.0 today

Apple is holding a press conference today to unveil their newest iPhone OS. Nothing is for certain and the rumors are sure flying about what’s going to be in it. So far I haven’t heard anything too exciting. Sure, Cut, Copy, and Paste would be welcomed, but that’s hardly worthy of a full dot release and press conference. So I have to imagine that there are going to be some features that no one is thinking/talking about. I’ve give my take on what they announce after they announce it.

Check out Scott Kelby’s Review of the New Elinchrom BXRI-500 Strobes

My buddy Scott Kelby has posted a review of Elinchrom’s new midrange strobes. As an Elinchrom 600RX owner, I’m very interested in these because they have the Skyport Wireless system built-in. Although I’m totally happy with my two 600RXs, I would consider getting one BXRI-500 as a 3rd light. Scott recorded a cool short video showcasing the new system. Check it out here.

Spend “An Evening with Terry White” tonight!

Happy St. Patricks Day! Tonight’s the night that I will be doing a live Photoshop Essentials demo via the web. Check out the details here.

An Evening With Terry White – Photoshop Essentials

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I don’t get to present in front of customers as much as I used to. Also in this economy travel has become a luxury. So I was thinking how could I spend some quality time with you and it hit me: “An Evening With Terry White!” Here’s how it works: I will pick an evening and a topic and do a one hour live session on that topic over the internet. There will be no cost to the attendees, It’s on me (well actually it’s on Adobe).

The First Topic

This first evening will be on “Adobe Photoshop Essentials.” Although this is going to be kind of basic for some, I really want to gear this session towards covering the kinds of things that my friends and customers ask me all the time. Topics like: How to remove someone from a background. How to fix blemishes and other artifacts. How to fix the color of an image, etc. So this session will be made up of several mini-tutorials. I will cover as many of these as I can fit in in an hour. Also realize that in Photoshop there are usually several ways to do the same thing and I only have an hour. So I may not do it the way you would have done it or the way you were thinking. Breathe, it will be ok.

Although I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop CS4, you’re not required to have CS4 to benefit from this session. Many of the techniques I plan to cover will be applicable to users of older versions. However, if you just want to be up-to-date and all, feel free head over to the Adobe Store. You can buy your upgrade and download it on the spot 🙂

When and where? R.S.V.P.?

This first evening will be Tuesday, March 17 @ 7PM E.T. and it will take place via Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. Here’s the URL: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/eveningwithterry

Sign on as a GUEST with your real name. While there is no pre-registration required, this session will be limited to 100 attendees. So it’s first come, first served. I advise you to log in 15 minutes before the 7PM start time as I plan to start on time.

Will you be able to ask questions?

There will be a Q&A session at the end. You will be able to submit your questions throughout the presentation in the Q&A pod. I will address as many of the submitted questions as I can at the end. Although I plan to end the presentation part within one hour, I will probably be able hang out a bit afterwards to continue answering questions. This will give people that only have an hour the chance to see the entire presentation before having to leave.

What you will need to participate

If you’re reading this blog, you probably have the necessary equipment to watch this session. You will need a computer (Mac or PC) with a web browser, a high speed internet connection and the Flash Player. The audio will come through your computer’s speakers. That’s pretty much it! There is no software that you need to install. If you want to make sure that your computer and internet connection are up to par, you can run this test. Although the last part of the test checks to see if you have the “add-in”, it’s not necessary to have it for this session. Go ahead and run the test now so that you’ll be ready in time for Tuesday. Also keep in mind that if for whatever reason your connection is not up to par or it’s not going well for you, there’s nothing I can do about it on my end and please accept my apology now.

What if you can’t make it or you’re 101st person?

If all goes well, this session will be recorded and I will post the link to it the next day on my blog. So if you can’t attend or if you don’t make it into the session due to a large turnout, you will be able to enjoy it afterwards at your leisure.

Why am I doing this and what’s next?

Although I can post videos anytime I want on my Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast, nothing beats live interaction. I like talking with customers and this will give me real-time feedback.  If this goes well I will do it again with different topics. If not, well we can’t say that I didn’t try. 🙂 See you on Tuesday!

Adobe Updates Lightroom to 2.3 and Camera RAW to 5.3

Both Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Camera RAW get updates with support for the latest and greatest cameras and bug fixes.

Lightroom 2.3 (Mac|Win)

New in Lightroom 2.3

Newly Supported RAW File Formats:

  • Nikon D3X
  • Olympus E-30
  • Plus unofficial RAW support for the recently announced Epson R-D1x camera

The goal of this release is to address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom 2 and provide additional camera raw support. A comprehensive list of issues fixed in this release is included below:

Lightroom 2 Bugs – Fixed

  • In the Windows 64-bit version of Lightroom an sFTP upload process could cause Lightroom to crash.
  • Slideshows could return to the first image randomly during playback. (ouch, I got bit by this one during a family reunion presentation!)
  • A memory leak could cause Lightroom to crash while attempting to process files with local adjustments.
  • Canon EOS 5D Mk II sRAW files could process with artifacts in Lightroom 2.2.
  • Lightroom 2.2 could cause disc burning to fail for Windows customers.
  • Attempting to undo(CTRL-Z) a single step in Lightroom 2.2 on Windows could cause a series of previous actions to be undone.

Photoshop Camera Raw 5.3

Adobe applications must be updated with the Camera Raw 5.3 plug-in in order to ensure compatibility with Lightroom 2 develop module settings and Photoshop integration features. Photoshop CS4 users can update the Camera Raw plug-in automatically using the Update tool listed under the Help menu. The Camera Raw 5.3 plug-in can also be downloaded and installed manually by visiting the Adobe web site. Please follow the installation instructions carefully.

Tips for Nikon DSLR and Adobe Creative Suite 4 Users

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Nikon D-Town

There are two hot new resources I wanted to make you aware of.  First off, my buddy Scott Kelby has just released a new weekly video podcast show called “Nikon D-Town.” This show is aimed at Nikon DSLR camera users. It’s co-hosted by Matt Kloskowski and airs each Thursday starting today! Each episode will be geared towards Nikon shooters so that they can get the most out of their gear. As a Nikon shooter myself, I can’t wait to check it out! Check out Nikon D-Town right here.

“Everyday Timesavers” now on Adobe TV

Next up, the Adobe evangelists have started a series called “Everyday Timesavers”! If you’re a Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) user and you want to get the most bang for your buck, then being more productive with the software is going to yield a greater ROI for you. Check out Everyday Timesavers on Adobe TV right here. New videos are due to go up every week and of course they’re free to watch.

Adobe Updates Photoshop CS4

Adobe just released updates to Photoshop CS4 (Mac|Win) to address the following issues:

The Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 11.0.1 update addresses a number of issues discovered after Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended (11.0) software were released.

The most significant fixes in the Photoshop CS4 11.0.1 update include the following:

• 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.

However, one of the most important things for me is that Adobe also released free a Photoshop Plug-in that allows you to disable the TrackPad Gestures in Photoshop when using one of Apple’s newer MacBooks. Scott, this should make your day and now you can put away your gun 😉

The Everything You Wanted To Know About Photoshop Book

It’s not often that I do book recommendations here. Quite frankly, I don’t get to spend much time reading books these days. So when I take the time to read one and review it, it must be pretty special. I also know how much work goes into writing a book. I’ve written a few myself. What I can’t imagine is how much work would have to go into a book called “Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual“? In this book Ms. Lesa Snider King had to cover EVERYTHING! That’s a tall order when it comes to Photoshop. She had to explain every little facet of the program and Photoshop CS4 is a lot to cover.

This book is designed to be “the manual”, but not the typical manual written by an engineer. It’s written in plain english with plenty of useful examples and techniques. You can use this book in a couple of ways. You can use it to look up things (which is probably what I would use it for most) or you could use it to actually learn the app, step-by-step, chapter-by-chapter. I also appreciate the fact that this book is in color! I dread seeing Photoshop books in black and white.

Whether you’re new to Adobe Photoshop or you’re an experienced user, this book is worth a look see and weighing in at 796 pages, there is a lot to see. The book has a list price of $49.99. Amazon has it for only $29.39.

Adobe CS4 Stuff

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As an Adobe employee it’s my job to tell customers about our products and what’s new. However, I can’t reach everyone all the time. So I was quite pleased to see that my friends over at NAPP (The Photoshop Guys) helping out by showing digital photographers (and others) what’s new in Photoshop CS4 and more importantly reasons why you’d want to upgrade?

Be sure to check out Scott Kelby’s 4 Part Series on the subject complete with videos. 

 

In other CS4 news

InDesign CS3/CS4 users on the Mac will be happy to know that the Leopard Command-H (hide) bug has finally been laid to rest in Mac OS X 10.5.6. I want to personally thank the hard working people over at Apple and internally at Adobe that helped get this fixed.

 

Where can I learn more about how to use Adobe’s products?

I get this question all the time. While there are certainly some really good training partners out there providing quality online and lecture based training, there are a ton of learning resources that are FREE!

 

Here are just a few of my favorites:

Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast – by yours truly – shameless plug alert

Adobe TV

Photoshop User TV

The Russell Brown Show

Julieanne Kost

John Nack’s Blog (Photoshop Product Manager – Must read)

Lightroom Killer Tips

Layers TV

InDesign Users Groups

Adobe Design Center