Welcome to my technology blog!
I just thought I would take a moment to let you know about Adobe’s Dennis Radeke’s newly redesigned blog. Dennis focuses on Adobe’s Dynamic Media/Video and Audio products and his blog, The Genesis Project focuses on tips and tricks for beginners using After Effects and Premiere Pro. Check it out here. Also check out the rest of the Adobe bloggers here.
One of my goals this year is to have less paper clutter (yeah I know, but I can try). I have been hearing rave reviews on the Fujitsu ScanSnap from my colleagues at Adobe (Noha Edell recently raved about it to me and my my buddy Chita Hunter reviewed a different model in MacGroup’s newsletter back in 2005). I saw this scanner in action a couple years ago at Macworld Expo and always had it in the back of my mind. I recently ordered one (which is on the way). However, I just read Adobe’s Adam Pratt’s review on it and it got me all excited all over again.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M (The M is for the Mac version) goes for $425 ($495 list) and includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. It scans in color or B&W and does two sided scanning of stacks of paper. It automatically converts the scans to PDFs and from what I hear it’s blazing fast! Check out Adam’s review for more.
This will be old news to many of you, but yesterday Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.2 with a slew of fixes. Most notable for my Adobe CS3 and Lightroom users are important fixes that Adobe’s Photoshop Product Manager John Nack details here. When Leopard was announced Adobe announced that Adobe Creative Suite 3 was compatible with a couple of exceptions. Most notably the Adobe CS3 Production Premium products and Acrobat 8 Professional. The Production Premium updates came out on scedule in December and that suite is now Leopard compatible and the Acrobat 8 Professional 8.1.2 update came out last week. So now CS3 is completely compatible with Leopard. The water is safe!
Adobe has officially announced Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh. This new version is the Universal Binary version (native to both Intel and Power PC based Macs) that Mac users have been waiting for. I’ll be showing this new version at Macworld Expo next week and who knows, if time permits I may even record a sneak peek podcast before then on my Adobe Creative Suite Podcast. So stay tuned. In the meantime, check out all that’s new here.
This new version is slated to ship early in the second quarter of 2008 and will sell for $90 ($70 upgrades).
Last night Adobe celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a BIG party for the employees! Wow! What a night. Not too many high tech companies can come close to the success of Adobe and we at Adobe have a lot to be thankful for. We’ve had good times and we’ve had bad times. Last night we reflected on the company’s 25 year history.
Everyone in the room was upbeat and having a good time. The mood and the party got even better when Adobe’s founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke took the stage!
John and Chuck reflected upon the early days and how they never imagined (back then) that Adobe would be what it is today. It was truly an honor to be in the company of these two Silicon Valley pioneers/inventors.
Adobe’s new CEO Shantanu Narayen took the stage and offered a toast to all of us and to our continued success!
There was also a surprise guest…
Smash Mouth rocked the house for the rest of the night!
I got a chance to spend a little time with some of the great people that I admire:
of course no Adobe event would be possible without a little Acrobat….
Like I said, it was a great night! I’m looking forward to the next 25 years and the innovations yet to come from this fantastic company and the people that work here! Thank you to all the customers who buy Adobe products (and keep me employed 😉 )
I have really been enjoying my New Nikon D300 camera and there really isn’t anything that I don’t like about it. It’s FAST, takes incredible shots and has all the bells and whistles that I’ve always wanted. Although the Nikon D300 doesn’t have a GPS unit built-in, it does now feature direct support for one and there is even a GPS menu on the camera itself. I bought the N2 di-GPS which works directly with select Nikon & Fuji DSLRs. It arrived this week and it wasn’t until yesterday during lunch that I got a chance to take it out for a spin. The first thing I said to myself when I opened the box was, “wow, this is much smaller than I imagined!” It’s not much bigger than a pack of gum. Very lightweight and easy to travel with. Although it’s designed to sit on the hot-shoe, it’s doesn’t have to. The integrated mount will also attach to the camera strap. There is no battery in it as it gets its power directly from the camera via the cable that attaches to the D300’s 10 pin remote terminal.
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Once you connect the cable, there is only one switch on the device and it switches from OFF, to Auto, to ON. Do I need to explain OFF? Didn’t think so. In the Auto position the GPS unit will turn on and off with the camera. This will probably yield the best battery life. However, each time the unit is turned on with the camera in this mode it will have to potentially acquire the satellite signal again. In the ON position, it stays on and connected to the GPS satellites regardless if the camera is on or not. Of course this will ultimately drain the camera’s battery faster. I recommend the ON position if you are shooting, then moving then shooting again. If you’re going to use it off and on throughout the day, then Auto is probably best. From a cold start it took about 15-20 seconds to acquire a GPS signal. There is a clear indicator right on top that flashes red when it is searching and stays solid red when it has locked on (Sony could learn from this!).
After connecting the N2 di-GPS and turning it on I was ready to shoot. The beauty of this unit is that the GPS information (longitude and latitude) is inserted right into the metadata of each shot as you take them. No need for post processing when you return to your computer. Since I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom I can take advantage of this data instantly by clicking the little GPS button in the metadata panel which will automatically take me to the location that I was shooting in on Google Maps.
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I took this shot at the New Partridge Creek Mall here in Michigan.
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When I look at the image above in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I can see the GPS coordinates in the metadata panel
When I click the little arrow to the right of the GPS coordinates, Lightroom takes me to my browser and automatically loads those coordinates in Google Maps for me (you can click the image above for the same experience).
The interesting thing here is that apparently this map hasn’t been updated yet because it doesn’t show the mall on the satellite view 🙂 The mall was just completed and opened in October 2007.
I found the accuracy to be decent, but not great. What I mean by this is that it seems to take few moments to update once you’ve moved. I took some shots just walking around my yard and when I got back to the computer, although I had moved, a couple of the shots were still showing the coordinates from shots taken a few moments earlier. One shot showed that I was in my neighbor’s yard.
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Here’s a shot I took in my backyard. OK, I’m kidding, this was taken at the Partridge Creek Mall. Normally I would have stepped back to get the whole tree, but there were two security guards waiting to tackle me if I even thought of pointing my camera at a store display (which is frowned upon at most malls).
This shot was taken maybe 50-60′ from the Apple store shot above.
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If you want to do some geotagging and map all the places that you shoot and you have one of the supported cameras, you can’t go wrong with this GPS unit. It’s painlessly simple to use and integrates beautifully. The N2 di-GPS goes for $238+$45 S&H. So it’s not cheap (neither are the cameras it supports), but if having GPS data automatically inserted into your images is your thing, this is the one for you.
Supports Nikon D3*, D300*, D2XS, D2X, D2HS & D200, Fujifilm S5 Pro.
*Nikon added new GPS function to D3 and D300. The new function resolved the battery drain issue. The new option in the menu let the user to select the metering system to stay on or auto off when GPS data is received to reduce the power consummation.
Also see my review on the NEW di-GPS Pro!
The Adobe Photoshop engineering team has been quite busy over the past few weeks (months) and has just released a slew of updates:
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3
This is the update you’ve been waiting for if you are on or going to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or if you were in the market for one of the hot new DSLR Cameras. Not only do we get improved Leopard compatibility but we also get native camera RAW support for the following cameras:
Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
Canon PowerShot G9
Nikon D3
Nikon D300 <- OK sign me up!
Olympus E-3
Olympus SP-560 UZ
Panasonic DMC-L10
Adobe is first to market (again) with support for the RAW format of the Nikon D3 and D300! The applications also now support the sRAW format produced by the Canon 1D Mk III, 1Ds Mk III, and 40D.
Also Adobe has released a Preview of the Lightroom Export SDK (available on http://labs.adobe.com). This will allow developers to create some really cool workflows. Think direct export to Flickr, Smugmug, FTP Hosts, etc.
Adobe Camera RAW 4.3 and the DNG Converter 4.3
If Lightroom is not your thing, but you are a Photoshop CS3 user then you’ll get the same camera RAW support as Lightroom in these updates.
Adobe Photoshop CS3 10.0.1& Bridge CS3 2.1.1
The most significant fixes in the Photoshop 10.0.1 update include the following:
A crash that could occur when Microsoft Intellipoint software is installed has been fixed.
The Adobe® Bridge CS3 2.1.1 update includes the following fixes and enhancements:
All of the updates above are available for download from adobe.com and should be available through the Adobe Updater.
Time flies when you’re having fun! Not long ago I posted an entry to celebrate a major milestone of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast hitting Over 5 Million Downloads. Well today I’m very pleased to announce that we hit our 200th Episode! That’s right, there are now 200 episodes of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast (with yours truly as the host) available for your viewing pleasure. These episodes cover just about every aspect of the Creative Suite and with more episodes to come.
Today’s episode is done by special guest Kevan O’Brien, the rock star from the Creative Suite 3: Creative License Tour and he details "The Making of the Johnny L Episode" in which he uses the latest and greatest Panasonic P2 camera and new editing capabilities in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3.
I’ve had a blast doing this show and the response has been phenomenal. This grass roots effort has reached thousands and thousands of viewers world-wide and many of you have walked up to me at tradeshows and seminars to tell me how much it has helped you in some way. Truly it is your continued support that keeps me motivated in doing these. So thank you!
Subscribe via iTunes for FREE or watch on the web.
I’ve been installing and testing Leopard since about 10AM this morning and I’m happy to report that compatibility and stability seem to be very high. So far I’ve only run into one peripheral (driver) that simply will not work on Leopard and that is my Dymo Labelwriter 330. Now keep in mind that I haven’t tested every little thing, but what I have tested has worked surprisingly well. As a matter of fact I would say that this has been the smoothest Mac OS X upgrade since the original Mac OS X. I’m having far fewer initial issues than I did going from Panther to Tiger.
Now for the news that many of you have been waiting for: Adobe Creative Suite 3 compatibility is GREAT! A few of the apps (Acrobat 8 Professional, Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3, Soundbooth CS3 and Encore CS3) will need dot releases and those dot releases are in the works. The dot releases are mostly to fix minor issues. For Adobe’s official Leopard statement complete with timelines for the updates click here. You’ll be happy to know that the rest of the CS3 products have no known Leopard issues.
Does Adobe recommend running Production Premium or Master Collection before its updates are available?
A. Yes, we are comfortable recommending this. Our testing revealed a few issues in specific workflows when running the video professional applications on Mac OS X Leopard. Many video professionals would not encounter these issues on a day-to-day basis, but we want to provide updates in December 2007 to address these issues and meet our standards of quality. You can evaluate the issues by visiting www.adobe.com/go/support and searching the online knowledgebase for more information.
So for right now I officially give Leopard a GREEN LIGHT! I still highly recommend that you follow my upgrade strategy from Part 1 earlier today (below). I can’t possibly know about all the apps, utilities and peripherals that you rely on every day, so you’ll need to test Leopard for yourself.
UPDATE: If printing from Lightroom is critical to your workflow, then you might want to hold off a bit until the Lightroom dot release is available. Currently under Leopard switching to the Print Module in LR 1.2 is not possible!
Like I said, it’s been a day of mostly watching progress bars. So I haven’t had a lot of time to explore the new features. I wanted to get in and test compatibility first. However, there are a few things that I couldn’t help but take notice of. The first one is how much easier it is to set up FileSharing between multiple Macs. Each of my family members has their own Mac here and I do have a Mac OS X Server running. However, I wanted to set up my older Power Mac G5 as a networked "Time Machine" backup server for the rest of the Macs (not the server, it already has its own nightly backup routine). So I took two 500GB drives that I had from a previous upgrade and put them in a dual bay enclosure. Then I partitioned them to match the drive sizes of each of the Macs that I wanted to backup. Next I shared each partition to its respective user and this was as easy as it can get. Then I simply went to each Mac and selected the networked partitions as the Time Machine drive for each user. Now each Mac is backing up REGULARLY and automatically behind the scenes. Before this I was using ChronoSync to just sync their Users folders to the server. Now I’m getting their whole drive with incremental changes every hour.
The next area of improvement seems to be around performance. Everything seems much snappier. I know that it’s usually perception, but I would swear that Leopard is faster than Tiger in most operations.
I’ll have more to report on Monday after I’ve actually had some time to do my day-to-day tasks, but Leopard is looking like a winner!
The folks in Cupertino have been a little busy today. Apple has announced that Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) will ship on the highly rumored date of Friday, October 26, 2007. They published a list of the 300 new features.
Also if you live in the Michigan area, Apple will be opening its 5th store in the state. The Apple Store, Partridge Creek, opens its doors at 10:00 a.m., October 18th. As usual you can expect lines and free t-shirts to the first 1,000 visitors. Apple stores are doing very well and the ones we already have here are constantly PACKED with people.
I get the question a lot of "what’s the difference between Aperture and Lightroom?" and of course I respond "just buy Lightroom." Actually I’m kidding. I explain that while I can tell you about the features of Lightroom quite extensively, I’ve never really used Aperture, so I’m going to be a little (ok a lot) biased. However, our good friend John Nack at Adobe has some interesting stats on what the pros are using. Head over to his blog to check them out.