Category: Adobe

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Adobe ships Lightroom 1.1 update

Adobe has shipped the Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 update which is a free update to all Lightroom 1.0 users. Although this update is modestly called 1.1, it really packs in quite a few useful features beyond the normal bug fixes. This would be a 1.5 update by most other software standards. I’m really happy about this update because it incorporates two of the features that I wanted most and really pushed for. The first one is a little checkbox in the image import dialog box that allows you to Eject your Memory Card after the import is complete. It was always a pain to have to remember to go back to the Finder to do that before. Now it happens automatically. The second one is actually one that most would not encounter. I actually store my images on my Mac OS X Server. It’s a dedicated Mac here in my home office that we all access. It gets backed up daily, etc. etc. While Lightroom 1.0 had no problem with this setup and referencing the images there, the problem came in when it was time to delete an image. I would go through a shoot rejecting the images I didn’t want to keep and then when I went to actually delete those rejects Lightroom would give me an area because it was unable to move those images to my local trash. Now in Lightroom 1.1 I get a dialog box with the option to delete those images immediately. I couldn’t be happier!

The next big feature is one that I didn’t ask for personally, but now I’m really glad it’s there. The Lightroom Library is now called a Catalog. This means that you can have multiple catalogs (only one open at a time though). This is important for me because it also allows you to export images to a catalog (complete with previews and edits) and import catalogs. So now when I import images while out on location using my MacBook Pro, I can do the work on the plane ride home. When I get home I can move the images to my server and then export that catalog and then import it into my desktop Mac Pro. This way both computers will have access to the same images with all the edits. Having this option really makes multiple computer workflows so much easier.

Lightroom 1.1 also incorporates all the latest enhancements from Camera RAW 4.1 including support now for over 160 different Camera RAW formats. There are tons of other subtle changes that will greatly enhance your use of Lightroom. Don’t walk, but run over to adobe.com and download this must have update.

If you would like to see this update in action be sure to check out tomorrow’s episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast.

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CS3 Tour – New York – Live!

I’m here in New York at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel which is the last stop on the CS3: Creative License Tour. We have over 850 people registered for this event. I’m here with my colleagues: Sebastian Distefano – showing the Design Premium Suite, John Schuman – showing the Web Premium Suite and Kevan O’Brien showing the all new CS3 Production Premium Suite. I love New York. This two day event started out with some really interesting pre-conference breakouts before the main event this afternoon. Be sure to check out the new CS3 logo’d items introduced in LA and here.

I’m posting this blog entry live using Adobe Contribute CS3 during my keynote address.

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CS3 Tour – Live in Hollywood!

I’m here in Hollywood at the Renaissance Hotel which is the seventh stop on the CS3: Creative License Tour. This is one of the two day events. We have over 800 people registered for this event. I’m here with my colleagues: Sebastian Distefano – showing the Design Premium Suite, Abbas Rizvi – showing the Web Premium Suite and Kevan O’Brien showing the all new CS3 Production Premium Suite. The LA crowd is lively and in the groove. This two day event started out with some great pre-conference breakouts before the main event this afternoon. This evening we have more breakouts and activities including the InDesign Users Group.

I’m posting this blog entry live using Adobe Contribute CS3 during my keynote address. I hope to see you in New York.

Also check out some of the CS3 Logo’d Wearable Gear that was unveiled at this show.

 

The view from my hotel room. It’s the famous Hollywood sign.

This facility was awesome and we presented to a standing room only crowd.

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CS3 Tour – Live in Seattle!

Great Crowd!

I’m at the sixth stop on the Adobe CS3: Creative License Tour here in Seattle at the Adobe University Room at the Adobe offices. We have over 200 people signed up for the event today. We actually saw the sun yesterday :-). Lisa Forrester is doing the Design Premium Suite, Abbas Rizvi is doing the Web Premium Suite and Kevan O’Brien is once again doing the Production Premium Suite.
This is the last of the one day cities so I hope to see you in LA or New York for the two day events.

I’m doing this post live during my keynote using Adobe Contribute CS3.

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CS3 Tour – Live in Boston

I’m here in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center which is the fifth stop on the CS3: Creative License Tour. We have close to 500 registered for this event. I’m here with my colleagues: Sebastian Distefano – showing the Design Premium Suite, Kyle Thompson – showing the Web Premium Suite and Kevan O’Brien showing the all new CS3 Production Premium Suite. Boston is always a great crowd and we hope to learn a lot about Adobe Creative Suite 3 throughout the day.

I’m posting this blog entry live using Adobe Contribute CS3 during my keynote address. I hope to see you at one of the upcoming cities.

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Adobe releases a new version of GoLive!

Adobe GoLive 9 CD Case

After the aquistion of Macromedia, people really questioned the future of certain products like Adobe GoLive and Macromedia Freehand. As far as the latter goes, Adobe did officially announce the end of the line for new Freehand versions. Adobe will continue to sell Freehand MX to those customers that need it. Adobe also promised that we would see a new version of GoLive. GoLive 9 is here. The difference (in policy/behavior) is that GoLive was/is an active product before the aqusition. Macromedia had already stopped development of Freehand before being aquired by Adobe. That’s why it never saw a Studio 8 upgrade.

Why two products?

That’s Simple. There are two types of customers that do web design/development. Dreamweaver CS3 is aimed at the code savvy developer high-end of the market. It is the industry leader in this space and that’s why it’s included in CS3. GoLive 9 is aimed at both code-savvy web professionals and non-coding graphic designers who need to create sophisticated, CSS-based content in an intuitive visual environment. I for one am happy about this (as I most closely fit the GoLive customer model). While I intend to continue getting up to speed on Dreamweaver CS3, all of my existing sites are in GoLive. So therefore it much easier to maintain them in a workflow and tool that I’m used to. GoLive 9 is also a universal binary and therefore runs faster on my intel based Macs. Yes, it runs on Vista too.

Can you switch over to Dreamweaver CS3?

Absolutely! If you want to move from GoLive to Dreamweaver, you can. It’s included in many of the CS3 suites. Also Adam Pratt and Lynn Grillo (GoLive gurus) have created an Adobe GoLive to Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Migration Guide. There is also a GL2DW Site Migration Extension.

What if I want to stay with GoLive for now, what are my upgrade options?

The upgrade to GoLive 9 is $169 from GL 6, CS, CS2, or Creative Suite CS Premium or Creative Suite CS2 Premium. Education price on GoLive 9 is $79.

Will Adobe keep making GoLive forever?

Whether we see a version 10 of GoLive or not is quite honestly up to the customer base. If GoLive 9 is a hit, then Adobe will likely pay attention to that success.

What are the new features in GoLive 9?

Best to head over to the Adobe site and check them out there. You can also download a trial version and take it for a spin.

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CS3 Tour – Toronto – Live!

Toronto CS3 Audience

I’m here in Toronto at the Carlu which is the fourth stop on the CS3: Creative License Tour. We have over 500 registered for this event. I’m here with my Canadian colleagues: Sebastian Distefano, Abbas Rizvi and Colin Smith. They’ll be doing the Design and Web Premium spots. Kevan O’Brien is here once again to wow the audience with the CS3 Production Premium Suite.

I’m posting this blog entry live using Adobe Contribute CS3 during my keynote address. I hope to see you at one of the upcoming cities.

Terry White giving the keynote and CS3 Master Collection Demo

Colin Smith and Sebastian Distefano

Colin Smith and Sebastian Distefano came out to there own theme music “White & Nerdy”
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Straight Outta Lynwood - White & Nerdy (Parody of "Ridin'" By Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone)

Abbas Rizvi, Kevan O'Brien, Beatrice Noble

Abbas Rizvi, Kevan O’Brien and Beatrice Noble

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Adobe CS3 Update Bonanza

I just got in from San Jose (3rd stop on the CS3: Creative License Tour) on the redeye and I realized just how many updates came out this week. So I thought I’d do a quick recap in case you missed any of it:

Camera RAW 4.1

Adobe released a rather significant update to Camera RAW this week. Beyond the normal support for the hot new cameras, this new version adds very cool and very useful Sharpening & Noise Reduction controls. No longer is it necessary to go to Photoshop just to do good sharpening of your images. There’s also a new Clarity slider that you’ll have to see to believe.

Camera RAW 4.1 adds support for 13 new digital cameras and backs, including the Canon EOS-1D Mark III, Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro, Nikon D40x, Olympus E-410, Olympus SP-550 UZ, Sigma SD14, Phase One H 20, Phase One H 25, Phase One P 20, Phase One P 21, Phase One P 25, Phase One P 30 and Phase One P 45.

Camera RAW 4.1 only works in Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 extended. If you are on an older version of Photoshop, but have one of these newer cameras, you can use the FREE DNG converter to convert your images into .DNG format and then use them in your older version of Photoshop. These controls will also be added to a free update of Lightroom which is do out soon. The Lightroom update will gain these features and more cool things.

Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 4.1 for Photoshop CS3 is now available for download (Mac | Win) from Adobe.com. You can also just run the Adobe Updater and these updates will be installed for you.

Bridge 2.1

Bridge 2.1 which is a part of the CS3 apps and suites got an update that fixes some bugs that cropped up after CS3 shipped. However, it also got some pretty neat enhancements too:

Multilevel Keywords

Organized your keywords into groups and subgroups as deep a hierarchy as you want by using the multilevel support in the keywords panel. Bridge now includes keyboard shortcuts for applying single keywords or parent keywords. Advanced options allow for storing hierarchy into the file metadata. Easily import and export keywords using tab-delimited file formats.

Improved Cache Management

Control the size of the Bridge cache of thumbnail and metadata information to better improve responsiveness. The cache can also be compacted to improve performance.

General Improvements

Preference control over video and audio file previews
Improved scrolling and renaming performance
Usability improvements to custom workspaces
Improved overall stability

You can update your copy of Bridge by running the Updates command from the Help menu in your CS3 apps.

Adobe Media Gallery Engine

Now you can produce Flash and HTML galleries right in Bridge CS3! The Adobe Media Gallery Engine is a FREE add on to Bridge CS3. It adds quick, powerful Web gallery creation to Adobe Photoshop® CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended and the Adobe Creative Suite®. AMG makes it possible to create HTML or Flash-based galleries from any of the file formats supported by Bridge; adjust the galleries using built-in preview; and export the results or upload them via FTP.

Sounds a lot like Lightroom’s Web Module doesn’t it?

New CS3 Screen Savers

Last, but certainly not least, I got a lot of requests for the cool colorful CS3 styled wallpaper (Desktop Pictures) that people have seen on my Mac during my CS3 Podcast Episodes. I made those Wallpapers available to the general public, but this week I’m also making the NEW Adobe CS3 Screen Saver available for both Mac and Windows. You can download them here and get your CS3 groove on.

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CS3 Tour – San Jose – Day 2

This is Day two of the CS3: Creative License Tour in San Jose California. There was such a tremendous demand for this event that we had to add a second. Once again we’re doing this event at the Adobe headquarters. Its great to have over 150 people here. I’m doing this blog post live during my keynote to show the simplicity of using Adobe Contribute CS3 to do blogging. The audience is energized and we’re diving deep Creative Suite 3 throughout the day.

Lisa Forrester is doing the Design Premium Suite, Kyle Thompson is doing the Web Premium Suite and Kevan O’Brien is once again doing the Production Premium Suite with his purple hair and all. I hope to see you at one of the upcoming cities.

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CS3 Event San Jose – Live

I’m at the 3rd stop on the Adobe CS3: Creative License Tour here in San Jose California. Actually we’re doing this event at the Adobe headquarters. Its great to have over 150 people here and the response was so great that we had to add a second day. The audience is great and we’re having a blast learning about Creative Suite 3. We also got a special treat by having Adobe’s Senior VP of the Creative Solutions Business, Johnny L join me on stage during the keynote. Lisa Forrester is doing the Design Premium Suite, Kyle Thompson is doing the Web Premium Suite and Kevan O’Brien is once again doing the Production Premium Suite with his purple hair and all. I think the new box designs went to his head, literally. I hope to see you at one of the upcoming cities.