Terry White's Tech Blog

April 10, 2013April 9, 2013

HOW Design Cast – Adobe Creative Cloud for Designers – Replay

HOW

If you missed my HOW Design Cast yesterday, now’s your chance to catch the replay. The topic was “Adobe Creative Cloud for Designers”.

In this session, Terry White will show you everything you need to know about Adobe Creative Cloud! Love print? Interested in websites and iPad apps? Ready to edit video? You can do it all. With Adobe® Creative Cloud™, a simple monthly membership gives you the entire collection of CS6 tools and more. Plus, Creative Cloud members automatically get access to new products and exclusive updates as soon as they’re released. Join Adobe Evangelist Terry White to learn how Creative Cloud will let you:

– Discover new features in your favorite CS6 design software including new performance engines in Photoshop Extended and Illustrator and the ability to create beautiful repeating patterns in Illustrator.

– Design and publish HTML websites without writing code using Muse.

– Create iPad apps without writing code using Adobe InDesign and Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition.

– Get access to the very latest features as soon as they’re available including ability to package files with Illustrator, more than a dozen new features in Photoshop Extended and the ability to create tablet and smartphone version of your website with Muse.

– Work on files at the office, from home, on your tablet. Just save files to the Creative Cloud Files folder on your desktop, which includes up to 20GB of storage, and start sharing between devices and team members, or with clients.

See the replay here:

April 8, 2013April 7, 2013

Tripple the Run Time of your Ice Light

I reviewed the Westcott Ice Light last fall and while this is a great, bright LED continuous light for photography, the one thing that hampers its use on location is the relatively short battery life of 60 minutes. If you’re near an AC outlet, no problem because you can just plug it in and run it for as long as you need. However, the point of most portable light solutions is that you can use them in the field on battery and 60 minutes for most just won’t be long enough for an extended shoot. Since the rechargeable battery is built-in there’s no choice but to plug the whole unit in once it goes dead. Westcott has addressed this shortcoming by offering an external battery.

The Ice Light Power Battery Pack

icelightbattery

This optional battery back can more than tripple the battery life of your Ice Light without being so big or so heavy that you wouldn’t want to travel with it. It’s actually quite compact considering the amount of extra juice you’re going to get out of it. Once you charge the battery pack you can use it to either power an Ice Light or charge it. The Ice Light Power Battery Pack runs for 2.5 hours and can give your Ice Light up to 5 hours total run time. Now we’re talking! 3-5 hours is great for the average half day shoot. Also if the AC plug is not right at the shooting location, you can charge the battery pack in another room and walk it over to the shoot in progress as needed.

Sounds great! However, my only issue with the solution unfortunately is the price. The external battery already adds to an already high priced piece of gear.

You can get the Ice Light Battery Pack here

You can get the Ice Light here.

Hey, Speaking of Westcott – check out my work in their New 2013 Interactive Catalog

See it here.

Continue reading “Tripple the Run Time of your Ice Light”

April 4, 2013April 3, 2013

5 Tips for Adobe Muse Users

adobemuselogo

In this episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast, Terry White shares 5 Tips for Adobe Muse users. Many of these tips are from the recent late February feature update. If you use Adobe Muse, you definitely want to watch this episode!

Are you missing out on my Bonus Content?

See more of my Adobe Creative Suite Videos on my Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App! My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:

April 3, 2013April 3, 2013

Lightroom 4.4 and Camera RAW/DNG 7.4 Release Versions Now Available

lightroom4

Lightroom 4.4 is now available as a final release on Adobe.com and through the update mechanism in Lightroom 4. The goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom.

Changes to Existing Camera Support:

Lightroom 4.4 includes a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Fujifilm cameras with the X-Trans sensor. This specifically impacts the following cameras:

Fujifilm X-Pro1 (*)
Fujifilm X-E1 (*)
Fujifilm X100S
Fujifilm X20

(*) Based on user feedback, the default sharpening amount applied to Fujifilm X-Pro1 and Fujifilm X-E1 raw files has been increased between Lightroom 4.4 Release Candidate and the final Lightroom 4.4 release.

Lightroom 4.4 includes a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Fujifilm cameras with the EXR sensor. This correction applies only to raw images captured using the “EXR HR” mode with the following cameras:

Fujifilm X10
Fujifilm XF1
Fujifilm X-S1
Fujifilm S200EXR
Fujifilm HS20EXR
Fujifilm HS30EXR
Fujifilm F550EXR
Fujifilm F600EXR
Fujifilm F770EXR
Fujifilm F800EXR

Adjusted Nikon default white balance for the following camera models:

NikonD2X
NikonD2Xs
NikonD2Hs
NikonD200
NikonD40
NikonD50
NikonD80

– Fix default aspect ratio support for Fujifilm X-E1 raw files.

Continue reading “Lightroom 4.4 and Camera RAW/DNG 7.4 Release Versions Now Available”

April 1, 2013March 30, 2013

My Recent Work in Print

My shot of Kandice Lynn on the beach featured in the Spring 2013 issue of Oxygen Magazine.

As a photographer there’s nothing more complimentary than a major publication or company wanting to use your work to represent their brand or products. As “hobby” photographer that compliment goes up 1,000%. Photography has always been a passion of mine, but mostly a hobby.

My shot of Amber Berry featured in the Spring 2013 issue of Ambassador Magazine – Perfect 10

One of the ways that hobby pays off is when I’m contacted by a publication that wants to use my work commercially or when someone wants to buy my prints or usage rights of my work.

Westcott produced a 70 page show guide for the WPPI show using my images of Kandice Lynn, Lena, Aferdita and Briana.

Those are the times that make me feel like my work (which could always be better) is good enough to be considered “professional”.

Continue reading “My Recent Work in Print”

March 28, 2013March 27, 2013

Behance ProSite is now included in Creative Cloud

behance-adobe

You might remember that back in December Adobe acquired Behance, the leading online social media platform that enables creative professionals to showcase and share their work with millions. We wanted to share some great news for our Creative Cloud complete members.
As of yesterday, Behance ProSite (normally $100/year) will be available at no additional cost for all paid Creative Cloud complete members. ProSite transforms a public Behance portfolio into a fully customized personal portfolio site with your own URL. You can design an incredible portfolio site that stays in sync with your projects on Behance, increasing your efficiency and helping your work get more exposure from Behance’s 18+ million visitors every month.

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March 27, 2013July 21, 2014

The Making of My Adobe Create Now Tour Recording

CreateNow-RecordingSetup-web — photo by Shawn Lee

I got a few questions regarding my setup for recording my last Adobe Creative Now Tour Event.

Here’s what I used:

I did the presentation on my MacBook Pro 15″ Retina. I was connected to the 1080p in house projector via the built-in HDMI port. I had my Wacom Intuos 5 tablet plugged into one USB port and my Logitech C920 HD Webcam plugged into the other one. While the Mac has a built-in FaceTime HD camera, it’s only as good as the angle of your display. By using the C920 I’m able to put it on a tripod and therefore position it anywhere I want.

Networking

I always travel with both a MiFi and AirPort Express. This way I can create my own network either by using the venue’s ethernet cable or via 4G. This is important for when I show Touch Apps and DPS SE so that I can mirror both my iPhone 5 and iPad to the same screen as the audience is seeing AND being recorded with Screenflow. I used Reflector on the Mac to Airplay from both my iOS devices at the same time.

Audio

As my buddy Jason Levine would say “It doesn’t matter how good your video is, if your audio sucks no one will care about your video.” This means using either a really good USB tabletop mic OR a audio recording device. In Cleveland I used a Blue Yeti USB mic and the audio was good. However, I had a Zoom H4N on order that arrived in time for Detroit and I decided to use that instead since it has legendary audio quality. As a backup I had Screenflow recording from the built-in mic on the MacBook Pro since I hadn’t used the H4N before. The H4N records to an SD card in WAV format or MP3 at various quality settings. It uses 2AA batteries and can also be mounted on a stand/tripod. I mounted it onto a Gorillapod and set it on the table.

Continue reading “The Making of My Adobe Create Now Tour Recording”

March 25, 2013June 7, 2015

5 Myths About Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe_Creative_Cloud

As I begin to wind down the Adobe Create New Tour, I couldn’t help but notice that no matter what city I went to, the story was the same. While people generally knew about Adobe’s Creative Cloud, they often had misconceptions about it. I started each presentation explaining what Creative Cloud was and what it wasn’t. Since not every one can attend a Create Now event Live, I thought I’d debunk the Top 5 Myths about Creative Cloud that I hear the most.

#1 “I don’t want to run my Applications in a web browser!”

When people hear “cloud” they get visions of running applications in a web browser. While that may be the case with other cloud offerings, it’s not the case with Creative Cloud. Creative Cloud members download and install their Apps as Adobe customers always have. The Apps like Photoshop , Illustrator, InDesign and even the new app Muse runs from your Hard Drive, not from the cloud.

#2 ” I don’t want to have to be connected to the internet just to use Photoshop.”

Once we get past the fact that you download the Apps and install them on your hard drive, people still sometimes think that they need to be connected to the internet to actually run the Apps because they are Creative Cloud Apps. Again, this is not true. Your Apps not only install on your hard drive, but they also can very much run offline. You computer does have to connect to the internet once a month to verify that your membership is still current, but that’s it. Once that check has happened you can disconnect and run all of your Creative Cloud apps OFF-line.

Update as of 5/6/2013: You will need to be online when you install and license your software. If you have an annual membership, you’ll be asked to connect to the web to validate your software licenses every 30 days. However, you’ll be able to use products for 99 days even if you’re offline.

#3 “I can’t share files to my clients or colleagues unless they’re Creative Cloud members.”

With your Creative Cloud membership you get 20GBs of cloud storage. You can use this storage to sync files between your devices and access them via the Touch Apps like Photoshop Touch and Adobe Ideas. If you place files in your Creative Cloud folder on your hard drive those files will not only be accessible when you’re offline, but you can also log into creative.adobe.com and share them. Once you decide to share a file you can email a link to your colleagues or clients and they will be able to view your file in their web browser even if they’ve never heard of Creative Cloud or the Adobe applications you used to create them. They don’t have to create an account or register for anything. See my video on how to share files with Creative Cloud here.

Continue reading “5 Myths About Adobe Creative Cloud”

March 22, 2013March 21, 2013

Kelby Digital Photography Tour

digital_photography_book

You probably already have this book (it’s the #1 bestselling book on digital photography ever), and if you like that book, you’ll love Scott’s brand new tour based on the book series! When I started to take my photography more seriously this was one of the 1st books I read from cover to cover. It certainly filled in a lot of gaps for me and I learned a ton.

If you don’t have the book, here’s the link (you’ll love it!).

He also wrote three bestselling follow-ups to the book, Volumes 2, 3, and 4 (all different content).

Well Scott is about to kick off a tour that is based on his Digital Photography Book series (and is taught by Scott himself).

Here’s the link for more info on the tour. Even if you can’t make the tour, you should definitely check out all four books. They also come packaged as a set here.

Continue reading “Kelby Digital Photography Tour”