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» Lightroom 2.1 Release Candidate is out!

Adobe has just released Lightroom 2.1 Release Candidate to everyone. The release candidate label indicates that they want more community testing on it before calling it final although it is stable. Lightroom 2.1 includes support for the following cameras:

• Fuji Finepix IS Pro

• Nikon D700

• Nikon D90

• Nikon Coolpix P6000

It also adds preliminary support for the following models:

• Canon Rebel XS

• Canon 50D

• Olympus SP-565 UZ

• Sony A900

• Sigma DP1

You can download Lightroom 2.1 from the Adobe Labs site.

» Video Tutorial: Create a frame using an action in Photoshop

I’ve been really bad when it comes to posting new site tutorials and after fixing up my recording environment I have no real reason not to be posting a lot more. Here are a first in the lines of many more coming. This one is on how to create a simple, yet elegant, frame for your photography in Photoshop and also how to batch process a number of high-res photos to get them web-ready in size and border.

• Tutorial Comments
• More Photoshop Tutorials

 

» Long awaited Friday News

 

Skipping the pirate talk for this post. I call these long awaited for several reasons. Firstly, I haven’t had time to post much news the past days and secondly, it’s Friday which means it’s soon time for a nice weekend!

• A couple of days ago now Apple updated its Remote app for the iPhone/iPod Touch with the functionality of now letting you create Genius playlists and create/edit playlists in iTunes. It’s a free download from the iTunes App Store.
   
• Adobe has released Camera Raw 4.6 RC (Release Candidate) and the DNG Converter 4.6. It adds support for the Fuji Finepix IS Pro, Nikon D700, Nikon D90 and Nikon Coolpix P6000. Also in is preliminary support for Canon Rebel XS, Canon 50D, Olympus SP-565, Sony A900 and the Sigma DP1. The reason that it is a release candidate is that they want some more community testing before they consider it a final product. Note: Release Candidate is a step beyond beta.
   
• Marketcircle has updated their Billings application for the Mac to version 3. Billings is a time tracking and invoice software. News in Billings 3 is a much more streamlined interface, client groups, chronological accounts view, instant overdue invoice notifications, recurring invoices and some general reports and tracking updates. Of course it’s gotten its share of bug fixes. The application costs $59 for a new license. An upgrade from a 2.x version will run for $35. A full working 21-day trial is available at their website.
• I’m working on some new reviews, tutorials and other goodies that will be coming soon. Keep looking for them all!

That’s it for now, have a great Friday!

» Thursday Dailies

• Adobe has announced that they are going to have a screencast showcasing the upcoming Creative Suite 4 on the 23rd September. It’s a free signup so Signup Now!
   
• If you’re like me and like WordPress and install it for a lot of clients, you will be interesting in this article over at WP-Candy on Five Ways to Familiarize Clients with WordPress. It might be a pretty simple content management system but can look very daunting at a first look. The ideas are really good and will work for anyone who install WordPress for clients.
   
• I’ve you’re at Photoshop World right now in Las Vegas, you are probably right in the opening keynote and viewing something cool. Hopefully all of us who can’t be there will hear about some of the cool things really soon and as soon as I do, I’ll post the stuff right up here.
   
• Yesterday when I posted about my ten favorites iPhone apps and I wrote about some bugs in Homeworkr. Now after I get an email from the creator of the app asking about the bugs so that he could fix them. I just wanted to acknowledge that they are keen on hearing from you if you have any bugs or feature requests for the app.

That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll be able to post up some Photoshop World news later.

» Tuesday Stuff

 

It’s Tuesday and here are the news:

• Google has released a beta version of their new Chrome web browser, running on WebKit like Apple’s Safari. The main idea behind the browser is to speed up websites by in one way or another, caching more code, mainly speeding up JavaScript web apps. You can find a post over at the official Google Blog that talks about the release. Currently it is for Windows only.
   
• Timothy Armes has released an update to his popular LR/Enfuse Lightroom plugin, bringing it up to version three. Features included in this new version includes batch processing and the ability for the plugin to reimport and stack the originals, and more. Both of these features do require Lightroom 2.
   
• Mozilla has in the days released an alpha stage plugin for FireFox called Ubiquity which allow you to create simple and quick mashups. What you do is that you pop open a window inside of FireFox (hud-style, transparent, dark-grey) where you type a command of what you want to do (like "google text" — which will search google for "text"). Check it out and give it a test, it’s relatively cool. It’s still a little buggy and could use a lot more commands, but hey, it’s only the first alpha version.
   
• Over at the Photography Corner they have posted a great article today in their resources section. The article is all Tips for Photographing Wildlife and is very well written and takes up some really good pointers.

Finally a note to everyone in the US Gulf Area! Hope everything is well with you and I hope it’s going to stay that way. Be safe!

» Yawn-starting Monday News

 

It’s another start of the week and after a full weekened, I’m pretty tired, yet it’s back to school again for another week. Here’s the news:

• Over at Viget Inspire they have a cool article about Creating Unique Shapes Using Actionscript and Flash! The article has some really nice demonstrations on what you can achieve with this and also allows you to download the source files for it.
   
• John Nack posted on his blog a reply to some rants sent to Adobe through the cool website, Dear Adobe. Some of the rants were very well formed and said while others are the opposite. Both the blog post and the Dear Adobe site is worth checking out!
   
• There are rumours all over that a new iPod Nano design is coming and not a day goes by before we see something new or tweaked. The addition to the rumours come now from a case maker who’ve already made and is selling a case for the rumoured upcoming 4-gen nano. We’ll see where this all is going.
   
• To wake up and start the week, we all need a bit of insperation. I’m going to send you to the portfolio of a buddy of mine, Andy. He’s got some really good photos there which he are also selling, limited edition (hence the name, One of 42).

A blog post will come up later today about the Photowalk this weekend! I say now though that it was a great event and I’m happy to be able to share some photos with you later.

» Two New Photoshop Hall of Fame Inductees

It’s the time of the year, two new industry professionals are being inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame and this time around it is award winning book author and fashion photographer, Martin Evening as well as Photoshop Product Manager, John Nack! Both Martin and John really has done a lot for the industry and are very well worth the induction into the Hall of Fame. It was created back in 2001 as a way of honouring the people who’ve made a great difference to Photoshop.

For more information and the past inductees, visit the Photoshop Hall of Fame site.

» Walking through the new Lightroom 2 features!

 I promised y’all to post the video walkthrough here on the site as well as on the podcast where it was released yesterday. It’s the iPod/iPhone optimized version I’m posting up here as well.

» Friday Newsreel

The beauty of weekdays is that there is always so much going on that is always as fun to share!

• Earlier in the week we saw the release of Lightroom 2 and I then also told you about some great resources to learn all the new features and also posted a review of the missing FAQ book. Now the presets are rolling in. First out here are some really cool ones from the great guy Sean McCormack over at the Lightroom Blog. He’s released a collection of more than 70 graduated filters. The collection is available for only €5.00 from his site with samples there as well!
   
• More Lightroom 2 things. I’ve just finished the recording of my walkthrough and just editing it up to post it to the Creative Suite Tips & Tricks Podcast later. I’ll also be making it available here on the blog but then you have to wait until tomorrow. Podcast subscribers get the scoop first
   
• Are you blogging? Do you want to do it from a desktop application? If so you might be interested in this article from Smashing Magazine where they review 15 Desktop Blogging Tools.
   
• If you’re coming along for the Worldwide Photo Walk on August 23rd you might want to know that there have been a lot more cities added over the days, making it a 113 total at the moment! That’s some really cool numbers. I’m going to be leading the walk in Gothenburg, Sweden (the city where I live) along with my buddy Rickard Niklasson. Our walk details have been set and posted on the site now so check it out!

I think that wraps it up for today. I’ve got the video coming up later and I’ve got cool things planned for the entire next week as well (and the weekend) so see you then!

» Adobe Lightroom 2 - The Missing FAQ

I posted a while ago about a new great book called Adobe Lightroom - The Missing Manual. Well now with the release of Lightroom 2, Victoria Bampton, the author has already released her updated version for Lightroom 2 (Adobe Lightroom 2 - The Missing FAQ). I’ve just reviewed the book and I think it is brilliant and does truly cover a hole that has been empty. I think it is a very well spent £14.95 (approx. $29.95) where you get almost a little lexicon on Lightroom that you can always keep handy. Thanks also to Victoria for providing all of my readers with a discount code. Upon purchase, just type in the following code (without the quotes) "BM2008" and you’ll get a discount!

• Read my Review
• Visit the Lightroom Queen