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» It’s eventful Tuesday!

 There are quite a lot of things happening this eventful Tuesday so perhaps I should be getting right to the news this time around!

Apple updates iPod Shuffle - lower price and more space!

Apple has today updated their line of iPod Shuffle. It is now available in a 1gb as well as a 2gb version and the price has gone down as well from previoud $79 for the 1gb version down to $49 and the two gigabyte version is just a $69 that’s coming very soon. Very welcome updates indeed and it is now perhaps possible to buy one if you say have a Classic or Touch and need one for some running music.

Apple updates to Xsan2 as well!

Apple is not lazy today updating another product, its SAN (Storage Area Network) product, Xsan to become Xsan 2. Enhancing performance quite a bit, Xsan 2 makes it easier for first time users to set up and quickly deploy a SAN; introduces MultiSAN, allowing users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time; is fully integrated with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard and is now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.

 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is 1 year old today!

Today, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is one year old! Released last year on this very date 19th Februrary at 12:01a.m EST! Actually Lightroom isn’t the only product in history to have been released on February 19th. Booth Adobe Camera Raw in 2003 and Photoshop 1 back in 1990 was shipped on this very date as well!

Cool browser plugin!

If you view a lot of photos, either on Google Images, Flickr, SmugMug or perhaps deviantART or maybe even on Facebook? Then you should be checking out this cool browser plugin that is available for both Internet Explorer, Safari and FireFox that is called PicLens! You just really got to check out the site and the demos to see really how cool it is!

» Friday Goodies

It is finally friday and it is so very nice! I’m being busy with a lot of web design works and I’ve been working on location at a company locally for the past two days getting their website up to date and making it nicer, still not entirely finished but almost! On with todays news however!

What the Duck

I’ve linked to What the Duck previously on the blog but I figure it is time to do again (one cannot do that too many times!). What the Duck is a photography online comic strip that has grown very popular. It is daily and pictured above is today hillarious strip which you just have to read! Check out the What the Duck site for more!

New Adobe Magazine Edition

The newest edition (and first for 2008) of the free Adobe Magazine has been released. The new issue features Photoshop being used for concept art, architectural illustration, and scientific imaging so check it out here!

Layers - The new photoshop book, on layers!

Finally for today comes a book tip on what looks to be so far the best photoshop book of 2008! It is the new Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s most powerful feature by Matt Kloskowski. It looks to be indeed a killer book explaining everything you need to know about layers in Photoshop! Go and read more about the book over at the Kelby Training website where you can for a limited time pre-order and get a signed copy of the book!

» Monday Stuff

 Here are some quick monday updates because I don’t have a whole lot of time today, it’s basically the evening before one of my biggest tests (I’m lucky enough to have two of them this week).

• Adobe has released the ACE Recertification exams for most of the Adobe applications. Current ACE holders should have recieved and e-mail from Adobe about the recertification. You’ll have until the 30 April to recertify. The full test seems to be rolling out as well with a test prep. guide coming soon! Check out the ACE page.
   
• Adobe has also announced that they will discontinue the Adobe Stock Photos service because it apparently is not as big of a hit as they predicted.
   
• I want to give a big heads up to Corey Barker yet again for his wonderful class Photoshop Extended in Motion. It is just mind blowing stuff that is really cool to learn! Go and check out Corey’s stuff over at Planet Photoshop as well.

That rounds up my quick monday stuff and I hope some more will be coming tomorrow. Oh and by the way, if any of you use or have used the Manfrotto 055XB tripod and have any comments on it, I’d like to hear them because I’m in the market for that tripod with a good (in budget) ballhead as well. Any suggestions welcome (although exlude the BH-55, I don’t have that big of a budget).

» Sunday Quick Stuff

 Alright, so after the jam packed updates this weekend we are soon onto a new week with a lot of things happening (at least for me) before a full week vaccation that I have from school in the week after. Onto the news:

• As you can probably see, the site has been updated with some new buttons here and there, a new header look (quite similar to the old, yet a litle updated) as well as a new footer, which I think works great.
   
•  If you remember, I wrote about the Photography Corner, Photograph of the Year contest a while back. The contest is now finished and voting is over. The winning entries have also been announced and I’m astounded on the good quality of the winning entires, and I would like to congratulate them all (especially my buddy Younes Bounhar for winning it all!).
   
• Speaking of contests, the Photoshop User Awards are over as well and you can find the winners right here. Some of the winners are just amazing!
   
• If you are into the blog reading, Joe McNally has launched a brand new blog that you can check out right here.
   
• I’ve had some more time to watch the classes over at Kelby Training and some of them just blows me away and makes the whole month membership I’m signed up for worth it, in just one class. I can really recommend the Photoshop Extended in Motion class by Corey Barker as one of the best I’ve taken in a long time. You can read my review on the service right here.

That’s about it for my Sunday Quick Stuff. I’ll be posting here again tomorrow for some more cool stuff that always happens on mondays!

» Wednesday News Talk

Yet half of another week has gone by and it is yet again Wednesday evening! I want to take a moment in these first lines of today to send out a Happy Birthday to one of my best friends in the whole world, Tove! I hope you are having an awesome birthday today!

Pixelmator updates to version 1.1.2

Pixelmator has released a new version of the software and it is now at version 1.1.2. The improvements are minor additions and edits such at shortcuts etc. but it is quite an extensive list, check the changelog here.

Adobe is listening to Lightroom suggestions; new version in progress!

Adobe is listening to all the suggestions that has been made recently on what we want to see in the new Lightroom version (2.0). Today Scott Kelby could say on his blog that they are working on a new version that apparently incorporates a lot of our wished for items but unfortnately he couldn’t say anymore because he’s under a NDA (non disclosure agreement) with Adobe. However I do most often think alike Scott when it comes to software and I will go ahead and assume that it is indeed going to be a killer version! Stay tuned!

Apple posts earnings report for the quarter; stock drops!

Apple has announced their earnings for the christmas quarter and even though they went with an over 1,58 billion dollar profit their stock dropped a full 11% on NASDAQ which means it has gone from a $180 value, down to $138 in this month alone. Apple Insider have been speculating and investigating why the stock could have made this quick drop.

WordPress announces that they will increase the free space!

For all of you that are hosting your blog at Wordpress.com this should be very happy news (or if you are planning on starting your blog there). They have decided to increase the space allowed on the server by more than 60 times, from 50mb to 3gb as according to Automattic’s (the creator of WordPress) founder, Matthrew Mullenweg!

And some inspiration!

Today, go and take a look at Belgium photographer “Zardo“’s (nickname) gallery over at deviantART. He does very awesome HDR photos of city life that is just plan amazing!

» Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 announced for the Mac!

Adobe has announced that Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac has been finished in development and will be shipping in the beginning of the second quarter this year! My opinion of this is; finally, there is a good need for it coming! Read more on version six, here.

» Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3.1 released!

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has been updated to version 1.3.1, and the update is available for download for Mac and Windows. Fixes include the following:

• The Lightroom 1.3 Print Module could previously cause the application to crash on either OS X 10.5 or 10.5.1 during template usage.

• On Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.5.1, the import process from a card reader or other device into Lightroom could fail to import all or a portion of the selected images.

• A decrease in Develop slider responsiveness introduced in Lightroom 1.3 has been corrected.

• The Lightroom 1.3 Develop module could cause the application to crash if adjustments were made in quick succession.

• Compressed raw files from the Nikon D100 were read incorrectly in Lightroom 1.3.

• A possible artifact in raw file support for the Olympus E-3 has been corrected.

• The Lightroom FTP Plug-in provided as sample code with the Export SDK did not function properly if the password was not saved with the selected FTP preset.

• Editing or creating a new FTP preset immediately prior to using the FTP plug-in provided as sample code with the Export SDK would cause the FTP process to fail.

• Using the Export as Previous option did not work with the FTP plug-in provided as sample code with the Export SDK.

» It’s “Finally Friday”

Today is “Finally Friday” and I really mean it, I’m so happy it is Friday again and weekend because I’ve been so very busy during the week I’ve hardly gotten time to be on the computer. Anyway this was always going to be the most busy because it is the end of the term and yeah it is always most busy then. So here are the weeks hottest stuff

I won the contest I was nominated in…

I gotto start with some more self centered stuff eh, that’s all because I’m just totally psyched about it! If you remember I posted a little while ago that I had been nominated for Photograph of the Month over at the Photography Corner website and I’m stunned that I won the voting and my “Summer Memories” photograph became the photograph of the month of December over there, meaning it has now won two awards!! The prize was a one year pro account to SmugMug where I will be setting up a site where you’ll be able to buy my photos from! Cool eh

Wacom Cintiq 12WX

Wacom has announced a brand new tablet in their Cintiq lineup, it is a smaller 12″ tablet (active screen size) that works just like a regular drawing tablet, only it has a screen built right in. It looks super cool and the resolution is 1280×800. You can read more about it here!

Adobe News!

• Adobe has released Camera Raw 4.3.1 that addresses some bugs in the 4.3 release. You can download it for free here!

• Adobe has also redesigned their entire company website over at Adobe.com to match the new creative suite! To me I think the design is well organized and it looks very stylish, so go and explore and enjoy the interactivity as well! By just taking a quick look at the source it appears that they have used a couple of their own suite programs (apart from the design side) such as Dreamweaver (I see presence of DW Templates) which is pretty cool in and of itself!

» Monday News Tidbits

Today seems to be gadget day with most news being about some of the coolest gadgets available right now!

D3 and D300 Stuff, site + review

• Starting off in the camera news, brought to you by the amazing wildlife photographer, Moose Peterson is an entire little (or not so little after all) site about the D that has just been released with more stuff being added along the way according to Moose. So go and have a look at the D3 Site!
• Following the news of the cameras in Nikon’s latest release we have a great review by Terry White on the Nikon D300 camera posted today over at his blog! It’s based on his first impressions with using the camera for about a week now and he really seems to be liking it a lot. So if you are in the market for a D300 or just want to read up on it, go and read Terry’s review right here!

New Web Design tutorials coming!

So I’ve begun to write a couple of highly requested web design tutorials for the site here and the first one to be released is a tutorial on how to make a stylish portfolio header right in Photoshop that we’ll use to build an entire portfolio site, right in Photoshop! So go to the tutorial section and check it out!

Learn to polish up your vector art in Photoshop!

The amazing illustration guru, Nick La has posted up a very cool tutorial or article on how he uses Adobe Photoshop to polish up his vector art made in Illustrator. I found it very interesting and cool to read so if you are interested you should definitely take a look at it here!

» Tuesday Update Galore

I’m back to the normal schedule this week with my news postings so here are the Tuesday Updates coming to you right now!

Firstly, if you are looking at entering one of the best photographic workshops you are likely to encounter, you’ll be looking at an exclusive workshop with one of the best photographers of today, Jay Maisel, and itt will take place Monday, December 17 to Friday December 21, from 9am to 10pm each day. The cost for this (meals included) is $5,000 and it is limited to just nine people, first come, first served! Get more info by sending a mail to jay@jaymaisel.com or by calling 212.431.5013. Also, if you haven’t seen Jay’s work, check out his website here!

Website to guide you in computer spec building

If you are looking to build a new PC and you need a little help on the specs, check out the website called “Recommended Spec“. They have a Basic, Mid and High spec for a wide range of applications, Audio, Graphic, Gaming etc and could be a useful resource if you are looking to build a computer in near future.

Photoshop World ‘08 Spring - Orlando, Florida

Photoshop World ‘08 the east-coast or spring edition has been announced and it is going to be in Orlando, Florida from April 2-5 where April 1 is going to be the pre-con day! Go over to the Photoshop World website to read more about the exciting event!

Want to win a copy of Lightroom?

If you are feeling up to win a copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom then you ought to check out the latest edition of Photoshop User TV from the NAPP folks! The prize is amongst others a full copy of the software (other prices being a NAPP membership, iPhone Book, iStockPhoto cap and more)!!

Finally…inspiration!

To cap of with some inspiration I’m going to leave you looking at two sites depending on your interest. If you are interested in some cool photography, take a look at the website of Andy Hornby who is a very talented photographer shooting many interesting photos!
If your interest lies in cool websites, you really need to take a look at 2Advanced Studios. These guys are really awesome and their company site is just real stunning! So go and have a look at it right now