Home       Tutorials       Quick-Tips       Reviews       About       Contact       Podcast       Register

» Monday Newsflash

Some cool things do happen on Mondays as well despite you think everyone is still left in their weekend mood. For me it is back to school tomorrow with a lot of school work, client work and project work to do on the same time however I have made it a new-years resolution to plan better this year, hope I continue with it as well otherwise it is only going to come down on myself. Anyway, over to the news

Sony announces A200 dSLR!

Today, Sony has announced their latest dSLR, the successor of the A100 is the brand new A200, featuring a 10.2 megapixel sensor, 2.7″ LCD screen and most notably an increased SteadyShot™ function that offers 2.5-3.5 steps anti-shake performance with all ? lenses. Sounds pretty cool really, price appears to be somewhere around $700-$900 kit-wise and they have continued support for all Sony and Minolta lenses Read more about it here.

ACE Boot Camp training course from Matt Kloskowski

Over at Kelby Training, Matt Kloskowski has just released a new cool training class that prepares you for the Adobe ACE  (Adobe Certified Expert) Exam. Matt has teached this is a pre-con class along with Dave Cross from time to time at Photoshop World and it is now available at Kelby Training in their subscription based online training service. Check it out!

 Lightroom tutorials in works!

I’m currently working hard on expanding the Lightroom tutorials booth with written text tutorials and recorded video tutorials. In this process I’d love to hear from you all what you want to see tutorials on as well so you get what you want So please leave a comment with what you want to see, also note I’m taking ideas on all the suite products so it doesn’t have to be Lightroom.

Photograph of the Year contest at Photography Corner

Photography Corner is still holding their Photograph of the Year contest and it is open to entrants until the 15th January! It’s just too cool to pass with over $20,000 in total prices and about $5,000 for the first price winner, prices ranking all the way down until the 10th place and that still is some pretty darn cool prizes! So go over to Photography Corner and check it out!

» Back home!

I’m currently back home and I’m catching up to everything that I couldn’t do whilst being away and resuming the project work as well with quite a few customer projects to do right now. Tomorrow will see a usual Monday Newsflash with some cool stuff gathering up for you Oh and by the way, there are two new tutorials up, one on History and Snapshots in Lightroom and the other one about HDR in Photoshop, they are booth in the featured tutorial box up top

» Recapping 2007 - What’s happened

Very soon 2007 is past history and we are into the new year of 2008 before I’ve even begun to write this post I’ve already picked half of the categories that I post into because a lot has indeed happened. If you want to read some more what’s happened in ‘07, check out the posts by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski, Scott covers Adobe, Photography and NAPP and Matt covers what’s been happening to Lightroom in 2007. Because there have been two lengthy and I must say great posts from them about that, I’ll not venture into that as much in my post but I will cover on how 2007 has been to me.

For me, 2007 has been a very good year with a lot of things kicking up to speed, especially in the second half. I’ve had the tough periods this year that I very much hope that next year won’t have with a lot of personal things happening although I finally do feel that they are easing off and I’m a more happy person now.

Beginning of 2007…I hardly remember much of it really except that I’d just gotten my Nikon D50 and was shooting a lot and I mean a lot of experimental photos and slowly but securely started to gear into landscape photography. Also my web design business, XLD Studios, started to advance a lot as I got quite a few clients, one that continues to approach me with new and great projects. I think the whole beginning of 2007 was very photo centric especially in march when I got to do work experience in a camera store, the store where I now even get called in when they need someone extra.

I can’t say a lot important for this post happened until after the summer, I mean, life rolled on and school rolled on and it was soon holidays. Now after the holidays things started to happen that is now reflecting me to who I am, I really felt my design business kicking of and especially my photography, mostly during the summer. I got several very nice shoots (if I may say so) that I’m happy with and what’s made my year is the fact that I’ve won four photographic awards, Image of the Week at NAPP, Editors Choice at NAPP, Daily Deviation at deviantART and Photograph of the Month for December at Photography Corner. I want to send a thank you to the NAPP staff for selecting those awards, to the folks at deviantART for their awesome support and especially thanks to Kev Lewis who featured my photograph with a daily deviation, also a big thanks of course goes to the Photography Corner community whom I’d been away from most of the year because I was very busy but now returned to and they are as awesome as ever, thank you for your ongoing support.

Now, there are some people I really must thank extra that I really can’t thank enough for their ongoing support;
First off, Tove, Ellen and Johanna, my three best friends in the world! You are just awesome, I can’t put more words on your awesomeness, because there are none in this world!!!

Secondly and this is where all the other folks come I need to thank extra, because I really do only have two steps, I want to thank Tim L. Walker for his support, trust and everlasting projects, it has been a fun year ; Susanna Cotter for her everlasting support and for being there all the time (and also for her apparently everlasting featured as well ;)) ; Juha M. Kinnunen for his so inspirational work ; my family, for their support and trust in what I do and for allowing me to continue doing it, finally also I want to extend a more general thank you to every viewer of this site whether you read the blog, watch my tutorials or watch my photography, an extra special thanks to those of you that find time to comment on the posts.

Finally I want to end with the current state of my sites and what I plan for them; Starting with XLD Studios, it is progressing very well and I have some great plans for the site that I will not reveal as of now because they are only in the planning stages, you will find out later on though This site, I’ll continue updating it with new stuff, blog posts, tutorials and some other resources that I will launch now in the new year as well, I hope this will be the year of this site, I will also continue to update the CST&T podcast but I do need to find another host site for it since it is currently draining all my bandwidth and thus I can’t update it right now. As some of you might be aware, I recently launched Bernskiold Photography, a new kinda site that is based on Smug Mug, where I won a years pro membership, now it has been awesome these weeks I’ve had it up and I will keep on using it for long so it is there you’ll find my full photo home from now on I’m also going to be continuing to be active on booth deviantART and Photography Corner as well, because I think booth communities are great (oh and Smug Mug as well).

So to all of you reading this and to your friends and families I wish you a very Happy and Prosperous new Year and that you will find nothing but joy this year and if you have any problems as of now, I hope they will solve as we enter another exciting year that will for me at least, be filled with a lot of new (and therfore scary) things but also a lot of wonderful and cool things as well!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

» QT: Take advantage of the AMG Plugin!

Many bridge users constantly go through Photoshop when they are making a web gallery thinking it is the only way when it is in fact, unnecessary complicated! You can download the Adobe Media Gallery (AMG) over at the Adobe site and it will allow you from inside Bridge (minimum requirement of Bridge 2.1) create a web gallery from by just selecting the pictures and going to the AMG Panel, then exporting it out to your desktop or a folder to then upload.

» Website Updates!

I don’t know if anyone noticed my updates to the site but there were quite a few this weekend that’ll allow for some cool interaction!

• I’ve added the ability to comment on the tutorials, so if you just want to post a comment or maybe a question or even some tips for me as well. I’d be glad for any comments on the tutorials (and blog posts)!

• Also added is the ability for you to register yourselves on this blog. The advantage is currently that you reserve your name as a commenting name, I’m however thinking about adding some features dependent on the login soon!

• I’ve added, early enough, some cool Christmas decoration to the site as well to get some wintery feel! Enjoy the decoration and if you want to know how I did the snow, stay tuned for a tutorial!

• As another goodie, I made a box on the top of the firs, blog page, with some featured tutorials! Enjoy the quick access to the featured ones which will change as time goes on!

Also, I’m sorry about the fact that no podcast episode has been released yet. I’ve had some problems with my microphone not wanting to record and I’m working on fixing it ASAP. Unfortunately I don’t have any good tutorials in store to air.

Check back tomorrow for some news, now I’m heading to bed (it’s late in my time zone ;)) because of school early in the morning. Have a good continue of the Monday (if you are in the far west) and have a good Tuesday!

» QT: Quickly reset a slider in Lightroom/Camera Raw

To quickly reset a slider in either Lightroom or Camera Raw, just double click on it and it’ll go to its default position, saving you much time

» QT: Render fullsize previews while you are away!

If you are going away from your computer for a little time, remember to start Lightroom on rendering fullsized previews of your photos so that you don’t have to wait for them to render when you zoom into a photo while editing. This can be done by going to Library > Previews > Render 1:1 Previews.

» QT: Export plugins for Lightroom!

If you have upgraded to Lightroom 1.3 (free upgrade so why shouldn’t you) you can take advantage of the new export dialog and also the fact that you can now install plug ins for the exporting to help you export to FTP, sites like Flickr, SmugMug etc. that are released freely on the web and will help your workflow a lot!

» QT: Take advantage of the sample files!

This is quite a universal quick tip to all of the Creative Suite applications. Take advantage of the sample files that comes with all of the applications in the suites. Under the program folder there is most often a folder called Samples where you can find sample files for many of the tools. Perfect if you are exploring new tools or if you teach the software. If the user has a copy of the program, the user will have the sample files!

» QT: Dreamweaver extensions - Useful stuff!

Many don’t realize that Adobe Dreamweaver has got a lot of cool and useful extensions over at the Adobe Exchange site. Many can speed up your workflow a lot and add many useful tools to the program! Some of the extensions even add complete site elements!