Early Thursday Tidbits

by: Erik Bernskiold

I’ve been on a little vacation, visiting my cousins for the past days and because yesterday was a travel day, the news update post for yesterday, is now coming today! Image above, taken with my iPhone only, hence the poor quality.

• John Nack, the product manager for Photoshop, shared the other day some cool new utilities that work with Lightroom and ACR. A Lightroom plugin that could be of use to you if you use it with another application than Photoshop is Open Directly, a plugin that lets you send a RAW file from Lightroom and right into another editing application of your choice. It’ll become a paid plugin on August 7th, so give it a try.
   
• Something software related again, VLC (the popular media player) has finally been updated to version 1.0! You can read more about this at MacAppZone.
   
• I’m in the process of planning out tutorials and recording more videos for the site again and if you have any suggestions or ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments here! It is much appreciated.

 

Tuesday News & Goodies

by: Erik Bernskiold

 

• I came across a really brilliant artwork the other day titled "What Photoshop would look like in real life" that I just had to share. They’ve basically built up a Photoshop interface using cardboard, paint, boxes etc. It’s super cool!
   
• Sigma has announced that they are buying the sensor company Foveon. This will basically mean that they have a tighter grip over the sensors they use in their cameras. Foveon will physically remain where they are in Silicon Valley which will also give Sigma some really high-tech real estate.
   
• A new version of Parallels Desktop has been released. The release is a big fix, fixing some bugs with guest user accounts and more and brings the version number to 3.0.5626. You can download it from the site for free if you are a current license holder. For new users the application costs $79.99.
   
• The popular media player, VLC has also gotten a bit of an upgrade to version 0.9.6. The specifics in the release are also security fixes that has been around for a few versions. They are also taking out the support for versions 0.8.6 or earlier. Use at your own risk, or upgrade.

Monday News Wrap-Up Post

by: Erik Bernskiold

It’s the start of another week and here are quite a few happenings today:

• The makers of the VLC media player has released a new version of it today. News include a reworked interface, new features and a lot of bugfixes. You can read a wiki entry on what’s new as well if you’d like to read it all as well as see a video on the news. Of course it is still free!
   
• While in the process of doing my blog series about screencasting here, I thought I’d link you to a post by Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks who goes into detail what he uses to do his screencasts. It’s a really in-depth post that you can always pick up some great tips from, even if you think you have your way set in stone (what’s up with that? always be open for improvements)!
   
• If you want to sync your iTunes library with your Sony Ericson mobile phone then try out this great little app, EasyListening from Divine Robot. The app has gotten an update in the past days to version 1.1, adding support for more phones. The app runs for $10 and is available only for the Mac.
   
• PhotographyBB, the free online photo magazine has just released their eigth edition. This edition includes tips and techniques for using camera flash, workflow techniques for Lightroom 2, a tour of St. Petersburg as well as the conclusion of the four-part series on HDR Photography.

That’s it for now on the news, stay tuned for a lot more coming this week here on the blog!