Friday, April 30, 2010

iPad with Wi-Fi+3G Now Available From Apple

The iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G is now available from Apple starting at $629 for the 16GB version. There are two monthly data plans: 250MB or unlimited but don’t think you can use your existing iPhone plan, because you can’t.   I have a couple of colleagues that have purchased the 32GB Wi-Fi version and seem to be fairly happy with it once they found a practical use; which would be my main issue as well.  I must admit after playing around with it I can see the allure.  Boys and toys, we just can’t help tinkering with new electronics whether practical or not.

The jury is still out for me, although I do like the possibility it provides when using the DLSR Camera Remote app from onOne.  It allows Canon and Nikon users to control their tethered DLSR from the iPad, change camera settings, view shots, etc.  Find out more on the onOne site.

At nearly $900 for the 64GB Wi-Fi+3G my wallet just won’t let me take the leap for a device that kind of lands in the middle of my Blackberry and laptop. 

In related news Terry White has posted a video tutorial on his blog covering the iPad Camera Connection Kit.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Now Fully Available


Adobe has finally made their Creative Suite 5 family of applications available to the masses.  I can't wait to get my hands on the new versions.  See the official company press release below.  NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) has a great online CS5 Learning Center as well detailing the updates and providing video tutorials.

SAN JOSE, Calif., — April 30, 2010  Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of the Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 product family, the highly-anticipated release of the industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow. With more than 250 new product features, the Creative Suite 5 product line brings exciting full-version upgrades of flagship creative tools and workflow enhancements to designers and developers — enabling the creation, delivery and optimization of content across media for greater impact and results.

The Adobe CS5 product family is powering the creation of content and applications for the upcoming releases of Flash® Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR® 2, which are optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities for a richer, more immersive user experience. Featuring integration with online content and digital marketing measurement and optimization capabilities for the first time, Creative Suite 5 products include access to signature Omniture® technologies, to capture, store and analyze information generated by websites and other sources. Adobe Creative Suite 5 products also integrate with Adobe CS Live*, a set of five innovative online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow and enable designers to focus on creating their best work (CS Live services are complimentary for a limited time).

The Creative Suite 5 line-up includes five new versions: Creative Suite 5 Master Collection, Creative Suite 5 Design Premium, Creative Suite 5 Web Premium, Creative Suite 5 Production Premium, Creative Suite 5 Design Standard, as well as 15 point products and associated technologies. Creative Suite now includes a brand-new component, Adobe Flash® Catalyst™, a professional interaction design tool that allows designers to rapidly create expressive Web application interfaces and design interaction without writing code.

“We’ve seen from early customer reaction that Creative Suite 5 continues to inspire the design and developer world by combining time-saving workflow and productivity features with astonishing new capabilities, such as Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5, that really push the creative envelope,” said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “Whatever the media, CS5 is ensuring that publishers and creatives can deliver stand-out work and build great businesses around their unique digital assets and content.”

Also available as part of the Creative Suite 5 product family, sold separately or in one of the five Creative Suite editions, are new versions of the Adobe Creative Suite tools, including Photoshop® CS5, Illustrator® CS5, InDesign® CS5, Flash Catalyst CS5, Flash CS5 Professional, Dreamweaver® CS5, Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS5, After Effects® CS5 and more.

The Creative Suite 5 products offer more than 250 new features that embrace interactivity, enhance performance and maximize the impact of creative content and digital marketing campaigns. InDesign CS5 powers the transition to digital publishing with new interactive documents and enhanced electronic reader device support. Image creation and editing get a boost with Truer Edge technology in Photoshop CS5, which offers better edge detecting technology and masking results in less time. Photoshop CS5 also includes the ability to remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels with Content-Aware Fill. New stroke options allow Adobe Illustrator CS5 users to create strokes of variable widths and precisely adjust the width at any point along the stroke. New Text Layout Framework in Flash Professional CS5 provides professional-level typography capabilities with functions like kerning, ligatures, tracking, leading, threaded text block and multiple columns. In addition, Dreamweaver CS5 now supports popular content management systems Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, allowing designers to get accurate views of dynamic Web content from within the product.

Performance improvements abound in the Creative Suite 5 product line with engineering breakthroughs, including native 64-bit support on both Mac and Windows® in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, that allows users to work more fluidly on high-resolution projects. The much anticipated NVIDIA® GPU-accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine allows Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 users to open projects faster, refine effects-rich HD sequences in real time and play back complex projects without rendering. The revolutionary timesaving Roto Brush tool in After Effects helps users isolate moving foreground elements in a fraction of the normal time.

Accelerate Creative Workflows with Adobe CS LiveAdobe Creative Suite 5 products integrate with Adobe CS Live*, a set of five online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow and enable designers to focus on creating their best work. CS Live online services are complimentary for a limited time and currently include: Adobe BrowserLab, Adobe CS Review, Acrobat.com, Adobe Story and SiteCatalyst® NetAverages™ from Omniture. Adobe CS Review enables online design reviews from directly in Creative Suite 5 applications, while Adobe BrowserLab is an indispensable tool for testing website content across different browsers and operating systems. NetAverages provides Web usage data that helps reduce the guesswork early in the creative process when designing for Web and mobile. Adobe Story is a collaborative scriptwriting tool that improves production and post-production workflows in CS5 Production Premium. Access to Acrobat.com services, such as Adobe ConnectNow Web conferencing, is also included to enhance discussion and information exchange with colleagues and clients around the globe.

Create and Deliver to More Mobile PlatformsUsing Flash Professional CS5, designers and developers can create, test and deliver Web content across a wide range of mobile platforms and devices such as smartphones, tablets, netbooks and other consumer electronics. Users can look forward to deploying content in the browser with Flash Player 10.1 and as a standalone application with AIR 2.

Pricing and Availability


Adobe Creative Suite 5 products and its associated point products will be available through Adobe Authorized Resellers, Adobe Direct Sales and the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/store. Estimated street price for the suites is US$1899 for CS5 Design Premium, US$1799 for CS5 Web Premium, US$1699 for CS5 Production Premium, US$1299 for CS5 Design Standard and US$2599 for Master Collection CS5. Upgrade pricing, volume licensing and education discounts are available. Adobe CS5 products integrate with Adobe CS Live online services which are complimentary for a limited time. For more detailed information about features, OS support, upgrade policies, pricing and international versions please visit: www.adobe.com/go/creativesuite.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Apple Releases RAW Compatibility Update 3.2


Apple has released the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.2 for Aperture 3 and iPhoto ’09.  Among the newly supported camera models are the Canon EOS Rebel T2i and 550D; Leica S2; Olympus E-450, E-600 and E-620; as well as several Sony Alpha DSLR models such as the A330, A380 and A450.  

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Canon EOS 7D Firmware 1.2.1 Upgrade Now Available


Canon release firmware update for the EOS 7D DSLR.


Firmware
Firmware Version 1.2.1 incorporates the following improvements and fixes, and can now be downloaded by clicking here.
  1. Extends the timing at which the high temperature warning indicator is displayed and the timing of automatic shut down of the camera due to a rise in internal temperature during Live View or EOS Movie functions.
  2. Optimizes program shift when the ISO setting of the camera is set to AUTO.
  3. Corrects a misspelling in the French-language menu.
  4. Corrects a phenomenon in which vertical magenta-colored banding appears in still images taken in movie-shooting mode. (This only occurs when in Manual exposure mode and when the ISO speed is set to "H". Note that this phenomenon only affects units with Firmware Version 1.2.0.)
Firmware Version 1.2.1 is for cameras with firmware up to Version 1.2.0. If the camera's firmware is already Version 1.2.1, it is not necessary to update the firmware. Note that cameras with firmware Version 1.2.1 and 1.2.0 cannot be downgraded to a previous firmware version (such as Version 1.1.0).

Support
This information is for residents of the United States and Puerto Rico only.
Thank you,
Customer Support Operations
Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Contact Information for Inquiries:
Canon Customer Support Center
Phone: 1-800-OK-CANON (toll free)
          1-800-652-2666
TTD:   1-866-251-3752 (toll free)
E-mail: carecenter@cits.canon.com
For additional support options: http://www.usa.canon.com/support

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Apple iPad Released, But Not Without Problems

The Apple iPad is here. See what Terry White thinks of the WiFi model on the MacNews site (follow link below). The AT&T 3G model ships at the end of April I believe. But things aren’t all sunshine for Apple. The company has acknowledged a problem with the WiFi connectivity. According to Apple "Under certain conditions, iPad may not automatically rejoin a known Wi-Fi network after restart or waking from sleep.” Apple states that the Internet-related problems can occur with third-party Wi-Fi routers that are dual-band capable if more than one network has the same name or there are different security settings for the multiple networks. Apple suggests users create separate names for different Wi-Fi bands and ensure that multiple networks have the same security settings.

If problems persist, Apple's support post suggests resetting iPad's network settings.  An estimated 300,000 iPads were sold on Saturday April 3rd when the product was officially launched.

A buddy of mine picked one up on Saturday, and I'd have to say it is pretty slick.  I can see potential, especially from a photographer's point of view in regard to displaying proofs as slide shows to clients, the mobile portfolio and mini-office capabilities.  But i'd need the 3G version to be truely mobile and with a price tag of over 800 bucks, plus 30 bucks a month for the 3G service, I'll keep my current laptop...for now.  Also, the lack of Flash support when browsing the web is disappointing.  Especially for me as my website is created with Flash. 


Adobe Creative Suite 5 Coming Monday April 12th

Monday is the big day for Adobe Creative Suite users. Creative Suite 5 is due to be unveiled Monday April 12th and the buzz is that photographers will fall even more in love with this version of CS. Follow the link below to register with Adobe and access informative preview information and event times. Also, Scott Kelby and the NAPP Crew will provide a Photoshop User CS5 Learning Center site to find out loads tutorials, interviews and information about the new product.

Adobe Announces 'Release Candidate' Versions of Lightroom, Camera RAW and DNG Converter

Adobe has announced the release of new 'Release Candidate’ versions of Photoshop Lightroom 2.7, Camera Raw 5.7 and DNG Converter 5.7 that are available for immediate download from Adobe Labs. They provide additional RAW support for 9 more cameras, including the Canon EOS 550D, Panasonic G2 and Olympus E-PL1. According to Adobe, the term 'Release Candidate' defines the downloads as well tested but not yet final retail versions. Also, the Lightroom 3 Beta Release 2 is available for download as well.