One onOne with Mike Wong

I just got a reminder from Gary over at Software Cinema about this incredible event coming up in December (which I can't believe is about 30 days away). If you are anywhere near San Francisco in December (the 8th to be exact), you owe it to yourself to come to this event. If you are no where near San Francisco in December, you should make plans to come out. Here are the full details...

		S A N   F R A N C I S C O THE BEST TRAINERS – All scheduled to appear on December 8th MARK YOUR CALENDAR... It’s the only day of the year the top Photoshop instructors are together in one location – an event you can’t afford to miss!
	Learn Adobe Photoshop® & Lightroom® from the very best! Here’s your chance to pick up the latest digital imaging techniques and learn about fine-tuning your skills and increasing your productivity. Plus, there’s a very special bonus – a full series of lighting demonstrations from 6:30 - 8:00 PM by several of the finest photographers in the country… if you learn how to get it right in the camera from the beginning you’ll spend less time working on the image later on! Technology never stops moving, especially this year! Our mini-expo gives you the chance to see the latest in new products. This is a unique opportunity to get some one-on-one attention and meet with the staff from Adobe, Canon, Wacom, Nik Software, OnOne, Lensbabies, Expoimaging, White House Custom Colour and Keeble & Shuchat Photography.
	More Info and Signup
	THE BEST OF THE BEST - All scheduled to appear on December 8th • Julieanne Kost --- Lightroom Keynote Demonstration • Ben Willmore --- Advanced Masking in Photoshop • Eddie Tapp --- Creative Photo Enhancement Techniques • Kevin Ames --- Lighting Without Lights • Jane Connor-ziser --- Portrait Photoshop Techniques • Jan Kabili --- Fixing Color Casts • Bob Coates --- Creative Album Pages in Photoshop • Jack Reznicki --- Quality Lighting Demonstration • Jim DiVitale --- Lighting Products Demonstration • Dave Montizambert --- Dramatic Lighting for Digital Capture • Todd Morrison --- Creating Dramatic Portrait Lighting This conference is the way to take your skills to the next level. You’ll pick up new techniques that will make a difference in your productivity. Plus, the program provides ample time to interact with each instructor. Each instructor will take one-on-one questions after their presentation in the expo room. See complete schedule and topics on the website.
www.software-cinema.com

Posted by Mike Wong at 10:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you missed the review of PhotoFrame Pro 3 in either Layers Magazine or in Photoshop User, you can read it online over at Macsimum news. We're quite proud that they still feel that PhotoFrame Pro 3 is still a must have plug-in for Adobe Photoshop.

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In the spirit of the season, here's a quick way to turn that (boring) Haloween snapshot into something a little more interesting using PhotoFrame Pro 3. Here's a picture of the pumpkin I carved with my (then 3 year old) son a couple of years ago.

Nothing too exciting or unique about this picture. But let's take a second and add some frames from the Paranormal collection in PhotoFrame Pro 3 and it becomes a little spookier and more in the spirit of the holiday. The first thing I did was to increase my canvas size by 1 inch on all sides.

All I did was experiment with several different versions of the Paranormal frames. I layered several on top of each other and adjusted the size and blur of each just a little bit. There's no right or wrong here just have some fun.

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:53 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Adobe announced yesterday that there is a new version of Lightoom available. The "dot 1" release fixes a slew of issues with the 4.0 beta release. For full details of what's new and to download the latest release, go to the Adobe Labs site.

Posted by Mike Wong at 7:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was reading Dave Cross' Blog today and saw his post about Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. Dove has put together an interesting little flash movie that shows the "transformation" or evolution as they call it from start to finish of bringing in a model and doing the makeup and then the post-processing work in the computer (though it looks like they've purposefully modified the computer screen so it doesn't look exactly like Photoshop, though I suppose they could be using something else).

I love the idea of the campaign though. Reminds me of that HP camera that does the in-camera "slimming" and how that still just seems wrong to me.

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:28 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'm heading down to Southern California tomorrow to do some in-store, retail trainings for one of our partners, Calumet. San Diego, Santa Ana, Los Angeles & Santa Barbara. I'm hoping to get a chance to take some pictures while on the road.

Posted by Mike Wong at 10:04 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

One of best things to do before you use PhotoFrame Pro is give yourself a little extra room to play with. To do that, increase your canvas size first. This will allow you to adust the size of the frame or frames that you're going to add to your photo.

You can do this yourself by going to Image > Canvas Size and then enter the amount you want to increase your canvas size by. Or you can download this Photoshop Action to increase your canvas size that we've got on our site. Just load the action and then run it before you use PhotoFrame.

Posted by Mike Wong at 10:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'm so jealous. I really wish I had figured out a way to get over to Yellowstone to join Moose Peterson and his gang for the Digital Landscape Workshop Series in Yellowstone earlier this week. Read Moose's blog to see some of his pictures and comments from the week. This is my favorite shot that he's posted.

Posted by Mike Wong at 9:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

iView Multimedia has released a free update to its flagship digital asset management program iView MediaPro. The first comprehensive update since iView’s acquisition by Microsoft this summer, iView MediaPro 3.1.2 delivers significantly more robust performance, including clearer error reporting and improved memory handling for both Mac and Windows customers, as well as a number of minor feature enhancements. [Read more]

Posted by Mike Wong at 9:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Since I posted earlier about the new 10MP Samsung mobile phone, I figured I might as well post this news about Adobe purchasing Actimgine, a French developer of video and interactive vector graphics technology. [Read more here]

Posted by Mike Wong at 9:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Adobe last week released the Public Beta of Camera Raw 3.6 (Macintosh | Windows®) with support for several new cameras. Version 3.5 (Macintosh | Windows®) is still the latest certified version of ACR, but if you've got one of the cameras listed below, you might want to check out the beta.

The new cameras that are now supported in Camera Raw 3.6 Public Beta are:

Canon
EOS 400D / Rebel XTi

Leica
D-LUX3
Digilux 3

Nikon
D80

Panasonic
DMC-LX2

Pentax
K100D

Posted by Mike Wong at 8:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Check this out. I'm a big fan of Samsung televisions, but never liked the Samsung phone my wife had for a year until her service contract ran out and I replaced it with a Motorola. But this phone might make me reconsider if nothing else than for the insane 10MP camera that it comes with.

Posted by Mike Wong at 8:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)