Mike Wong is the VP of Marketing at onOne Software, located in Portland, Oregon.
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If you are planning on going to the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International show in Las Vegas in March 2007 and would like a free pass to the Expo area, just download this PDF and present it at the registration desk to get free access the Expo. And be sure to stop by our booth and say hello!
If you haven't already seen this, the good people over at NAPP have put together a great site that covers all you need to know to get up to speed with Photoshop CS3. Be sure to check it out.
Another day, another announcement. Earlier today, we announced our plans for updating Mask Pro 4, Intellihance Pro 4 and PhotoFrame Pro 3 to be compatible with Photoshop CS3. Yesterday, we talked about our plans for Genuine Fractals.
If you're using Photoshop CS3 in it's public beta form on Mac OS X and want/need to use any of our plug-ins you'll have to run Photoshop CS3 under Rosetta (which pretty much defeats the purpose of the CS3 public beta) for the time being. Rest assured we're hard at work on making the Mac versions of our plug-ins Universal Binaries and plan to share more on that in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
As you may have already seen, today, we announced a new version of Genuine Fractals 5.0 which will be available in the spring of 2007 right around the time that Photoshop CS3 will be commercially (not in beta form) available.
Be sure to check back in the coming weeks as we'll post some screenshots and will have much more to talk about with this new version. For now, here's a quick recap of the new features you can expect to see in Genuine Fractals 5.0.
Another inspired shot from Julianne Kost's book, Window Seat. I shot this one with my compact Canon SD550 on the way from PDX to ATL. After a bit of Photoshop work, here's what I ended up with. The frame you see on the picture is from the Jack Davis Collection of add-on frames for PhotoFrame Pro.
I'll post a short tutorial on how I ended up with this final picture in the next few days.
Before PhotoFrame Pro:
After PhotoFrame Pro:
Images copyright Mike Wong
Another day, another event. Seems like these shows never end! Which is great, because that means you've always got a chance to learn something new! Today I'm down in South San Francisco for the Adobe Photoshop Training Camp and Conference Expo put on by Software Cinema. Some big names are going to be here today and it should be a great show! I'll try to post some pictures throughout the day.
I've been hearing this a lot lately. Someone says something like this where they say "I've got a friend who is a professional photographer who is a beta tester for Adobe's Lightroom". What a coincidence, so do I. In fact, I've got non-professional photographer friends who are beta testers for Lightoom. For that matter, I AM A BETA TESTER FOR LIGHTROOM.
When a company makes a beta program public, anybody can be a beta tester. This kind of stuff just cracks me up. Sure, being a beta tester for some kinds of software still has some "I'm on the inside track" excitement for those who care about that kind of stuff. But when a program like Lightroom is a public beta and all you have to do to qualify to be a "beta tester" is fill out a form and give Adobe your email address, well, it's not that big of a deal.
If someone was a true beta tester for a non-announced, non-public program, they would be under Non-Disclosure Agreements and couldn't (or shouldn't) be talking to friends who aren't on the beta program under a similar (or the same) NDA.
I don't mean to single the above referenced blog post out, it just made me realize that I hear and read this all the time now and I think it's silly.
No posts from Day 2 of my Atlanta stay, but it was a good day at the Epson Print Academy. They had a good turn out and I got to talk to a lot of really great people during the breaks. For those of you who stopped by and bought one of our products, thank you very much! Be sure to check out our online tutorials to help you get up to speed with your new purchase.
I had a day to myself today, which is rare on these types of trips, so I took advantage and went to the Georgia Aquarium with Jim DiVitale. Thanks again for taking me Jim! The highlight of the day was seeing the enormous tank (6.2 million gallons held back by 2 feet of acryllic that spans 63 feet in width and about 40 feet or more in height) where there are 4, count 'em 4, whale sharks! These are incredible animals and to see one up close was something amazing. Here's a picture of the largest one whose name is Norton. The other male is named Ralph and the two females are named, Alice & Trixie.
Next stop on my trip is Tampa to visit our good friends over at NAPP.
I'm now in Atlanta. First time ever. Everyone always calls it Hotlanta, but I gotta tell you, it's more like Chillylanta or Windylanta today. It's brisk and windy outside. Nothing hot about it. I'm on a quest to see if I can find a place that serves Pepsi. I don't give myself very good odds seeing how I am in the land of Coke. In fact, it appears that the Coca-Cola headquarters are just behind me past the Georgia Tech campus.
Here's a shot from my hotel room balcony. You can see the Georgia Tech football stadium in the background.
The traffic here looks horrendous. It's only gotten worse since I've been here. But with a population approaching 5 million, what would you expect.
I went out looking for a place to eat, and I didn't get very far from my hotel when I smelled what could only be that unmistakable combination of deep fried oil and french fries. It was like there was a forest fire and you could smell the smoke for miles. Well it turns out, I was approaching an Atlanta institution known as The Varsity. Apparently, the downtown Atlanta location is responsible for more retail sales of Coca-Cola on an annual basis than any other single location in the world, a record which has stood for many years running. If you look towards the bottom center of the picture above, you can see The Varsity. It's huge. The parking lot, including the drive in area, was completely full. Maybe I'll have to stop in before I leave town.
I couldn't bring myself to stay in there tough. I just got rid of that BBQ smell from Mobile and didn't want to replace it with the unmistakable, if not somewhat appetizing, smell of french fries.
Off to dinner soon with Jim DiVitale. He lives here in Atlanta ya know. I'm looking forward to catching up with him.
Image copyright Mike Wong
En route to Atlanta for the Epson Print Academy this Saturday, I stopped in Mobile, AL for a couple of meetings with a reseller. For lunch yesterday, we went to this great BBQ joint. Damn it was good food. I still smell like a mixture of BBQ and smoke - and I don't mean BBQ smoke. I mean cigarette smoke. Coming from Oregon where you can't smoke inside any public building, it was a bit of a shock to walk into two different restaurants where smoking is allowed. When you don't smoke, walking into it hits you like a brick wall. At least it does to me.
Anyway, I escaped the cold weather of Oregon this week - or so I thought. When I left Portland, it was about 33 degrees F and wet. Landing in Mobile, it was 75 and HUMID. This morning on the way to Mobile Regional Airport, it's a bit brisk. 39 degrees F by all of the electronic bank billboards on Airport Blvd.
Here's some Mobile, AL trivia for you. Did you know...to the delight of children everywhere, Lonnie Johnson of Mobile, AL invented the Super Soaker.
More later when I get to Atlanta.
