Mike Wong is the VP of Marketing at onOne Software, located in Portland, Oregon.
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If anybody wants a free One Day Admission ticket to the Photoshop World 2007 Las Vegas TECH EXPO, post a comment with your email and I'll get a hold of you and send you a ticket. Each ticket is will admit two (2) people and is worth $20 each. This ticket does not get you into any of the classes at Photoshop World, but will get you into the Tech Expo.
I'm declaring today Mask Pro day. I stumbled across this blog post about Mask Pro 4 from a Google Blog Alert.
[Mask Pro 4] has about a 5-minute learning curve, but if you watch their online tutorials, it's very easy to use and works very well. Their tutorials are inline with what I would make if I were a developer trying to sell software. Anyway this app is very useful, well worth the $150+ USD.
Hot off the presses, here's a review of Mask Pro 4 by the Anchorage Mac User Group. I'm a little biased of course, by my favorite quote in the review was:
There is no program in existence that will magically make perfect selections of every subject, every time. That may be a lofty goal, but is not really an attainable dream.
Having said that, I personally found that Mask Pro 4 comes amazingly close to it.
Thanks for the review guys!
Here's Jim's latest image promoting the upcoming workshops that he and his wife Helene Glassman do. I love the image. Jim is a great at doing the displacement map technique in Photoshop - so much so that the Brooks Institute uses his article from Photoshop User magazine a year or so ago as the curriculum for teaching the technique.
If you're interested in attending one of Jim or Helene's workshops, visit their respective sites listed below.
Okay, I've got to do this post just to be official...Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is now officially available. I've been using it more and more over the past few months and am really enjoying it. It's much more modal than Aperture, which I also have and was using because it handles RAW much better than iPhoto and integrates well with the iLife apps (which I find myself using less and less each passing month). But Aperture, running on my Dual 2Ghz G5 with 3 GB of RAM, is very slow. Sure, I have the bare minimum in terms of supported video card, but I'm not about to go drop $300 on a new video card to make it faster.
Lightroom on the other hand, runs quite nicely on the same system. I like Aperture's non-modal approach better and I think they've got the whole versioning thing down better than Lightroom currently does, but I just can't get past the performance on my not-that-old system. Someday, I'll upgrade to an Intel-Mac at home, but just yet. I'm spending my money these days on upgrading my lenses (specifically the Canon EF 24-105 f4/L IS and the 70-200 f4/L IS).
Anyway, Photoshop Lightroom is shipping and if you're so inclined, it's available for a $100 discount ($199 intro pricing). Check out the demo if you haven't played with the beta yet.
One of the most exciting new features in Genuine Fractals 5.0 is the exposure of two controls that let you fine tune your scaling results: Gain & Threshold. But what are they and what do they do? Read on to find out...
In general, the Genuine Fractals algorithm has been improved to provide higher quality scaling results. Additionally, there are also two new algorithm variables that may be adjusted by the user. They are currently labeled B&W Gain and Threshold. The default settings are 3 and 25 respectively. Using the deault settings will provide results equivalent to Genuine Fractals 4.1. Adjusting these variables (on an image by image basis) can provide improved detail in non edge regions as well as control edge sharpness. Below is a description of each control and recommendations of how to use them.
B&W Gain: This controls the amount of detail in flat, non-edge areas of an image. If your image contains lots of minute detail that does not have defined edges (many organic patterns like leaves, rock, bark; or man made pattens like fabric) it may be good to increase the Gain to a setting of 4 or 5. Settings beyond 5 will often introduce a bumpy noise pattern which is undesirable unless your original image was from scanned film. Settings lower than the default setting of 3 are useful for images with large areas of continuous tone that have no appreciable detail (sand, snow, sky) but have hard edged foreground subjects such as landscape images, architecture or portraiture.
Threshold: This controls the amount of hard edge detail that is enhanced. The default setting is 25. Decreasing the threshold will focus the algorithms only on edge information. This may be useful for portraiture or for reducing noise in your image. Settings higher than 25 will increase the amount of small detail in flatter areas of the image. Settings as high as 100 are useful for highly detailed images such as hair or feathers. Higher threshold settings will also make Genuine Fractals process faster.
So there you have it. A quick overview of these two new settings. Enjoy the beta!
It's been a very busy start to 2007 for us here at onOne, so busy that it dawned on me last night that I have been a bit remiss about posting to the blog! So I'll try to make up for that today.
On the heels of the Genuine Fractals 5.0 public beta, we're happy to share with you a preview release of PhotoFrame Pro 3.1. The new update (free to all registered users of PhotoFrame Pro 3) sports a couple of new features as well as compatibility with Photoshop CS3 running natively on Intel-Macs (also referred to as a Universal Binary).
New features in PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 include 16-bit support so you no longer have to convert files to 8-bit and a new Auto-Rotate feature that will automatically adjust the orientation of a frame to best fit your image. Some of the frame content was developed and set by default to be applied in a portrait orientation, some was done for landscape. At the time we developed, we essentially had to flip a coin as to which one we did (rather than developing two of everything). The problem was if you wanted a landscape oriented frame on your portrait oriented image. Sometimes you couldn't see a difference but other times you could - it all depended on the frame.
But PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 fixes that. The plug-in will automatically detect the orientation of your image and compare it to the frame you are applying and make the necessary rotation so the frame looks good the first time and gives you a better user experience.
The beta will only work if you have a licensed version (meaning you bought it, not just downloaded a demo) of PhotoFrame Pro 3 on your computer. Full install instructions are available on the beta site so make sure you read through the release notes. This version is sooooo much faster on an Intel-Mac under Photoshop CS3 than it was running in Photoshop CS2 running under Rosetta.
Enjoy!
Capture NX has been updated by Nikon (or perhaps more specifically Nik Software) to version 1.1.
The new version brings Intel-Mac compatibility, Windows Vista optimizations and sports some new user interface elements according to the press release. More from the release...
Capture NX 1.1 is available for download immediately and can be purchased for an estimated selling price of $149.95* as a full boxed version or downloadable key. A 30-day trial version is available, for new users, and can be downloaded at http://www.nikonusa.com, in the Software Download section. Current users of Capture NX will be also able to download an update to version 1.1 at no additional cost. A special limited-time upgrade price of $89.95 will be offered to current owners of Nikon Capture 4 software in the U.S. market. This upgrade will only be available online at http://www.nikonmall.com/captureupgrade/ for registered Nikon Capture 4 owners and will be limited to one upgrade per Nikon Capture 4 product key. The upgrade will require certain customer verification of ownership. Customers who have not already registered their version of Capture 4 will receive instructions to do so at the site.
Exercise your creative mind! Join Jim DiVitale and Helene Glassman for 3 days of "tools, tips, and a workflow fix" to enhance your photography and Photoshop skills. Jim & Helene are Photoshop World Instructors with over 50 years of combined experience in the photographic industry. You get double the value of any other seminar.
You can choose from attending a seminar in the West (Santa Barbara, CA) or in the East (Atlanta, GA).
Choose a link for more information.
For more information about Helene and Jim, visit their new websites.
http://www.imagerybyhelene.com
http://www.divitalephotography.com
