Along for the shoot were senior product manager Dan Harlacher, Brian Kraft (vp sales), Vincent and me. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to spend a day shooting with Vincent, now you can see. Brian Kraft shot a little video along the way and put it up on Vimeo. I thought it would be fun to share here.

Just a warning though, this may be a side of Vincent many of you have not seen before. He was very heavily under the influence of Gummy Bears early in the day. Evidence of why you should keep them out of the reach of your kids.

The presets use three different backgrounds that were originally designed by Kersti Malvre and were first included in the PhotoFrame 4.5 release. Each also has a different camera edge frame that is blurred out and set to black to give a unique and non-symmetrical vignette. The first preset also includes an adornment from Vicki Taufer. All presets use the same photograph frame that was designed by Vincent Versace.

To download these free presets, click on each image below or just head on over to the onOne Exchange.

Please note, the fonts/typefaces used in these presets are not included in the preset. The type was added in Photoshop after I applied the presets to the photo. Links to where you can purchase each of the fonts is included on the onOne Exchange.

Image copyright Joe Drivas

My good friend Joe Drivas just let me know about a Stock Photography workshop that he is leading on February 19th and 20th at Harmon’s School of Photography.

The 1 and a half day Stock Photography workshop will be led by Joe himself. Joe is one of the leading stock photographers in the United States and his work is represented and licensed worldwide through Getty Images, Iconica, Stone and Photographer’s Choice collections.

Joe will be providing an overview of the stock photography industry and detail  his unique and successful approach to being a highly competitive stock photographer. He will cover his software workflow, his approach to image metadata, and archival methods for quick retrieval. Also, he is going to discuss model and property releases, and describe what gear to bring to the shoot.

The cost for the event is only $250. A pretty good deal to learn from one of the best in the business. For more information be sure to visit the Harmon’s School of Photography web site.

Genuine Fractals, PhotoTools, PhotoFrame, PhotoTune and FocalPoint are all technically Photoshop Automation plug-ins. As an Automation plugin, you can include any of these plug-ins in an action that you create in Photoshop to speed up your workflow. They can also be included in any batch processing workflow that you may have as well. As an Automation plugin, the plugin will show up in the File > Automation menu.

In previous versions of the onOne Plug-In Suite, to make it easier to find our plug-ins (because quite frankly, you shouldn’t have to know or be concerned with the difference between a Filter and an Automation plug-in or where they live within Photoshop for that matter) we created the onOne Menu which is inserted between the Window and Help menu items in the Photoshop menu bar. However, over the years with changes to both Photoshop and (primarily) the Windows operating system, the creation of this menu has been, how shall I put it… delicate. Fragile. Sometimes flaky and non-existent to be honest. On the Mac OS X platform, it hasn’t been a problem, but not all of you out there use Mac OS X  so we had to find a better, long-term solution to provide a single, consistent and stable place to allow you to access our plug-ins.

Enter the Photoshop CS4 Panel.

You are most likely already familiar with these panels. In fact, you use them everyday. There is a Layers panel, Masks panel, Adjustments panel, etc etc etc. Perhaps the coolest thing about panels is that anybody can create a panel. John Nack has a panel that shows his daily RSS feed from his blog. Julieanne Kost has a daily PS tip panel.

We figured since the onOne menu doesn’t work for everybody in Photoshop CS4 that we would create a panel for our plug-ins. The problem is that while it gets installed automatically when you run the onOne Plug-In Suite 5 installer, it doesn’t actually show up when you relaunch Photoshop. But it’s easy to get it to appear after you’ve run the installer. Here’s what you do.

Simply go to the Window > Extensions menu and then choose onOne. Up pops the new onOne Panel where you can now double-click on any of the product names and go directly into that plug-in. Alternately, if you single-click on a product name, a sub-menu is exposed showing you any preset categories that you have created with that plug-in. Click on a category name and you see the presets in that category. If you double-click on a preset name, that preset will be applied to your photo. Very slick.

The new onOne Palette

Preset categories displayed

So if you have installed Plug-In Suite 5 and you are not sure where all of your favorite plug-ins are located, just go to the Window > Extensions menu and select onOne. You will have a nice new palette with everything in one place. Oh, and by the way, you can dock it alongside your other panels as well by dragging it into either the panel bar or next to a panel that is already open like the Layers panel.

Photoshop 20th Anniversary! Celebrate with Adobe and NAPP

For 20 years, the world has used industry-leading Adobe Photoshop software to transform creative inspiration into nearly everything we see, from magazine covers to medical devices to city skylines. That’s why, every day, Adobe is inspired to create the innovative technologies that build more speed, intelligence, and magic into each new Photoshop product—so you can continue to turn your creative vision into reality.

Adobe is kicking off a year-long celebration of Photoshop’s 20th anniversary starting with an Adobe and National Association of Photoshop Professionals star-studded celebration, live at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco, February 18th, 7:30pm.

The evening is hosted by NAPP Founder Scott Kelby and Adobe Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Creative Solutions Business Unit, Johnny Loiacono, with the NAPP Photoshop Guys — Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski, plus Adobe Photoshop star Russell Brown, and other important members of the Adobe team.

As a valued partner of Adobe, onOne customers are invited to join for this history-making, fun-filled night packed with amazing Photoshop tricks, incredible tips, and a celebration of the program that changed and shaped popular culture forever. Plus, you will get an exclusive sneak peek at the future of Photoshop.

Everyone attending gets a one-of-a-kind Photoshop 20th anniversary t-shirt and poster commemorating this amazing night of learning and fun. You must pre-register to attend.

Can’t make it live, the event will be webcast.

Visit http://www.photoshopuser.com/photoshop20th to register or learn more

Early in December, Rick suggested we start a photo blog in 2010 with the idea of each of us posting a photo every other day. Rick has the even days. I have the odd days. For me, it’s going to force me to get creative every day – or at least every other day – and shoot. Which will be great because I love shooting but don’t always make the time to do it. I’ve already warned my family that I’ll be asking them to sit for a bunch of portraits.

So on January 1, we officially started our blog. The blog theme is still in progress, but we wanted to get going with posting photos. We have a few things planned to improve upon on the viewing experience but that will come later (hopefully sooner).

Here’s a self-portrait that I shot last night in my living room for my post today. I would have photographed someone in my family, but they were all in bed already. Be kind if you’re going to comment.

I used my Canon 5D Mark II with my favorite lens, Canon’s EF 135mm f/2L. For the lighting, I used my Canon 580 EX II triggered remotely by a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 transmitter and the Flex TT5 receiver. The light was reflected using a Westcott 60″ umbrella. I just got the umbrella and the Pocket Wizards so I’m still experimenting with off camera lighting, but so far, I’m having lots of fun with it. And of course, I used the DSLR Camera Remote on my iPhone to trigger the camera.

If you have any off camera lighting suggestions or photos, please post them or links to your photos in the comments below. And be sure to check out our new photo blog at www.135f2.com. It’s named after Rick’s and my favorite lens. If you can put up with my photos every other day, you’ll be treated to some beautiful photography from Rick who is a very talented photographer.

Finally, I didn’t post anything over the recent Christmas and New Year’s holidays. I was pretty much offline during those 2 weeks, but I’d like to thank all of you who read this blog, whether you own an onOne product or not. I appreciate you reading my blog here and for participating in photo contests, comments, etc. Thank you. I hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.

First place prize is Kiboko camera backpack generously donated by Andy’s company Guru Gear. Second prize is a Trek-Tech TrekPod Go generously donated by TrekTech. Here are the winners…

First Place

Image copyright Slightly Sloppy Edges

Second Place

Image copyright Jeremy Keas

Thanks again to everybody who entered the contest. Our January contest will be starting in the next few days.

In case you haven’t already read the PDN Gear Guide from November 27th, I’m excited to share with you that our DSLR Camera Remote application for the iPhone (and the iPod Touch) was listed as the number one iPhone app for Photographers.

When we first saw onOne Software’s DSLR Camera Remote app, we thought: “Whoa.” After we got a chance to play with [it] we revised our opinion and thought: “Holy Smokes! This isn’t just cool, it’s actually useful.”

You can check out the rest of the top 10 iPhone apps for photographers at the PDN web site. I own a few of the other apps and have just purchased 2 more.

As stated before, onOne Software has nothing to do with sending these emails or the web sites that are linked to within. I’m a bit surprised (though maybe I shouldn’t be) that the spammers have pretty much ripped off the entire boilerplate copyright footer info in this email from Apple right down to their address.

Here’s what the email that I received looks like. I don’t recommend going to this web site nor clicking on any links within any emails that look like this.