Mike Wong is the VP of Marketing at onOne Software, located in Portland, Oregon.
For those of you moving to Leopard, please note that we are still testing our plug-ins with the final, shipping version of this new OS from Apple. For more information, you can click here to go to the onOne Software Knowledge Base.
We'll let everybody know when updates are available.
The podcast for the interview I did on Photo Talk Radio last weekend is now live. If you're interested, please visit their site and have a listen.
I just finished up with my first LIVE radio interview with Howard Lipin and Mike Garcia over at Photo Talk Radio.
In the past, internet radio interviews that I've done were always recorded and turned into podcasts, but this was my first one that was live. I'm glad I didn't tell the guys in the office or my family as I'm sure they would have called in and heckled me.
Thanks again to Howard and Mike for having me on this morning!
Recently at the Adobe CS3 Creative License tour stop in New York, I demonstrated the Magic Brush feature of Mask Pro 4 and how you can use it effectively without manually picking any keep or drop colors. Lots of people asked me to do a tutorial on this so here it is! The tutorial requires the latest version of Apple's QuickTime so be sure you have the latest and greatest version installed.
(Watch the video | 32.9 MB | 14:11)
I'm driving up the trusty (but incredibly boring, no curves, could drive it blindfolded) I-5 later today for the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit 2007 event on the Microsoft campus on July 11 & 12.
I went to the event last year and had a good time and found it very interesting to listen to many different photographers share their views on the business side of photography ranging from needing/wanting better workflows to how video might impact the still photography business. This year's agenda looks just as promising and I'm looking forward to the event.
I'm also excited because I get to show off Mask Pro's color decontamination technology during the technology showcase on July 11. But don't blink or you might miss it! I've only been given 3 minutes to present as there are 9 others who will be showing other products so it's got to be short and sweet.
I'll post a 12 minute version of the demo I'm going to do on the site later today.
We're both honored and excited to have found out recently that the onOne Plug-In Suite 3 was recently named an American Photo Editors' Choice for 2007 in the category of Top Imaging Software.
This makes two American Photo Editors' Choice awards in a row for onOne. Last year Genuine Fractals received the award!
James Dempsey over at Macworld.com did a nice write up today (or was it yesterday - why am I up so late?) about plug-in updates for the Adobe CS3 apps.
James mentions a handful of plug-ins and their CS3 savvy status for InDesign CS3, Illustrator CS3 and of course, Photoshop CS3. He also mentions the status of some font management apps including Extensis' Suitcase.
Being from onOne, I was especially happy to read James' comments on our plug-ins.
"I consider all four of OnOne’s Photoshop plug-ins to be the best on the market for what they do."
Thanks James! It's always nice to hear those kind of words. We work hard to deliver great products to users and we appreciate the mention!
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed on The Podcast Network's The Digital Photography Show (check out the podcast) with the host Scott Sherman. Scott is a great guy and very good interviewer as well. The show started off where we realized that we both had kids the same age (6 and 3) and that both of our oldest boys were finishing up Kindergarten. It's always fun talking to other parents who have kids the same age. Anyway, we talked mostly about plug-ins (what are they and why you need them) and then more specifically about Genuine Fractals, Mask Pro, PhotoFrame Pro and Intellihance Pro.
If you haven't already, you should head over to the Digital Photography Show website and check out all of their podcasts. There are lots of great interviews in the archives with people such as Scott Kelby, Kevin Kubota and Rick Sammon.
Regarding the new Quick Selection tool in Photoshop CS3, Digit Magazine out of the U.K. had this to say...
"The new Quick Selection tool enables you to create an selection area by 'painting' areas to keep and ignore, with Photoshop selecting surrounding blocks of similar colours automatically. It’s a massive improvement on the old Magic Wand, but it’s not as accurate as plug-ins such as OnOne Mask Pro or Vertus Fluid Mask - and lacks those tools fine-tuning controls for dealing with tricky areas such as hair."
Like anything else, there are always different ways to tackle the challenge of making a good selection. Sometimes the best way is with a standard Photoshop tool or technique and I agree with Digit that the new Quick Selection tool is a nice improvement over the Magic Wand - and I'm sure I'll use it from time to time - but again, every image is different and as such there are times when you'll want more control over your selection and you'll find that a plug-in like Mask Pro is better suited for your needs.
We're excited to announce that onOne Software has teamed up with Lynda.com to provide 1.5 hours of Mask Pro 4 video training available to all onOne Software users for free. That's right, free. Normally, Lynda.com charges for this type of content, but they're giving away this content to all onOne Software users. Just go to http://www.lynda.com/go/MaskPro and follow the instructions to get this content.
We feel that the best way to learn a new product is to watch a video of it in action. And the folks over at Lynda.com really know their stuff when it comes to teaching online. Be sure to check it out. If you don't have a copy of Mask Pro already, visit our downloads page and request a free 30-day demo. To add to that 30 days, onOne Software also offers a 30-day, no questions asked money back guarantee.
If you're going to be upgrading to Photoshop CS3 this Spring and are wondering what onOne Software has planned in terms of updates and compatibility and such, here's a recap of what we plan on doing and how it will affect you.
Back in December 2006 (which seems like forever ago already) we announced our plans for Photoshop CS3 compatibility which included making free (via download) updates available for PhotoFrame Pro 3, Intellihance Pro 4 and Mask Pro 4. If you are a registered user of any of those products, you should be receiving an email from us alerting you to the availability along with a download link to get the update installers. If you are not registered, you can so at our online registration page. If you don't get the email for some reason, just give us a call at 888-968-1468 and we'll get you the download links.
For Genuine Fractals, it's a little different. We announced Genuine Fractals 5 in December as well and have stated that anyone who purchases Genuine Fractals 4.1 (standard or Print Pro) as a new purchase or as an upgrade, will get Genuine Fractals 5.0 for free via download when it ships this Spring. Upgrade pricing will be available for those who do not qualify for the free upgrade.
For those of you participating in the Photoshop CS3 public beta, you can download beta versions of Genuine Fractals 5, Mask Pro 4.1 and PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 to use. Please note Mask Pro 4.1 and PhotoFrame Pro 3.1 will require that you have full versions (not demo versions) of Mask Pro 4.0 and PhotoFrame Pro 3.0 installed already. The Genuine Fractals 5 beta does not have this same requirement but does have a timeout date.
This is a few days late (last week was pretty busy) but I wanted to post a quick note that we posted the first beta of Mask Pro 4.1 for Adobe Photoshop CS3 last week on our labs site.
This new version (which, by the way is free to all existing, registered owners of Mask Pro 4.0) adds native support for Photoshop CS3 (it is a Universal Binary for Mac OS X) as well as 16-bit support. We've been asked for 16-bit support for a while now, so we're happy to be offering this to Mask Pro 4 users at no charge.
Go to the onOne Software labs site now and download your copy today. Again, you must have a licensed copy of Mask Pro 4.0 installed in order for the beta to run.
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!
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.
