Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Welcome to the Adobe® Photoshop® Camera Raw 5.4 plug-in release candidate on Adobe Labs. The Camera Raw plug-in provides easy access within Photoshop to the raw image formats produced by many leading professional and midrange digital cameras. The ‘release candidate' label indicates that the plug-in is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers. The Camera Raw team would like the community to help verify the quality of the plug-in through normal usage as this will ensure that the plug-in is tested on a diversity of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe."

Newly supported cameras in this release are: Canon EOS 500D (EOS Rebel T1i), Epson R-D1x, Hasselblad CF-22, CF-22MS, CF-39, CF-39MS, CFH-22, CFH-39, CFV, 503CWD, H2D-22, H2D-39, H3D-22, H3D-31, H3D-39, H3DII-22, H3DII-31, H3DII-39, H3DII-39MS, H3DII-50, Kodak EasyShare Z980, Nikon D5000, Olympus E-450, Olympus E-620, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1, and the Sigma DP2. If you've got one of those cameras, and you've been itching to use ACR with the raw files, here's your chance.

Photoshop Elements is a surprisingly powerful and capable package - I've been using it for years, going back several versions, and for the kind of work I tend to do with photos, it's more than enough. I think a lot of people have bought into the hype that Photoshop CS is the "only" software you should use if you're at all serious about photography, and I think that's incorrect. At any rate, getting Photoshop Elements 7 for $59.99 USD (40% off the normal price) is a great deal - it easily out-does every other product I've tested in the sub-$100 price range. The new version, which I'm working on a review of, has a lot to offer.

Product Category: Photo editing software

Manufacturer: Adobe

Where to Buy: Amazon.com [Affiliate]

Price: $265.99 USD ($99 upgrade from Lightroom 1.0 direct from Adobe)

System Requirements: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista (32-bit or 64-bit) or OS X 10.4/10.5. 1 GB RAM, 1 GB hard drive space...but if you have a computer with those specs, you probably shouldn't be shooting in raw. Figure on 2+ GB of RAM and a 2+ Ghz dual-core CPU for decent performance.

Pros:

• Great quality raw photo conversions using Adobe Camera Raw;
• Fast software that scales to multi-core systems beautifully;
• Clearly designed for photography professionals in a hurry;
• Impressive depth of tools for correction, adjusting, printing, and sharing online.

Cons:

• Lack of HDR functionality; no duplicate filtering
• Needs a fast CPU and plenty of RAM to really sing;
• No automatic lens barrel distortion correction like DxO Optics Pro offers.

Summary: Lightroom is a photo processing software package aimed at professional and prosumer users. More specifically, it's raw photo processing software. If you don't have a camera that can shoot in raw format, or you're only shooting in JPEG, this isn't the software for you. If you're a photographer who shoots in raw format and are looking for software that will help you develop, edit, process, sort, rank, and export your images, this is among the best software on the market for those tasks and well-worth the asking price. Read more...

"Adobe® Photoshop.com Mobile is the easiest way to upload, view, and share your photos online from your phone. All you need is a supported Windows Mobile phone and your Photoshop.com account ID. Photoshop.com Mobile beta will be available as a free download in September."

Adobe claims that Photoshop.com Mobile will only support the MOTO Q, Blackjack, and Treo 700/750 series, although we're willing to bet most other Windows Mobile devices will handle it just fine as long as Flash is installed. At any rate, we'll let you know the moment it's available.

"Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the Open Screen Project, supported by a group of industry leaders, including ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless. The project is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Also supporting the Open Screen Project are leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to reliably deliver rich Web and video experiences live and on-demand across a variety of devices. The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment -- taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ -- that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and devices, including phones, mobile Internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by enabling the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment is intended to provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers."



Adobe, in a typical long-winded manner, recently announced the opening up of Flash in an attempt to enable consistency in content delivery across a wide range of devices, including set top boxes and mobile phones. In what is most likely a response to Silverlight and HTML 5, the industry initiative sees the removal of restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV/F4V, the removal of licensing fees, and the publishing of multiple APIs and protocols. Definitely a step forward. Any developers and designers care to weigh in with their thoughts?