Columbus seminar & Adobe announcement

I just realized that I'm teaching the Maximum Tour in Columbus, OH on the same day that Adobe makes their announcement of Creative Suite 5 and Photoshop CS5. Hmmmmmm

Might be a reason to come to that seminar on April 12th. I'm just saying....

Ask Dave Podcast

Seems like just the other day that I launched my weekly podcast, Ask Dave, but episode number 9 went up this past Monday.
Remember, if you have a short Photoshop question you'd like me to answer, you can send me the question via Twitter (@davecross) or by using the comments at kelbytv.com

I hope you are - or will become - a regular viewer of Ask Dave.

Bits 'n pieces

After a week with little blogging at Photoshop World, here's a few bits and pieces to start off this week...

Last week I was featured on Terry White's Blog, in his weekly Tech Profile. Check it out.
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One of the big announcements at Photoshop World was the announcement by Adobe of when they would announce CS5: April 12th. Be sure to check back on that date for all the details! Interesting concept: announce when you're going to make an announcement ;)

And take a look at this YouTube channel for a sneak peek or two.

[EDIT] Another sneak peek, this time from the PSW Keynote, featuring Katrin Eismann. here
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To view some photos from Photoshop World,check out the Attendee Flickr Group and the Photoshop World gallery
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Oh yeah, Adobe released another public beta for something called Lightroom ;)
You can find all kinds of details, links etc at Tom Hogarty's blog.
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Finally, my sincere thanks for those people who took part in my first Head Shots for Charity fund raiser, donating money for me to take their head shot. Thanks to my friends at Wescott for the use of their lights (and assistance) and photoflashdrive.com for donating thumb drives, I was able to raise close to $500 for St Judes Children's Hospital. Look for this to be bigger and better at Photoshop World Las Vegas,

Photoshop World Phun

Follow the Photoshop World Keynote live today (starting at 9 am EST) here

A Flickr group with some crazy/silly/fun photos from the "photo booth" at the Tweetup last night.

Streaming video from Photoshop World

During Photoshop World, when I get a chance, I'm going to try streaming some video from my iPhone, using Ustream. If you follow me on Twitter and see a tweet that looks like this:

@davecross Hey! I'm live on Ustream from my iPhone - http://ustre.am/3Jr8

Click on the link to watch the video. Keep your fingers crossed that it will work!

Not going to PSW?

You could always create your own personal Expo by checking out the web sites of some of the companies exhibiting at Photoshop World, and some of their specials:

Adorama

Artistic Photo Canvas

Rebates at B&H Photo!

Adobe Special Offers

New Corel Painter 11 + New Wacom Intuos4 Pen Tablet

iCLIPART.com.

mpix (check their blog for specials)

OnOne Software (save $200 through March 25th)

Wescott ($500 in free product with Strobelite kit)

Only a few more days...

Today is my last day of office work before heading off to Orlando and the fun craziness really really hard work of Photoshop World. For anyone who's not gone to a Photoshop World, it really is a combination of fun, excitement, exhaustion and education. You meet lots of new people, see a few old friends and learn a ton about Photoshop. It takes a huge amount of effort to go to that many classes, walk the Expo floor and squeeze in a few social events, but boy, is it worth it!

I look forward to saying hi to those of you coming to Orlando, and you know what? It's not too early to start thinking about Photoshop World in Las Vegas, Sept 1 - 3, 2010!

In case you missed it, here's my previous post about planning for PSW.

I feel sorry for Illustrator

A few weeks ago we were in San Francisco to celebrate the 20th aniversary of Photoshop. It was a pretty big deal, featuring a bunch of well-known folks talking about the birth of Photoshop. Heck, there is even a web site dedicated to the 20 years of Photoshop.

Meanwhile, poor old Adobe Illustrator turned 20 three years ago, with barely a wimper of recognition. Looking back now, the only thing I could find was this cool video on John Nack's blog - it came with Illustrator in 1987. I feel badly, since I didn't really do anything to recognize this important occasion myself, especially since it was Illustrator in 1987 that really got me started in teaching.

Anyways, happily belated anniversary to Adobe Illustrator - you're 23 years old, and as great as ever!

Being a student

A few weeks ago I decided to be a student and watch Scott Kelby's online class, Light it, Shoot it, Retouch it. My goal was to watch Scott's instruction and then try to get the same (or similar) results myself.

After watching the lighting set-up, getting some helpful camera tips and making some notes, I went into the studio and took my own shots.

In my usual fashion of showing the after photo first, here's the "finished" photo after 15 minutes of retouching (a few blemishes removed, lessening dark areas under her eyes and whitening the eyes).


Here is the "as shot" photo, thanks to Scott's easy-to-follow instruction.


I'm very pleased with the results of my first attempt at learning a new technique, thanks to Scott and Kelby Training.

Free software from OnOne

onOne Software, Inc. has announced the immediate availability of two fully-functional Photoshop plug-ins: PhotoTools 2.5 Free and the new PhotoFrame 4.5 Free. The free plug-ins for Photoshop are based on the award winning versions of PhotoTools 2.5 Standard Edition and PhotoFrame 4.5 Standard Edition and are compatible with Photoshop CS2, CS3 and CS4.

PhotoTools 2.5 Free and PhotoFrame 4.5 Free provide photographers with select content from the Standard Editions of each product, while maintaining the full-functionality, unlike the traditional restrictions of 30 day timed trials or watermarked images. The free presets for Lightroom 2, Adobe Camera Raw and the onOne Exchange allow photographers to streamline their workflow and get the most out of the onOne products they already own. The new onOne University underscores onOne's commitment to helping customers get the most out of their software investment by providing over 100 free training videos with even more training content planned.

PhotoTools 2.5 Free, PhotoFrame 4.5 Free, Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw Presets are available immediately at no cost as downloads from onOne Software. The onOne Exchange is available at www.ononeexchange.com and onOne University is available at www.ononesoftware.com/university

Impressions of WPPI

Yesterday the WPPI conference wrapped up in Vegas. This was the second time I had visited the trade show, although the first time was a couple of years ago when it was at a different (less efficient) venue. Here's a few of my thoughts about the trade show and the event, although I did not attend any classes so I can't comment on those.

If you're a wedding or portrait photographer there's no question that this is the event aimed at you. All the top names in that industry were there, speaking both at booths in the trade show and in classes. The atmosphere seemed to be very high energy, and let me tell you, these people know how to party! It seemed like there were always several sponsored parties to attend. I heard a lot of people discussing how little sleep they were getting.

It was also interesting to note the younger average age and the high percentage of women compared to a show such as Photo Plus.

I spoke at the mpixpro booth a couple of times and once at OnOne Software, and it was great to meet many NAPP members and viewers of Photoshop User TV. Of course, as always I was asked one of two questions quite a few times: "where's your Canada shirt?", or "where's Scott and Matt?".

One of the more interesting moments was when I dropped by the Colorati booth to chat with owner Leon Sandoval. Leon is a long-time NAPP member and I remember him talking on the NAPP forums a few years ago about launching his business. (Colorati provides post-production services for photographers). Leon told me that he gives full credit to NAPP and what he learned as a member for being ready to start his own business. It was great to hear a success story like his.

As I walked around I couldn't believe how many booths were selling albums and photo books. There seemed to be so many... just now I checked on the WPPI page and there were 38 of them! I can't help but wonder how all of those companies stay in business, particularly since there seemed to be a lot of the same album products over and over again. I guess photographers pick their favorites and there - somehow - is enough business to go around.

Several NAPP members came up to me and said that they thought that Photoshop World was much better organized and run than WPPI. That was very gratifying since we don't hire a convention company to run PSW, we do it all ourselves.

They sure don't waste a square inch of advertising space at WPPI. Everywhere you walked there were lit up sponsors signs, signs on the windows in the hotel hallways, signs up the escalators, and even in the food court. It was a little overwhelming at times.

Here's a couple of products that I picked up that I'll be taking a look at (after Photoshop World)

Action Runner
A very interesting app that puts a great inerface on Actions. It takes whatever Actions you have, purchased or home-made, and makes it very easy to set up batches with specific images and multiple actions. Can't wait to try it.

QuiKeys
An interesting hardware keypad to help you fly through editing in Photoshop and Lightroom. For a keyboard shortcut junkie like me, this looks very interesting.

There are a few more things that are buried in the depths of my briefcase, but eventually I'll find and talk about those too.

Now it's off to Minneapolis for the Maximum Photoshop Tour tomorrow. Bye bye Vegas, until Photoshop World in September....

There's still time!

Yes there's till time to attend Photoshop World in Orlando, AND to come to the pre-conference session that Corey Baker and I are teaching.

Here's a quick overview on youtube of our session

(you gotta love the stills that youtube chooses, huh?)

My quickie interview an mpixpro

Today I'll be speaking at the mpixpro booth at WPPI.

Here's a quick interview I did for their blog

Presentationitis

It's thankfully a rare affliction, but over the years, I've heard of many cases. For speakers and presenters, Presentationitis is a terrible condition that could be described this way: you test your microphones, projector, software and hardware - probably multiple times - and then right before the presentation (seminar or class) is about to start something goes wrong. It's happened to me a few times, it's happened to Scott Kelby, and I'm sure it's happened to many other speakers.

Last Friday in LA I had another case. Two hours before the seminar we were testing audio and it was great. Then we turned a microphone back on and had a buzz that just would not go away. We changed mics, batteries, cables, you name it and still no fix. So the decision was made to bring in a different sound system. Cool - at least we discovered this before the day started.

Then we tested my laptop, connected it to the projector... all good. I'm such a worry wart that I even disconnected and reconnected several times to make sure it worked fine each time. In part I did this because of a rare but known problem that can occur when you have a Wacom tablet connected and then connect to a projector. After multiple tests, everything was a go.

Fast forward to moments before the seminar was to begin and we switched the cable from one laptop to mine and...nothing. Black screen with no sign of life. The laptop did not refresh, the video connection was not made, nothing. Disconnect the tablet? Nothing. Force a restart? Nothing. Panic a little? Yes. After several minutes of trying everything and imploring my laptop to work, it finally did, Phew. Except for one thing: when I moved my pen on the tablet, it jumped around the screen like crazy. Oh, my tablet isn't configured probably - no problem, I'll just pop into the settings and fix it. Nope.

So, I taught the first two classes using the trackpad on my laptop. Now, I'm pretty good with my trackpad, but it was definitely a challenge. Hopefully, it was not obvious to the class (I only mentioned my problem after I fixed it at lunch time).

Why am I telling you all this? So that the next time you're watching a presenter struggle with some kind of technical difficulty, you'll realize that they probably tested everything, but were hit with a sudden unexpected case of Presentationitis.

(Thanks to all the wonderful people who came to my seminar Friday - I had a blast, despite the glitches)

[EDIT: Here's a quick summary and some great pics from Alan Hess. Thanks Alan!]

Questions from Twitter

I'm getting lots of questions via Twitter and Kelby TV for my weekly podcast, Ask Dave. However, some aren't really suitable for a video answer, so here are a few answers.....

jefersonbalves @davecross whats the configuration of your notebook dave (mac)? please tell me? thanks

A: I have an off-the-shelf MacBook Pro.2,8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHZ DDRR# (According to "About this Mac")

nauzer67 @davecross Is there anyway to organize fonts into groups in the picker(grunge, script,etc.)

A: Probably, if you use some kind of font managment utility. Since fonts are an operating system function, Photoshop has no control over that. There are quite a few options out there, and I'm afraid that I have no recommendation since I don't use one :)

Jan Jílek Hi, this might be a hard question. When I go into Lens Correction Filter a grid is over my screen and I have to turn it off. Is there any way how to make this setting permanent? Like I'l go under Lens Correction and the grid will be turned off? Thanks

A: There is a workaround that involves changing one small thing in Lens Correction (such as changing the Vignette midpoint to 49), turning off the grid and saving a preset. Then when you open Lens Correction choose your preset. If I could give you a cryptic answer, I would say, "wait for it" ;)

Houston Brown - Dave, I know you can close all files in photoshop by selecting Alt-Ctrl-W but how do you close them all and prevent the "Do you want to save" dialog box coming up for each one. Many thanks, Houston Brown

A: Again, I would say...not at the moment :)

New Cintiq from Wacom

Hot on the heels of their wireless Intuos tablet comes this announcement:

[PRESS RELEASE]
Today, Wacom® introduces the much anticipated Cintiq®21UX, its newly-redesigned interactive pen display delivering
state-of-the-art pen performance and innovative ergonomics in a color-accurate LCD display. Designed specifically to meet the demanding needs of professional photographers, designers, artists and animators, the new Cintiq 21UX offers unparalleled creative control, comfort and productivity.

The Cintiq 21UX experience starts with its amazing new pen performance, capable of capturing the slightest nuance of pen pressure against the LCD surface, as well as offering 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity. Other innovative enhancements include rear-mounted Touch Strips that are ideally placed for fingertip access while working. Each Touch Strip has an accompanying thumb-controlled Touch Strip Toggle button that controls up to four different user-assigned functions per application such as zoom, scroll, brush size adjustment and canvas rotation. In addition, the overall design has been refined and updated in an all-black color scheme, providing a sophisticated and handsome look.

The new Cintiq 21UX (DTK-2100) priced at $1999 USD is intended to begin shipping in the United States, Canada and the majority of Latin America countries in late March or early April. It will be available in Argentina, Brazil and Chile in early summer due to certification requirements in those countries. Consult your local electronics retailer or visit www.wacom.com for the most current information.

Going to WPPI

I'm heading to Las Vegas next week for the WPPI convention & trade show, where I'll be speaking at the mpixpro booth.



This week I travel to Los Angeles this Friday to teach the Down & Dirty Tour.