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For many people just getting into digital photography, the world of photo editing can seem a tad overwhelming. Hewlett Packard offers some help in the foray through the forest of editing your precious snapshots and helping you turn them into all they can be, even if it didn’t happen exactly the way you wanted right from the camera.

The Adobe Photoshop program, a perennial favorite among many photographers is rather tried and true. It’s used by everyone from magazine layout staff and professionals to the Joe Schmoe who captured his son playing flag football at the weekend game. However, if you are first wading into the waters of photo editing...granted, the program may seem a little daunting, especially for those not familiar with any kind of editing or publishing software. 

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The recently released Photoshop Express, which is a free web-based photo editor has just added support for Flickr. With the newly added support users can now take images from their Flickr account, edit them in Photoshop Express and place the hopefully nicer images back into their Flickr photo stream for everyone to enjoy. If you are new to Photoshop Express, you can check out the recent review from our own Debbie Cook.

Via [Lifehacker]

While the image could be completely faked, it would lead us to believe that Steve Ballmer is using a MacBook to run his presentations. What’s your call? The MacBook could have simply been Photoshopped in or possibly the MacBook is just running Windows, or maybe Ballmer has finally gone crazy and jumped ship.

Image [Flickr] Via [Gizmodo]

Great news for all Photoshop Express users! After careful deliberation (I’m guessing somewhere between 2 seconds a couple thousand emails), Adobe has decided to trash the section in the Photoshop Express EULA where it says that Adobe owns any and all photos you upload, and can do whatever the heck they want with it, including using it for monetary gains. As of April 10, they say that they’re only going to claim “those limited rights that allow [them] to operate the service” and not “claim ownership of your content and won’t sell your images.” Good. I was fearing they might find a way to make money from all of the greasy mugshots I’ve uploaded to their service. God bless freedom of speech!

Via [Gizmodo]

Photoshop Express recently attracted my attention and I signed up. This was a very easy and short process. Include me in that group of digital photo snapping and sharing fanatics. Sharing photos has become the easy part - choosing where to share them is - well, not so easy. Researching the numerous photo sharing sites available on the internet is very time consuming.

Competition is rampant among these photo hosting sites. Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, Flickr, Photobucket, Shutterfly and Picasa are just a few popular drops in the bucket. I wish that there was a giant list of options that could be checked off that would lead to the perfect site for me. My requirements may not be the same as yours but here goes.

I’d rather not pay a subscription fee. Most photo sharing sites offer free albums but extra features will initiate a fee. Editing abilities and uploads to my blogs as well as other sites are huge time savers. For example, photos in Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa can be edited through Photoshop Express. Viewing options for my visitors are also important to me. Whether viewing as a private visitor or as a public viewer, slideshows and videos are fun. 

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Adobe Photoshop maybe a little late with this but still it still is Photoshop, so no matter how delayed they are in releasing the web version of the widely used image editor, it should definitely receive quite the number of users. Released as Adobe Photoshop Express, this free Rich Internet Application offers users with the basic Photoshop editing functions in a fast loading Flash-based web environment. Users are allowed to upload up to 2GB of photos for editing, touching up and sharing. Edited photos can also be uploaded or downloaded to various social networking sites such as Facebook.

For expert Photoshop users, Photoshop Express may be a letdown as it made their favorite photo editing tool to within reach of the non-technical users. The web based tool has become your ordinary, drag-and-drop, point-and-click web application. A user can quickly crop and rotate photos, remove red-eye, jazz up photos, adjust white balance, sharpen, do soft focus plus other image editing manipulations. 

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Over the years that Adobe Photoshop has had to mature into a professional product, it has gained impressive features with each new release.  The release of Photoshop CS3 is no exception.  Before I get into the details of the software, I must disclaim – I tested it on a Dell laptop with 1GB of RAM, and an 1.86 Ghz Intel Pentium M processor.  Any issues with performance that I mention may very well be due to my PC, and not the software itself.  Now that I got that out of my system, lets get the show on the road.

Panels

With the release of CS3 comes many user interface enhancements.  One of the most frequently used ones are the new Panels.  Similar to previous versions of Photoshop, Panels are the tool boxes on your screen that hold the most frequently used options and styles – such as Layers, Paths, Swatches, and Channels. 

The improvement of these tools not only is due to the content in the Panels, but also how you manage their appearance in your “workspace”.  Similar to the older Macromedia products such as Dreamweaver, you can now click the arrows in the top right of the Panel to make them minimize.  This is extremely helpful for those of us that do not have gigantic monitors, and need to get those Panels out of the way so we can work with an image.  Here are a few screenshots of the different ways you can view your Panels:

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Adobe has announced that their updated Adobe Production Studio software suite will ship mid-2007 for both Mac and PC. Part of Adobe’s Creative Suite family, the graphics, audio and video software collection will include After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, Encore DVD, Soundbooth and Dynamic Link. The applications are all meant to work seamlessly with each other, essentially creating a complete home video production “studio.” It’s a podcasting YouTubing junkie’s dream. Soundbooth, the suite’s audio app, will replace Audition in the new release but will continue to be developed as a stand-alone Windows product. The price was not indicated, though the current version of Production Studio ver. 1.0 retails for $1699, the Pro version ($649 to upgrade), and $1199 for the Standard release ($499 to upgrade). Adobe will demo the new suite at Macworld 2007.

Let’s hope it ships in time to use for projects entered in the 2007 Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ends April 27, 2007).

Press Release [Adobe] Read [Moji Blog]

Adobe released their beta version of the Photoshop CS3 software last Friday and the reviews and screenshots are already starting to trickle in. The CS3 beta includes support for Apple’s Intel-based systems in addition to PCs. Photoshop CS3 beta also includes a pre-release version of a major upgrade to Adobe Bridge, as well as a preview release of the all-new Adobe Device Central. Photoshop customers can use Adobe Device Central to design, preview, and test compelling mobile content created specifically for smaller screens. This new tool, integrated in the Photoshop CS3 beta, simplifies and accelerates the creation of mobile content through a preview environment and built-in device profiles.

For Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta, recommended system requirements are as follows. For Macintosh: Mac OSX 10.4.8 or 10.5, 1 GHz PowerPC G4 or G5 processor, Intel based Macintosh. For Windows: Intel Xeon , Xeon Dual, Centrino or Pentium 4 processor, Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, Microsoft Windows Vista. Both platforms require 512 MB RAM and a 1024x769 resolution screen.

Photoshop CS3 beta will expire soon after the launch of Photoshop CS3 in Spring 2007. Details on final pricing, system requirements
and availability have yet to be determined. The software can be downloaded at: http://labs.adobe.com

Check out more pics and see the roundup [Wired]

In a private briefing with InDesignSecrets, the Adobe revealed four features planned for the next major release of the page layout application, InDesign, which will ship in the second quarter of 2007 as part of Adobe Creative Suite 3.0 (CS3). InDesign CS3 will be a Universal Binary when it’s released, capable of running on Intel Macs. The application is already up and running as a Universal Binary, Adobe revealed in demonstrations on a MacBook Pro.

One of the new features of the application, dubbed “Object Effects,” will allow designers to apply Photoshop-like effects such as bevel, emboss and inner shadow, to any InDesign object including text. Another feature will allow transparency effects to be applied to an object’s fill, stroke, or contents on an individual basis. InDesign CS3 will also offer designers more control over the way they select and work with multiple files.

“You will be able to select more than one graphic or text file in the Place dialog box, and when you click OK, you’ll see a small thumbnail of each image next to the Place cursor,” InDesignSecrets said in its report. “You can then quickly place each image or text file into a frame with a ‘click, click, click.’ Even better, you can cycle through the images “loaded” in the Place cursor with the arrow keys before clicking.”

Read [AppleInsider]