The cat’s out of the bag. “CS-Next” is now officially CS4. I woke up a bit earlier than normal this morning so that I could watch Adobe’s premiere webcast on East Coast time. If you attended the keynote at Photoshop World in Vegas earlier this month, you saw the entire Photoshop presentation that was made on this morning’s webcast. It was exactly the same. Kudos to NAPP for talking Adobe into giving the NAPP-Hardcore a sneak peak.

The bottom line with the official launch webcast is that it’s impossible to go into any depth on a family of 13 different programs and wrap things up in 60 minutes. If you really want to learn about what’s coming in CS4, check out these sites. [Read more →]

Adobe has announced that they will announce the newest generation of their Creative Suite software on September 23rd. If you’d like to be the first on your block to watch the Adobe CS4 webcast, click here to sign up.

JP Caponigro attended the recent Photoshop World keynote and provides a sneak preview about the future of Photoshop CS4 here.

The dates for the upcoming 2008/09 tour of the Epson Print Academy are now online. The 16-city tour starts in Atlanta on November 8. No specifics about pricing or curriculum have been released. Click here for the event calendar. I expect that more details will be released by the end of the month.

The last tour, held in 2006, offered two tracks at each venue –- one for amateurs and one for professionals. I attended the pro track in San Francisco and met Bruce Fraser, JP Caponigro, Greg Gorman, Jeff Schewe and Mac Holbert. I expect that the instructors on the new tour will be equally stellar.

I always look forward to the Epson Print Academy as a way to catch up the latest techniques. Even though I drive my Epson 3800 with a high-degree of confidence, I’m looking forward to attending the pro track in San Francisco next February. With the recent release of Lightroom 2 and the upcoming announcement of Photoshop CS4, I highly recommend the event regardless of your printer make and skill level.

Adobe has started shipping the 2nd generation of Lightroom (officially “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2″). I’ll say it up front, “I love Lightroom.” As a commercial shooter, Lightroom has become the backbone of my post-capture workflow. In my studio, Photoshop now handles only those things that Lightroom cannot do… which is much less now that Lightroom can handle many localized corrections.

Is Lightroom 2 perfect? No. Is it the best software around for one-stop handling of ingestion, DNG conversion, keywording, metatagging, sorting, ranking, RAW processing, exporting in multiple formats, creating slideshows and web galleries? Definitely yes. [Read more →]

If you could be a fly on the wall and listen in on intimate conversations with Jay Maisel, Pete Turner, Jerry Uelsmann or Richard Benson, would you be interested? Then tune in to George Jardine’s podcasts published under the boring title “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom”. One of the great windfall’s of Adobe’s efforts to promote Lightroom is that George, as Adobe’s Pro Evangelist, has traveled the country and published dozens of his conversations with pro shooters – both iconic and not-so-iconic. [July 1 Update: George bids farewell to his friends at Adobe. Read the post on his blog here.]

You’ll hear photographers talk about their work, the ups and downs of their careers and where they think photography is headed. The podcasts are free. Many are enhanced podcasts with photos of the interview and/or the photographer’s work. [Read more →]