Adobe has released its newest versions of its industry standard software, CS6. To everyone’s disappointment, or at least mine, Adobe Edge is still not a finalized product included in their Creative Suite. Although they have released a great solution called Creative Cloud, a subscription service offering access to all CS6 applications as well as other cloud services. This facilitates the integration of desktop Adobe software with the company’s growing staple of tablet and smartphone applications.Creative Cloud is priced at $49.99 per month for an annual membership, or $74.99 per month on a month-to-month basis. The service is also being offered at a special introductory rate of $29.99 per month for current users of Adobe’s CS3, CS4, CS5, and CS5.5 software. This service can save you a lot of money and time if you use these programs on a daily basis. An annual membership over the span of three years will have paid for an entire Adobe Creative Suite, and we all know it stinks to buy a $3500 program that is upgraded within a year. Having access to all Adobe programs across multiple platforms, and getting automatic updates for all of your Adobe programs as they come out is a win-win situation for me.
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201204/042312AdobeCreativeCloud.html

By:Clint Smith

Source: Skynet Solutions

I can remember, when I was a kid, going to my local library and bookstore to get the latest printed BBS listings for my area. In my opinion, Bulletin Board Systems were the beginning of the internet for the general public. I had a 386 or 486 running at a blazing speed of 33MHz with a connection speed of 2400 baud. Excalibur, AOL, and other similar sharing sites came up soon before the dot-com era boomed.

Everything has been fairly steady in the internet world until people and companies started trying to beat everyone to the punch with new browsers and languages. But what has really started a tear in the interweb’s fabric is the premature use and implementation of HTML5.

As it stands now, HTML5 is not a standard, and it is not “supported,” however you still find big names boasting about their compatibility with this non-standardized language. Every big name in the tech field has their own internet browser, and they are using this to their disguised advantage to make the user feel as if they are ahead of the curve. It ends up being a finger pointing contest to what company or browser fails to be the best at something, but all we really want is across the board functionality for all devices.

Who originally proposed the start and development of HTML5? I bet you wouldn’t guess it started with one of the least used browsers, Opera from Opera Software. Since then every big boy on the playground has stripped it from their grips and is claiming it as their own, but there is a catch: you have to use their browser because the language is developed in a proprietary way that only allows viewing with their software. So where is this going? Advertising? Control? Web content monitoring? You can decide for yourself.

Currently there is no date on the final standardized release of HTML5 according to World Wide Web Consortium. There are plenty of supported APIs between browsers, but in the end, this early adoption HTML5 is causing big confusion for people everywhere around the world.

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Clint Smith

This past week, I attended a couple of webinars put on by Topaz Labs that featured some of their plug-in software for Adobe Photoshop.

The first webinar was hosted by Nichole Paschal, a Topaz representative, and it featured B&W effect plug-in and Adjust. Topaz Adjust allows you to make Pseudo HDR pictures without having to compile several different exposures into one. Once installed, the plug-in is easy to jump into and use in your normal work flow for photography. The interface is fairly easy to grasp with multiple presets and many sections with individual sliders. Watching someone’s work flow can be informative because there is always more than one way to do something in Adobe Photoshop, and you can benefit from knowing more about how to use Adobe Photoshop. I have already been introduced to Topaz Adjust about a year ago, and so far, it has been a great Adobe Photoshop plug-in.

The second webinar was hosted by an established photographer, Joel Wolfson. He demonstrated a new plug-in for Topaz called Star Effects. This plug-in allowed Joel to amplify lighting effects with ease. As I mentioned before, watching someone’s work flow can be more informative than expected. I watched Joel copy a layer mask to another layer and invert it with some hotkey movements that I had previously been unaware of.

The webinars are only an hour and are well worth it, especially when the event is free! They also have software giveaways for random people in the webinar, and everyone gets a discount code! Check out the Topaz Labs site for more information about their products, or check out their YouTube channel to re-watch a previous webinar.

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Clint Smith