A few moments ago, Adobe announced the shipping of Lightroom 2.

Adobe has announced the shipping of Lightroom 2! It’s $299 for first time buyers, or a $99 upgrade for current Lightroom users. Lightroom 2 was in public beta for several months. This allowed users to kick the tires a bit and offer suggestions to Adobe. Now that Lightroom 2 has matured and headed out into the big cruel world, lets see if it can survive in the wild. Actually, it does more than survive, it kicks a** and takes names! Quite a few changes have happened since it was in public beta.
Oh yeah, I know what your about to ask, and yet, it updates all your Lightroom 1 Catalogs so you can get up and running without having to recreate your library. Now that’s out of the way…

Check out the PhotoshopCAFE learning Site, for a list of new features, review and free videos

The searchable list of all Starbucks store closures has been posted

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/18/starbucks-closure-list-al_n_113646.html

looks like I am losing a few in my area

Once you have merged to HDR only half the work is done. The magic happens with Tone-Mapping. Lern how to use Photomatix Tone Mapping and Photoshop’s tools together for the best results.

See the video on AdobeTV

So the iPhone 3G and 2.0 software came out yesterday, with a bit of a hitch. Both itunes and ATT Activation servers went down. Welcome to the new brick! When I didi get the 2.0 update, I gotta say, it’s cool. How cool? Cool enough.

At this point I see no point in upgrading to 3G iPhone, too disappointing feature set, I get what? Faster internet? big deal.. I want vid camera, an 8 mp camera, video chat, Flash support, Multimedia MSM and a card slot.

Instinct has live TV and Radio. Common apple, this isn’t the computer industry where you can crawl out new features, if you don’t move faster your gonna get your a** whooped. 

When you go to a bakery, it’s impossible for you to eat all the goodies under the counter. Instead you have to make a choice. When you choose your tasty crème pie, you have just made a selection. Out of all the tasty morsels, you have selected the crème pie.

When you are working in Photoshop, there are many times when you want to do something to a portion of an image. Not every adjustment or filter should be applied to the entire image. Imagine a picture of a woman and you want to make her lips redder. Without selections, her eyes would also glow red like a demon. Perhaps you want to move a small portion of an image around the page. Once again, selections are the way to do that.

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Typography is considered as an art form in itself. People have spent their entire lives in the study and art of typography. If you think this is new? Remember that the Romans created the Romanized fonts that we use today over 2,000 years ago. The Chinese and Middle Eastern cultures have been designing with type for Thousands of years. Don’t forget the Egyptians and their beautiful and intricate hieroglyphics.

Think about this before slapping down bright pink type in comic sans or some other font that should be outlawed. Beautifully set type can add so much elegance or impact to a piece of work. On the other hand, poorly set type can ruin an otherwise outstanding piece of art. Photoshop has the tools to help you create distinguished and elegant type.

Type is not only about elegance, its also about communicating a message. Good typographic rules are important. Is this store giving away grills or covers? As it turns out it’s only covers, but the typography is misleading.

I found this at my local Albertsons store.

The new iPhone 3G announced. Available July 11 2008.

Biggest features? Fast 3G speed. Price drop! 8 GB for $199 and 16 Gb for $299.

Built in GPS, exchange server with push email and calendar. 3rd Party Apps. Apparently it has a black plastic back and a flush headphone jack so you can now use any headphones with it. Battery life is marginally better, but will be worse on 3G. Oh yeah, the 16 Gb model also comes in white. (Now you can pimp your iPhone)

There you have it in a nutshell (just went live on apple.com)

Monday will tell for sure. Steve Jobs is expected to make announcements during his keynote at WWDC. I sure hope that Flash is included. This will be a nice step forward for Flash developers and for users. One example is youtube. Currently some of the youtube content is repurposed for viewing on the iphone, but most of the flash based content can’t be viewed on the iPhone.

Here is a little info that has leaked…

“Clues to Apple’s next steps can be found in a recently unearthed U.S. patent filing attributed to Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs. If the filing is any guide, Apple’s going to end its stalemate with Adobe System Inc. (ADBE), and forge a deal with Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) so it can sell its iPhone in many more countries, to name just two of Apple’s potential next steps.”

“Just how will Apple meet expectations? Using the patent application as a guide, Apple appears to be making room on the iPhone for flash memory, which means an end to Apple’s standoff with Adobe (ADBE) that’s kept iPhones from easily viewing a plethora of Internet videos.

Apple has said that Adobe’s flash media player, which is on hundreds of other phones, doesn’t perform up to Apple’s standards for the iPhone.”

(Quotes from By Ben Charny, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-8230; ben.charny@dowjones.com)

Some really cool ideas and designs here

I’m proud to announce that PhotoshopCAFE now has it’s own channel on Adobe TV.

We will be adding new content on a regular basis. Look for this to expand into a full podcast with live footage and all that, when I find the time.

Check out the first episode