Adobe has launched the public beta version of Photoshop CS6, which features a completely redesigned user interface along with new saving features (auto and background), new content-aware features (move and patch), new blur filters, an updated Adobe Camera RAW, and improved video editing capability. There’s a 62% increase in features, with 65 of them inspired by user feedback. ACR 7 also features the same new engine found in Lightroom 4 that improves the performance of sliders.
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Beta testers still have until the end of the month to play around with the program, but Adobe has now officially launched Lightroom 4 to the general public. The program features an improved develop module, a new map module, book creation, new video features, and space saving lossy compression for DNG files. It’s also significantly cheaper than prior versions: the full program costs just $149, while the upgrade costs $79.

Adobe Lightroom 4 (via PhotoWalkPro)

After announcing its impending arrival last year, Adobe today officially launched Photoshop Touch for the iPad and Android-powered tablets. The app offers many of Photoshop’s core tools:

Use Photoshop features designed for the tablet such as layers, selection tools, adjustments, and filters to create mind-blowing images. Use new Scribble Select to easily keep and remove elements of an image.

It’s priced at $10 and is available from the iTunes App Store and the Android Market.
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Here’s a tutorial on how to do non-automated HDR for real estate photography using Photoshop CS5. The first thing you’ll need is a sturdy tripod with a level. The closer you are to a leveled image, the less correction you’ll have to do later.
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To keep itself lean and focused, Google is planning to do some spring cleaning and shut down a number of non-critical projects and services that don’t attract enough attention to keep alive. One of the services marked for termination is Picnik, the online photo editor that Google acquired back in 2010. The service will remain online until April 19, after which the team will be folded into the Google+ team.

(via Engadget)

There are plenty of presets out there that attempt to make your digital images look like they were shot with film, but VSCO Film by Visual Supply Co is different: it’s a Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW add-on that uses film profiles to change how the RAW files are interpreted rather than simply perform standard adjustments on the images. The video introduction above shows some examples of what the various options can do. This patent-pending method of film emulation doesn’t come cheap — it costs $120 each for Canon or Nikon profiles, and $200 for both.

VSCO Film (via Jeremy Cowart via John Nack via Wired)

Adobe released a beta version of Lightroom 4 today. New features include support for location data through a map module, book making through Blurb, new video features, new shadow/highlight controls, simplified basic adjustments, new local adjustments, and space saving lossy compression for DNG files. You can find a complete list of changes here. You can downloaded the program for free and use it until the beta version expires on March 31st, 2012.

Photoshop Lightroom 4 Beta [Adobe]

The 4th version of Android, named Ice Cream Sandwich, is set to be released sometime in the next month or so. If you’ve been craving for a built-in photo editor, you may soon get your wish. Android Police has uncovered a boatload of icons and images that strongly suggest that future Android phones and tablets will ship with photo editing tools built into Android Gallery. In addition to basic tools such as crop, sharpen, and rotate, there will apparently be 19 different photo effects you can apply as well. Sadly, they’re of the cheesier variety (e.g. posterize), so don’t expect them to compete with the likes of Instagram anytime soon.

(via Android Police via Engadget)

Photographer Zack Arias has written up a lengthy and insightful post detailing how he goes about updating and editing his portfolio:

Here begins the process of lining up your children and, ummmm, figuring out which ones you love more than the others. This begins the painful process. It’s painful to not only choose but if you are a true creative this is the part where your self doubt, anxiety, and loathing start to show up. You come back to your BIG edit and it all sucks.

The images that you want to shoot are not in this folder. They are still out in the world waiting for you to capture them. As you start to go through 1,000+ of your “best” images they all begin to suck. You want to trash them all and just go shoot a new book. Well sorry Charlie, you can’t do that. You can’t go shoot a new book. Those elusive images are just that… elusive. You have to harden yourself during this process and realize that you are building a body of work with what you have to work with. If you ever say “I’ll just do this when my work is ready” then you will never do it. That kept me from this process for a long time. Kick the demons out of your head and get to work.

Arias recommends that you should go through this process at least twice a year, as it will show you holes in your body of work that you can then go out and fill.

Editing Your Portfolio [Zack Arias]

Adobe has announced a new Android app called Photoshop Touch for tablet owners. Rather than provide a full suite of image editing features, the app appears to be more geared towards minor edits, effects, and sharing. It’ll be released in the near future for Android at a price of $10, and an iOS version is on the way as well.
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