Google+ Photographer’s Conference

Designed to help you further develop your Google+ networking abilities and refine your photography talents, this this history-making conference will be powered by Google's Hangout (web conferencing) technology and the G+ platform to offer a collaborative mix of photography, social media, branding and networking sessions that will teach you how take full advantage of what's happening now and what’s to come on Google+. The informative sessions will be taught by the best Google+ photographers, top photography instructors and some of the geniuses of social media. This is the first ever Google+ Photographer’s Conference on May 22-23, 2012 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended Finalized

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced Adobe® Photoshop® CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended software, major releases of the undisputed standard for professional digital imaging. Packed with new features and enhancements, the software includes groundbreaking innovations and unparalleled performance breakthroughs that expand the frontiers of imaging science, and deliver new levels of creativity and increased efficiency. Photoshop CS6 Extended integrates the state-of-the-art editing, compositing, and graphic design capabilities of Photoshop CS6, as well as advanced tools for 3D design*, image and video editing, and quantitative analysis which address the unique needs of the graphic design, video, Web, architecture, medical, manufacturing and engineering industries.

Photoshop CS6 features include:

• Content-Aware Patch – Allows greater control by letting users choose the sample area used to create a patch.
• Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine – Takes advantage of the graphics processing unit in modern hardware to speed up imaging and editing tasks, and process large images faster.
• New and Re-engineered Design Tools – Type styles enable consistent formatting; vector layers apply strokes and add gradients to vector objects; custom strokes and dashed lines are easily created; quick layers search and more.
• Intuitive Video Creation – The full range of familiar Photoshop tools and an intuitive set of new video tools to create and enhance any video clip.
• Blur Gallery – A simple new interface with on-image and in-context controls allows users to quickly create photographic blur effects including tilt-shift effects, blur everything with one focal point, or vary the blurriness between multiple focal points.

Photoshop CS6 Extended includes all Photoshop CS6 features and:

• Mercury Graphics Engine for 3D – Increased power and speed via engine optimized for 3D imaging.
• New 3D Controls – UI improvements for more efficient 3D workflows.
• New 3D Effects – Reflections and “drag-able” shadows to enhance images.

Source: Canon Rumors

Picnik still open ?

Recently I had written that the well known online photo editing tool Picnik’s last day would be 19th of April 2012 [Link here]. It’s 20th today and almost end of the day -- I see that the website is still open and you can still upload your photo and edit it. Google had acquired Picnik back in early 2010 [Link here] and they have now decided to close Picknik. You don’t have to be disappointed  as Picnik will now be available in Google plus as “Creative Kit” and you can still use the same features that you were using before. Recently, after the announcement of closure, Picnik had made all it’s premium features free of cost. You can still try uploading your photos and start editing it. The time is up and you never know when the site will be down. 

Update: Picnik is no more. RIP :(

National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography

The National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography spells out the basics of fine photography—whether you are using a digital SLR or a film camera—as well as more advanced techniques for the amateur photographer. From the top twelve color moves to creative gift ideas to quality camera phone photography, this guide will not only inspire you but also arm you with the practical know-how to get great images. It is the indispensable reference for photographers everywhere. Straightforward and entertaining, this is the ultimate source for people seeking real how-to advice from the editors and photographers of National Geographic. It is carefully designed to lead the amateur photographer to better pictures and is comprehensive in scope, explaining the entire process from choosing a camera to taking the pictures to printing, scanning, and archiving the images.

You can view and purchase it here:

National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography from Flipkart.com

National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography from Amazon

Top features in Photoshop CS6

Here is a list with some of the favorite features that you may like in Photoshop CS6:

1. Crop tool –  Cropping an image has been the same without any enhancement for a long time now. CS6 crop is non disruptive, it will not throw away data after cropping, you can always go back. Even after cropping, you can get the cropped image back and then edit. You can use the classic crop tool as well in the new CS6 if you are used to the older version.

2. Filters – Blur gallery now has 3 different types - Field, Iris and Tilt blur. You have great control over the blur and you can edit your photos which can't be captured photographically like focusing on more than one object at the same time.

3. Adaptive Wide Angle - Instead of cropping and do lens correction go for adaptive wide angle filter. Example is if you have a photo with too many buildings which appear curved because of the wide angle lens used, Photoshop CS6 allows you to adjust manually by drawing lines and edit the image and make it look much better.

4. Video Editing - You can edit videos using Photoshop but using CS6 it is much more streamlined. You can go to timeline and select the right layer and then add effects to your video. This can be done to the objects in the timeline. You don’t have to be a video editor to do this.

5. Content Aware Patch - This feature helps in a great way when it comes to editing your image at the edges. Usually in older versions, when we try to edit image at the edges; it used to leave white patch. This is not the case with the CS6.

6. Content Aware Move – This is a new feature in CS6. If an object in your image is in one corner and you want to drag that object then this tool is very helpful as it will recreate a background which looks so real.
Check out this video by Terry White:

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta

The world’s best digital image editing software is about to get even better. Photoshop CS6 beta is now available as a free download from Adobe Labs in English and Japanese.

Here are some of the Photoshop CS6 Highlights:

Content-Aware Patch — Patch images with greater control using the newest member of the Content-Aware family of technologies. Choose the sample area you want to use to create your patch, and then watch Content-Aware Patch magically blend pixels for a stunning result.
Blazingly fast performance and a modern UI — Experience unprecedented performance with the Mercury Graphics Engine, which gives you near-instant results when you edit with key tools such as Liquify, Puppet Warp, and Crop. Plus, a refined, fresh, and elegant Photoshop interface features dark background options that make your images pop.
New and re-engineered design tools — Create superior designs fast. Get consistent formatting with type styles, create and apply custom strokes and dashed lines to shapes, quickly search layers, and much more.

Download Link: Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta

Picnik will be closing

Back in 2010, I had written an article on Google acquiring Picnik, the online photo editing tool in another blog of mine—Ravi’s Blog. And its hardly 2 years after acquisition of Picnik by Google and they wants to close Picnik.  This is one of the products which Google has and will be closing in recent times. Picnik will be closed on 19th of April 2012. Some of  the best features which were meant for premium users are now made free till the closing date. Premium users who had updated their subscription will get their entire money back. For those who were using Picnik, you don’t have to be sad as Picnik will now be embedded into Google+ where you can find many of your favorite Picnik effects. You can edit your photo that is uploaded on Google+ by clicking on “Creative Kit” under each uploaded photo.

New Photoshop Feature–Content Aware Fill

Adobe Photoshop team has been rolling out a series of videos highlighting selected features of the popular photo editing software. Photoshop, well known for it’s vast array of time saving techniques, has established itself as the leader in image editing. Popular additions to the later versions of Photoshop have been the Content Aware options. In the video below users are given an example and brief tutorial on the Content Aware Fill function using the ability to paste pixel data from any area of the photo. Content Aware Move tool is a very quickly and handily, allows you to move large and small objects alike while avoiding the time consuming task of using Layer Masks. I will be updating more on these soon. Follow my blog and I will keep you all updated with more and latest updates.