Ok, this is really pretty cool…
(click above to watch a YouTube hosted seven minute video)

Since PhotoshopNews.com has been so successful in covering Photoshop related news & info, PixelGenius decided Lightroom deserved it’s own site as well. So, welcome to Lightroom-News.com.

Martin Evening will be sharing duties as Editor in Chief with Jeff Schewe. Contributing Editors are; Ian Lyons, Sean McCormack, Seth Resnick & Andrew Rodney. Stop in and see what you think of the place.

AIIM to Facilitate ISO Standards Process for Leading Electronic Document Format

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 29, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

An End User’s Champion, Fraser’s Contributions to the Digital Imaging and Desktop Color Industry will be Celebrated in an Upbeat, Inspirational Multimedia Event on January 10

Press Release: January 2, 2007 – San Francisco – Visual arts connoisseur, proud and humorous Scotsman, masterful musician, tireless digital imaging scientist and author, and peaceful Buddhist with more than a passing fancy for astronomy — Bruce Fraser was a renaissance man whose most outstanding characteristic was his humanity.

I’m leaving for Toronto, Canada on Tuesday to join Michael Reichmann of the Luminous Landscape to shoot our Adobe Photoshop Lightroom DVD tutorial. Some of you may remember the story I did about The Making of the Lighroom DVD last August.

Well, the observant among you might be able to deduce that since we’re shooting our Lightroom 1.0 DVD, the release of Lightroom won’t be too far off (remember, Beta 4 is designed to cease Feb, 2007). The “observant” would probably be correct :~)

So, I’ll be a little light in posts this week…I will be posting final details of the Industry Celebration and Tribute to Bruce Fraser scheduled for January 10, 2007 from 6:00PM – 7:30PM at Macworld Expo.

Here’s a brief description: In the world of digital color and imaging, few can claim the myriad contributions to product innovation, development and end user education that belong to Bruce Fraser. The principal author of the best-selling Real World series of books about Adobe Photoshop and the definitive works Real World Color Management and Real World Camera Raw, Bruce has enlightened end users and experts worldwide on the intricacies of color publishing and imaging.

Macworld Conference and Expo 2007 along with major manufacturers, Peachpit Press (Bruce’s publisher), and an array of imaging luminaries and digital photography superstars, is pleased to invite all conference attendees and exhibitors to a gala tribute for legendary consultant, author and lecturer Bruce Fraser.

Hosted by internationally renowned musician and photographer Graham Nash, this program promises to be the must-attend event of the conference.

Attendance is free for conference attendees and Macworld has arranged for anybody to register (for free) to attend this event.

Some of our visitors to PhotoshopNews may already be aware that Bruce Fraser, noted author, lecturer and “color geek”, was diagnosed several months ago with terminal lung cancer.

With the release of the Adobe Photoshop CS3 public beta, users who already have a Photoshop CS2 serial number will be able to download and install the brand new version of Photoshop-at least in its current beta form.

One of the things users will notice is a new application icon which heralds the beginning of the new Creative Suite 3 icon art.

Be aware also that it will take some time to get it downloaded-the Mac version is 684MB (including Bridge and Camera Raw 4) and the Windows version is 355MB. The larger Mac file size is due largely because it’s a Universal Binary that includes both the PPC as well as MacIntel optimized code.

John Nack, senior product manager for Adobe Photoshop, photo by George Jardine.

To coincide with the announcement and availability of Photoshop CS3 as a public beta, Martin Evening has released a sample chapter from his forthcoming book: Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, published by Focal Press.

The new edition of this best selling book should be hitting the streets in Spring of 2007, shortly after the official release of Photoshop CS3.

As a special perk for PhotoshopNews readers, Martin has made his Chapter 1: What’s New in Photoshop CS3 available for free download.

The 21 page PDF, outlines all the new features of Photoshop CS3 and Bridge 2, written from a user’s perspective. It offers an honest appraisal of what will be on offer in this new version of the program, if you really want to know what’s NEW!

Got questions about the Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta release?
These are the official answers from Adobe…

…with a few friends for the Epson Print Academy in Salt Lake City this Saturday, November 11th. (Boy, I hope they have a Starbucks there…)

For the last few years, a small exclusive group of people have been invited by the Pixel Mafia to attend a special dinner during PhotoPlus Expo (see the PSN Pixel Mafia story from 2005). Who is the Pixel Mafia you may ask? Well, if you have to ask, you really don’t want to know…The Rules of Omertá, ya know?

This year, the Pixel Mafia Dinner was held on Thursday, November 2nd at Jovia Restaurant (135 E 62nd Street near Lexington). The guests were comprised of the “Usual Suspects” as well as some new blood.

Photo Plus East was held again this year at the Javits Center in New York from the 2nd-4th of November. Several members of the Pixel Genius team plus friends were there to take part in the various seminars and events. Here is a summary of what took place, in particular the Adobe Booth seminar sessions, where demos of Lightroom Beta 5 were shown for the first time in public. To find out more about what happened, read on…

The Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidlines (UPDIG) working group has announced the release of version 2.0 of their guidelines for the delivery of digital photographs.

Adobe has released Adobe Lightroom Beta 4 for Macintosh and Windows now available for download at: Labs.Adobe.com. Windows users can now access more of the module features that were previously unavailable in the PC version of public Beta 3. But the main changes in Beta 4 have all taken place in the Library and Develop modules. In this second part review we are going to concentrate on what’s new in the Library module, such as the new interface changes to the grid layout, the ability to batch rename images, and convert to DNG and CD/DVD archiving. Read the rest of this story for an in-depth look at the Beta 4 Develop module.

Adobe has released Adobe Lightroom Beta 4 for Macintosh and Windows, and is available for download at: Labs.Adobe.com. Windows users can now access more of the module features that were previously unavailable in the PC version of public Beta 3. But the main changes in Beta 4 have all taken place in the Library and Develop modules.

In this first part review we are going to concentrate on what’s new in the Develop module. This is the first chance to see how the Raw Shooter raw processing technology has been incorporated into Beta 4, and how Adobe has added more versatility to the tone and color edit controls. Some of the key new features are that you can drag-edit the histogram and have the ability to directly edit the tone curve plus make on-image tone curve edits. Read the rest of this story for an in-depth look at the Beta 4 Develop module.

Room with a view…34th floor looking North.

Photoshop World was last week and it was both a lot of fun and educational for those who attended. This is my report of the first day of my first Photoshop World. I only shot stuff on this first day (I was speaking the other days) so this is the only posting I’ll be doing.

Last week, at Photoshop World, Epson held a special “mini” Print Academy. The question was, would people come and could we cover what we needed to cover in such a short period of time. The answer to both questions was yes!

All I’m going to give you is the link.  :~)

Via John Nack’s Adobe Blog.

Source: The New York Times
Written by Maria Aspan

The recent discovery that a Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated pictures he took for Reuters has raised questions about the standards of photojournalism at a time of widespread digital photography.

The incident also increased pressure on news photo editors, who select and edit thousands of photographs under deadline each day, to detect digital alterations.

Source: blogs.Reuters.com
Written by Gary Hershorn, News Pictures Editor for North America

News photographers routinely process images using Adobe Photoshop software. But there has been a basic premise in the world of photojournalism that what was allowed in making prints in the pre-digital days of darkrooms is all that is acceptable today.

Source: Reuters via Yahoo News
LONDON (Reuters) – Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.

Altered image on left, original on right

Peachpit releases The Adobe Lightroom Book by Martin Evening as a new “Rough Cut” publishing concept-a book available as it’s being written. Which dovetails well with a product like Adobe Lightroom which is being developed as a public preview.

Digital photographers who have relied on Adobe Photoshop to work with their images have a new tool at their disposal: Adobe Lightroom.

As a professional photographer, author Martin Evening knows firsthand what photographers need for a more efficient workflow.

Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop CS2 by Bruce Fraser is shipping.

It’s a sad but undeniable fact of life: Whether you scan, shoot, or capture, the process of digitizing images introduces softness, and to get great-looking results, you’ll need to sharpen the great majority of digital images.

The softness introduced during digitizing results from the very nature of the digitizing process. To represent images digitally, we must transform them from continuous gradations of tone and color to points on a grid. In the process details gets “averaged” into the pixels, softening the overall appearance.

Adobe has updated many of the original white papers and primers available as PDF downloads from Adobe.com. Explore these papers and primers — written by some of the biggest names in the industry — to learn more about the world of digital photography.