Lightroom

This week at CES, Adobe released Lightroom 4 beta for both Windows and Mac. Available as a free download from Adobe Labs, the digital photo management and editing software gives users a preview of the new features that will be offered in the final release, expected in March 2012.

What's new:

• Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
• Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.
• Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
• White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
• Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
• Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
• Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr.
• Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
• Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

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July is here, which mean X-Rite has announced its schedule of online tutorials for photographers. The July Webinars cover four topics which will help photographers learn quick and easy ways to enhance their color workflow.

"Just in time to help photographers reach new heights with their summertime photography, this month our hour-long educational webinars will teach imaging professionals and enthusiasts how X-Rite's line of color management tools can bring their digital photography color to new levels and help them incorporate a near-effortless color workflow into their every day imaging projects," said Mark Rezzonico, vice president X-Rite Photo Marketing. "Also this month we are pleased to feature two new webinars – one hosted by world-renowned photographer David Saffir and co-sponsored by Nik Software, and one hosted by Brian Matiash and co-sponsored by onOne Software. These new webinars are geared to help creative photographers of all levels and styles tap into their creativity and think outside the box."Read more

X-Rite just announced its schedule of free June Webinars, which are designed for both professional and serious amateur photographers.

The four free Webinar topics this month will help photographers gain new confidence and to learn quick, easy and powerful ways to enhance their color workflow. Webinar attendees will also have the opportunity to ask questions to the live trainers.

"Just in time for summer photography, this month our hour-long educational webinars will teach imaging professionals and enthusiasts how X-Rite's line of color management tools can bring their digital photography color to new levels and help them incorporate a near-effortless color workflow into their every day imaging projects," said Mark Rezzonico, vice president X-Rite Photo Marketing. "Also this month we are pleased to feature two new webinars co-sponsored by Nik Software and onOne Software geared to help photographers of all levels tap into their creativity and think outside the box. All photographers who are passionate about their photography, color accuracy and workflow efficiency are encouraged to regularly join our ongoing series of X-Rite Webinars."Read more

It's April 1st, which means that X-Rite just announced their new, free webinars for both professional and serious amateur photographers. Three free Webinars are being offered this month, with topics that are sure to help photographers gain new confidence and learn quick, easy and powerful ways to enhance their color workflow.

April Webinar Schedule

Thursday, April 7, 2011; 1:00pm EDT and 3:00pm EDT
RAW COLOR POWER with Adobe Lightroom and the ColorChecker Passport

Photographers can learn how to reduce their image processing time and improve quality control in their RAW workflow by combining the powerful color capabilities of the ColorChecker Passport and Adobe Imaging solutions.

Topics that will be covered include:

• Creating and Using Camera Profiles
• Custom White Balance with the Passport
• One click accurate color edits
• Matching color response of two or more cameras
• Matching color response under different lighting conditions
• Color editing in Adobe Lightroom
• Color editing in Adobe Photoshop

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onOne Software on Thursday announced the availability of Perfect Resize, one component of the Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Apple Aperture. Available on its own, or as part of Perfect Photo Suite 5.5, Perfect Resize has many new features that aid in maintaining fine detail when enlarging images, along with new gallery wrap and tiling options. Previously known as Genuine Fractals, the new Perfect Resize 7 supports Photoshop CS5, CS4 and CS3 and can now be used directly from within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Apple Aperture without a separate host application.

New Features:

NEW Smoothness Control: Designed for the demanding photographer, the new Smoothness control allows users to adjust the smoothness of curved edges to minimize artifacts. This new feature is very useful when resizing images and is especially valuable when working with lower resolution source files or when an extreme crop is required from a higher resolution source file.Read more