I’ve heard a few comments to the effect of “Adobe Carousel looks great, but I really want to pull my raw photos into my iPad, apply flags, ratings, and keywords, and they sync everything with Lightroom on my desktop.” Happily, that’s just what Photosmith ($17.99) already offers:
Category Archives: Photography
Introducing Adobe Carousel
“Lightroom for iPad” has been the clearest customer mandate I’ve heard in 10+ years at Adobe. Photographers are clamoring to transfer photos wirelessly to their tablets, review & tweak them there, and then sync the results with their desktops.
Adobe Carousel (press release) embraces that vision–and takes it further. This new app–announced today for iOS and Mac OS X (with Android & Windows versions in development)–brings a highly tuned version of the Lightroom/Camera Raw engine to mobile devices, combining it with excellent multi-device syncing. Key coolness:
- You get access to all your images on all your devices.
- All edits are non-destructive: tweak a setting on one device & you’ll see the edit ripple through your other devices.
- It’s easy to collaborate with friends & family: people you invite to share a photo catalog can view photos, add new ones, apply adjustments and preset “looks,” and flag favorites.
- You can easily publish to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
What does it cost, and when can you get it? The iOS and Mac versions should be available shortly. The iPad, iPhone, and Mac apps are free, and the syncing/storage service costs $9.99 a month (or $99/year), with a special introductory price of $5.99 a month (or $59.99 a year). Storage & number of photos are unlimited.
When you pay for an Adobe Carousel subscription, you’e investing in one complete solution, enabling you to import as many photos as you want, adjust and improve those photos, and then share those photos with family & friends.
This first version of the app is ruthlessly focused on simplicity & on meeting the needs of a very large group of photographers. As it evolves there’s plenty of room to grow, including adding support for raw file formats and integrating with Lightroom & other desktop apps.
When we introduced Lightroom, we likewise started small, listened hard to photographers, and rapidly iterated based on their feedback. I’m extremely excited to see what develops.
PS–You may know that I’ve been working on mobile imaging apps at Adobe, so can I take credit for Carousel? I’m afraid not: I was the PM early on, helping get things rolling, after which I moved to another effort. More on that soon enough.
Video: Soap bubbles & ferrofluid
When he’s not designing interfaces at Adobe, Kim Pimmel makes short films:
I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism.
See more of his projects on Vimeo. [Via]
(rt) Photography: Canine Love
(rt) Scientific photography: Escher in water, eggs exploding, & more
- Moments in time:
- Love it: an Escher painting refracted in a drop of falling water.
- Check out some rather amazing food photography (PDF)–e.g. high-speed egg detonation. [Via Margot]
- Space:
- Ever wonder what a “shooting star” looks like from space? This image was taken during the Perseids meteor shower. [Via]
- “Look at That, You Son of a Bitch“: Frank perspective on the fragility of Earth, from Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell. [Via]
- Images like this make me suspect that God has a soft spot for airbrushed “Noble Wolf” shirts.
(rt) Odd camera materials (Lego, paper, & wood)
- Behold the Legotron, Mark I, a 4×5 Camera made of LEGO bricks. [Via]
- Going for a softer feel, one can get a working Leica M3 paper pinhole camera.
- You’re welcome, hipsters: the Wood Camera iPhone Case.
Video: Skating, rendered beautifully
Video: A Day in California
Perfectly lovely:
Bobby Solomon writes,
Photographer Ryan Killackey and his wife decided to document California, mostly the Los Angeles area, through photos, taking over 10,000 in total, and then compiling them into this beautiful video.
Hints about Adobe's future mobile photography tools
Managing your photos across a range of devices (phones, tablets, computers, cameras) really starts to suck. We’re exploring some interesting solutions that go beyond what others have announced:
No matter which device is in your hand, you see your entire photo library. So those hundreds of photos you took while touring through Italy with your smartphone would also appear in the library on your tablet device and at home on your laptop…just like that.
At Adobe, we’re exploring solutions to get you there. And it should come as no surprise that we will also leverage the power of Photoshop editing technology for quick fixes along the way.
A tad vague, maybe, but stay tuned. Good things are on the way.
Video: Danny MacAskill
Beautiful filmmaking showcases incredible athleticism:
Slow-Mo Owl Show
Oddly intense! (especially full screen)
One of these winged victors tried to make off with my parents’ elderly wiener dog during a midnight outing. Advantage: Older Irish lady using her bathrobe to look bigger! [Via]
Video: A Skateboard's-Eye View of Manhattan
Filmmaker & skater Josh Maredy killed a pair of GoPro cameras en route to capturing this madness:
[Via]
Video: World's largest stop-motion animation
Not content with having made “the world’s smallest stop-motion animation,” the folks at Aardman set out to crush it with the world’s largest–and once again, they shot it with a telephone:
As usual I find the making-of video even more interesting than the final piece:
[Via]
"Metropolis": Enormous Matchbox kinetic sculpture
If you played with Hot Wheels as a kid, this is what you saw when drifting off to sleep:
Hypnotic & terrific. Here’s more about artist Chris Burden.
Exhibit: Photo Tampering Throughout History
You can build a business manipulating photos; how about building one by detecting those manipulations?
My longtime boss Kevin Connor was instrumental in building Photoshop, Lightroom, and PS Elements into the successes they are today, and he taught me the ropes of product management. After 15 years he was ready to try starting his own company, so this spring he teamed up with Dr. Hany Farid (“the father of digital image forensics,” said NOVA). Together they’ve started forensics company Fourandsix (get the pun?), aimed at “revealing the truth behind every photograph.”
Now they’ve put up Photo Tampering Throughout History, an interesting collection of famous (and infamous) forgeries & manipulations from Abraham Lincoln’s day to the present. Numerous examples include before & after images plus brief histories of what happened.
I wish Kevin & Hany great success in this new endeavor, and I can’t wait to see the tools & services they introduce.
Related/previous:
Free Lightroom webinar on bookmaking, tomorrow
Photographer Jerry Courvoisier is presenting online tomorrow at 10am Pacific time:
How to Use Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 3.0 to Develop, Sort and Sequence Your Images for Blurb Bookmaking: In this free webinar, world-class Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom specialist Jerry Courvoisier will take you through great Lightroom tips and tricks including how to prep your photos for your book. He’ll also show you how to use the new Blurb Bookify™ plug-in for Lightroom. Plus, stay for an exclusive Lightroom discount at the conclusion of the webinar.
Come join me for a photo walk on Friday!
First we talk (mobile imaging), then we walk.
Photographers & mobile-imaging experts Dan Marcolina (author of iPhone Obsessed) & Knox Bronson (founder of P1xels, “the site of record for the emergent and global iphoneographic artist community”) will be speaking at the Photoshop store in San Francisco this Friday at 1:30pm. Afterwards (3:30-5pm) we’ll be taking pictures outside:
Join Dan, Knox, and members of the Photoshop team for a photo walk through Union Square. The only caveat is: NO CAMERAS ALLOWED. That’s right, you’ll only take photos with your mobile phone.
For me it’s a chance to see how you work & to hear more about what you want Adobe to do in mobile imaging.
Afterwards Blurb is throwing a little party in the store, showing off books while supplying drinks & appetizers. Not a bad little Friday afternoon/evening, eh?
The store is at 550 Sutter. See the schedule for details on these events & everything else happening there. Hope to see you there!
Cool DIY aerial filmmaking
I’ll say it again: I’m oddly thankful that incredible technology like this didn’t exist when I was a kid, as otherwise I’d have lost my entire adolescence to it. First, here’s what happened when filmmaker Joe Simon mounted a Canon 7D to an RC helicopter:
[Via]
If you prefer more the rock-n-roll grunge tip, check out the work of 19-year-old Jeremiah Warren and his rocket-mounted spy cam:
[Via]
Previously: DSLR video + RC helicopter = awesome
More Photoshop-as-Instagram
Abduzeedo shares tips on replicating Instagram’s Nashville color effect via Photoshop. (Seems like it’s kind of begging to be turned into an action.) Previously: Instagram filters as PS actions.
Tangentially related: A band called The Vaccines is planning to use Instagram to create a crowd-sourced music video. [Via]
Great NASA resources commemorating the Shuttle & Shepard
- As the Shuttle flies its last few orbits above us, you might enjoy this excellent collection of photos from the program’s history.
- I also really enjoyed this short history on Alan Shepard & the first US manned spaceflight, the 50th anniversary of which passed a few weeks ago.
iPhone rolling shutter + guitar strings = interesting effect
Fascinating (though, the creator notes, apparently not representative of how strings actually vibrate):
[Via]
dbox: Instagram Filters as Photoshop Actions
If you’re a fan of Instagram-style photo effects & would like to apply them easily in Photoshop, check out Daniel Box’s Instagram Filters as Photoshop Actions. I stumbled upon these randomly, not as the results of a search, so if you’ve seen other cool ways to apply these or similar effects via PS, please feel free to point them out via comments.
New Lightroom Website builder plug-in released
Matthew Campagna has released TTG Pages CE for Lightroom:
TTG Pages CE is not an image gallery. It is a website construction tool used to create a home in which your image galleries may thrive. It creates pages — Home, Services, Info, About and a Contact page with email contact form — and a self-populating Gallery Index for your image galleries.
Whether you’re building your first photo website or your hundredth, TTG Pages CE is the tool you’ve been waiting for to streamline your Lightroom-to-website workflow, and to create a website you can take pride in.
The tool is $25 from Matthew’s site.
360-degree cockpits, new & old
- 360vr features a 360-degree pano of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s flight deck, captured during the orbiter’s decommissioning process. [Via]
- Photographer Patrick McGee has shared a pair of Waco biplane cockpits. [Via]
Tangentially related: Don’t miss Shlomi Yoav’s eye-popping, wide-angle Shuttle launch photo.
Video: The Incredible Rube Goldberg Portrait Photography Machine
I kind of can’t even talk about this:
Hats off to David Dvir and the team at 2D Photography. Here’s more info about the project, plus a making-of video:
[Via Harrison Liu]
Feature request: Instagram->Facebook
I often say that if I could code, I’d never leave the basement*: I know what I want, but I have to rely on others to make it real.
At the moment I’m wishing for a way to suck up some or all of my Instagram-hosted images, then repost them on Facebook. I already share each individual image via Twitter (and thus Facebook), but these don’t end up residing on FB, where family members would be much more likely to see them. This can’t be a hard thing to implement, but I’ve yet to see it done.
Update: Thanks to Noah Mittman for pointing out Instaport, a free site that lets you download some/all of your images as a ZIP archive. It’s a great start, though just to get greedy, let me also request a way to retain image captions. For me those are often as critical as the images themselves.
* Thus it’s probably like my not being more muscular (which would lead to my getting into lots of fights): probably a blessing in disguise.
Disappearing acts: Content-Aware Fill in motion & more
- “Waldo was a chump at hiding compared to Liu Bolin.” Check out the artist’s amazing camouflage as he melts into various backgrounds.
- Christiane Feser and Mara Monetti hide their love away… with candy sprinkles! [Via]
- After Effects PM Steve Forde demos a quasi-Content-Aware Fill effect using CS 5.5’s new Warp Stabilizer.
Video: Striking a cymbal at 1,000fps
Bah-dum, tssch!
Spoiler: Not much changes after the initial strike. [Via]
Carousel (Instagram on Mac) gets new features
The beautiful Carousel for browsing/commenting on Instagram feeds ($5 on the Mac App Store) has been updated with a number of new capabilities, including searching, support for gestures, and the ability to see all the images you’ve liked. I highly recommend it.
Also very nice (and free): the Screenstagram screensaver.
Video: "Bullet time lightning"
A Tesla coil plus a 10-camera array of custom-programmed Canon cameras = Rob Flickenger’s 70 megapixel bullet time lightning.
More info is here. [Via Iván Cavero Belaunde]
(rt) Photography: Blackbirds & cursing & migrants, oh my
- Cute: the USB Film Roll packs 4GB of photos into a recycled film canister.
- History:
- Interesting stories: 10 People’s Lives in Famous Photographs (“Migrant Mother,” the flowers-in-gun-barrels guy, and more).
- Here’s a beautiful SR-71 Blackbird family portrait, plus a piece on why the SR-71 matters. [Via]
- Fun with profanity:
- “‘[Screw] it. They’re all the same to me.’ remarked stock photo Steve, as he saved the company another 50%…” [Via]
- It was almost worth buying the mug for its “shit-language.”
Instagallery enhanced
Our friend Troy Gaul has revised his excellent Instagallery iPad app with a host of improvements. For v1.2:
In short: Grid. AirPlay. AirPrint. Liked photos. Twitter. Facebook. Open in Safari. Open in Instagram. Email, save, and copy yours. Video out. Favorite sets. Recent sets. Better comments. Easy tagging. Entire caption. Filter display. Unnamed locations. Tap to advance. TextExpander. Faster. Bugs fixed.
Check out the App Store page for more details.
A tour of Earth from space
Dr. Justin Wilkinson from NASA provides a beautifully unhurried tour of Earth from above, as shot by astronauts in orbit.
[Via]
Stitching moments together
Photographer Peter Langenhahn combines hundreds of photos into huge, hundred-gigabyte monsters that show numerous moments at once–for example, depicting all the fouls in a soccer match. Here’s a brief piece (light on technical details, I’m afraid) on how he does it:
Kottke also points out the Peter Funch’s New York composites (mentioned previously).
Amazing first-person skiing/parachuting/avalanche video
Props for the After Effects Warp Stabilizer
Well-known cinematographer Vincent Laforet has some kind words for the new tool in AE CS5.5:
What truly inspired me was the ability to shoot handheld footage at a high resolution, knowing full well that I could later stabilize it with technology such as Adobe CS 5.5′s Warp Stabilizer… Warp Stabilizer is truly AMAZING – and I’m not exaggerating here. This technology has the potential to change the way many of us shoot – allowing us to rely less on complex stabilization devices – and more on smaller less complex camera support platforms. This will allow filmmakers to shoot with a bit more freedom – which is exciting.
Vincent promises to share more details soon. In the meantime, enjoy the work he’s been capturing with the RED Epic 5K camera, bits of which were stabilized in AE:
Video: A DIY Space Balloon
Luke Geissbühler & his kids sent their homemade weather balloon & camera rig (packed inside a foam take-out container!) up 100,000 feet, right to the edge of space. It makes for some surprisingly captivating filmmaking.
[Via]
Adventures with mini cams
Planting a GoPro camera inside a hula hoop produces oddly watchable results:
[Via]
On a much less stable front, the $60 Hot Wheels Video Racer shoots at up to 60 frames per second, creating what Autoblog calls “nausea-inducing fun”:
Time lapse: Manhattan in Motion
Lovely work from Josh Owens:
[Via]
Breakfast, interrupted, at 1,000fps
Bruton Stroube captured high-speed mayhem using a Phantom HD Gold shooting at 1000fps:
The making-of video makes the shoot look like some messy fun. [Via]
A nifty twist on time lapse videos
You spin me right ’round, baby, right ’round like the earth, baby…
[Via]
(rt) Photographic history: Abbey Road to Mt. Rushmore
- Ever seen the original design of Mount Rushmore; who knew?
- Iain MacMillan remembers the Abbey Road album cover sessions.
- 40 years of industrial design history: Design house ItalDesign commemorates its work via iPad.
- The NYT remembers Willard S. Boyle, father of the CCD. On behalf of all digital shooters, thanks, Dr. B!
Video: Skaters on fire
Is it pyrotechnics, or is it Memorex? Hard to say, maybe, but I like the effect:
The filmmakers have posted a behind-the-scenes feature for the subsequent video in the series. I highly applaud their use of “FM.” [Via]
iObsessed for iPad
Photographer Dan Marcolina used InDesign CS5 to create iObsessed, an interactive compendium of over 30 apps. The book complements his iPhone Obsessed photo book, and he writes:
This interactive format allows you to see video tutorials right in-line with the featured images, along with the ability to pinch and zoom any image to see its full detail. Additional surprise links are found on each chapter page.
Here’s the quick demo:
Adobe TV: Lightroom coloring techniques & shortcuts
Recent vids of possible interest:
The Complete Picture with Julieanne Kost: Selective Coloring Techniques in Lightroom
In this Episode of the Complete Picture Julieanne Kost explains two different methods for selectively colorizing an image to differentiate the subject from the background using Adobe Camera Raw.Creative Suite Podcast: Photographers – 5 Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts that will Speed up your Workflow
In this episode I’ll show you 5+ Lightroom Keyboard shortcuts that will definitely speed up your day-to-day Lightroom workflow!
(rt) iPhone bits & content-aware fails
- iPhone:
- Hmm: A Leica-iPhone hybrid? (Would this still be relevant if wireless camera-to-phone transfer got good & pervasive?)
- Though I don’t use the app, I can dig this hip Hipstamatic iPhone case. [Via]
- Terry White gets detailed on “How the iPad fits into a Photography Workflow.”
- ‘Shop You, ‘Shop Me:
- An Orthodox Jewish newspaper Photosh–er, digitally removed–Hillary Clinton from a photo.
- Right back atcha: “Citing modesty, hipster website removes ‘sexually suggestive’ male images from Situation Room photo.” [Via]
(rt) Photography: Finding art in nukes, tulips, & more
- Natural art:
- Wow–this is really a photo, not a composite? [Via]
- Julian Faulhaber treats tulips in Netherlands as abstract art.
- Conflict:
- Odd: The Unabomber’s famous hood & sweatshirt. Even odder: The US Marshals are auctioning it all (and evidently use Flickr). [Via]
- The Atlantic rounds up striking, sometimes ghoulish photos of nuclear weapons tests. The mannequins creep me out. [Via]
Origami sculptures transform in water
Etienne Cliquet’s fascinating “Flottille” micro-origami sculptures are 2-3 centimeters long and open based on capillary action.
[Via]
(rt) Useful online photo tools
- Neat idea: SLR Camera Simulator teaches the effects of camera parameters. [Via]
- StolenCamera Finder “uses the serial number stored in your photo to search the web for photos taken w/the same camera.”
- Bigger camera sensors generally offer better performance. Sensor-Size.com lets you “Compare & Convert Digital Cameras.”