• Postcard Polaroid features, well, just that–a blog-ful of Polaroid snaps sent in by readers, often with little magic marker witticisms.
• In a related vein, Photojojo has a cool idea (and tutorial) for turning a single photo into a large mailable mosaic.  And in their Awesomeness section (heh), they sell The Mailable Photo Frame, a self-contained 4"x6" sleeve with its own stand.
• If that’s up your alley, you might like MOO’s Flickr MiniCards–an easy way to print tiny, sharable copies of your images.
• Through Joe Lencioni’s excellent Shifting Pixel, I found Bending Light Magazine, home to numerous lovely Flash galleries like this one. I especially liked these discoveries. (“I’ve got a fever… and the only prescription… is more cowball.”)
• I escaped rural Illinois without ever having tipped a cow, though I was chased by a few. Too bad I didn’t think to shoot them (with a camera, of course).  Rachel Sudlow did; Cowscapes is the result.
• Borut Peterlin does some cool portraiture.

• Postcard Polaroid features, well, just that–a blog-ful of Polaroid snaps sent in by readers, often with little magic marker witticisms.
• In a related vein, Photojojo has a cool idea (and tutorial) for turning a single photo into a large mailable mosaic.  And in their Awesomeness section (heh), they sell The Mailable Photo Frame, a self-contained 4"x6" sleeve with its own stand.
• If that’s up your alley, you might like MOO’s Flickr MiniCards–an easy way to print tiny, sharable copies of your images.
• Through Joe Lencioni’s excellent Shifting Pixel, I found Bending Light Magazine, home to numerous lovely Flash galleries like this one. I especially liked these discoveries. (“I’ve got a fever… and the only prescription… is more cowball.”)
• I escaped rural Illinois without ever having tipped a cow, though I was chased by a few. Too bad I didn’t think to shoot them (with a camera, of course).  Rachel Sudlow did; Cowscapes is the result.
• Borut Peterlin does some cool portraiture.

Ryan McGinnis of Backing Winds has posted a solid intro to creating high dynamic range images in Photoshop.  "Photoshop CS2 has a little-known (it seems) built-in HDR assembler," he writes, "that, while lacking the ‘make my photo look like an acid-trip‘ tone-mapping features of Photomatix, is capable of creating extremely realistic or extremely surreal HDR images." He ends up with a beautifully exposed image of the interior of a cathedral, although it would be nice to get a bit more info on how he (very capably) tone-mapped the 32-bit file down to 16bpc. [Via]

I mentioned the article to Photoshop engineer John Peterson, who worked on the Merge to HDR feature.  He points out a few things:

• Instead of opening images via Camera Raw, setting their parameters, and then choosing Merge to HDR, you can simply select them in Bridge and choose Tools->Photoshop->Merge to HDR (or from within Photoshop, choose File->Automate->Merge to HDR).
• Merge to HDR and Camera RAW have a secret handshake where M2HDR tells Camera Raw to always zero out the exposure-related parameters (Exposure, Shadows, Brightness, Contrast) and guarantee linear output.
• "The alignment feature doesn’t usually work so great" — Fair enough, and we have some good ideas on how to improve it.
• "You don’t need to adjust the histogram…it has no effect on the final image" — This is true, although it does set the exposure value for the finished document.

Speaking of HDR, here’s an otherworldly photo of an Italian cathedral.  And John P. speaks highly of the Merge to HDR chapter in Mikkel Aaland’s Photoshop CS2 Raw.

…and no, I’m not just quoting the pitchfork-wielding villagers now surrounding my office^*. 😉

In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d pass along a couple of snaps from Photoshop engineer Joe Ault, who captured a ghoulish hot rod mod during a recent car show: see the pistoncarb heads and whole car.  Note to self: must get more flavaful ride.

Elsewhere, on Sunday night my wife Margot & I carved pumpkins with our newest Photoshop PM, Bryan O’Neil Hughes & his freshly minted fianceé Alex (double congrats, guys!).  I opted to go with my favorite luchador, while Margot went more Día de los Muertos & Bryan did "Pumpkin Pi."  Here’s the gallery.

In a related vein:

• Mao Ze Tongue: The SF Chronicle has hired 12 artists to make downloadable last-minute masks.
• Here’s a great little skull I found on Logopond.
• If you like the history of the graphic arts, or if you just enjoy slightly weird old imagery, check out Gene Gable’s collection Of Evil Witches and Dancing Pickles.
• Along those lines , the Today’s Inspiration blog features a whole mess of vintage Halloween-related art.

Happy Halloween,
J.

[ ^* Speaking of that chaos, thanks for all the feedback. I greatly appreciate the level-headed comments, and I’ve gained some good perspective from them. –J.]

• Held aboard NYC’s USS Intrepid, pro arm wrestling contest The Big Apple Grapple is captured by photographer Clayton James Cubitt. Sadly, no one makes the insane Stallone-face from Over the Top.
• Scott Pommier features bikers, skaters, and the occasional man-rodent showdown in his portfolio.
• Backyard wrestling?  Yeah, that’s probably gonna end in tears. [Via]
• Okay, he’s not American, but this iguana isn’t kidding around.
• Neither American nor particularly tough, Walking the Cabbage (which is not a euphemism, apparently) challenges ideas of acceptable behavior by, well, walking a cabbage around China.  More info here. [Via]

• Martin Waugh produces gorgeous images of fluids in motion–something he calls Liquid Sculpture.  As you’d expect, creating the images depends on high-speed photography.  Related: Marc Pawliger points out the 10-nanosecond exposures needed to capture nuclear fireballs.
• ¿Donde esta la biblioteca? Right here, in a series of beautiful photos.[Via]  Some of the shots could have benefitted from HDR, and it’s too bad they don’t include pix of the rad new Seattle Public Library (or maybe ND’s Touchdown Jesus). Still, it’s a great collection.
• "This seems more like a John Nack item…" writes John Dowdell, and so it is, but I’ve been delayed in posting it (dang actual job slowing me down): Little People is "a tiny street art project" that leaves tiny figures around London. [Via]  It makes me think of the miniature food sculptures of French pastry chef/photographer team Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle.  For my part, I used to carry around a GI Joe head that I’d photograph in all kinds of situations (say, the middle of Death Valley).  I named him Sgt. Goldbug, after the little Richard Scarry creation who’d hide somewhere on every page.
• Speaking of food, Worth1000 features some deeply unappetizing Photoshop food mash-ups.  (Of course, these are not quite as nauseating as that McDLT ad with Jason Alexander.)

• Martin Waugh produces gorgeous images of fluids in motion–something he calls Liquid Sculpture.  As you’d expect, creating the images depends on high-speed photography.  Related: Marc Pawliger points out the 10-nanosecond exposures needed to capture nuclear fireballs.
• ¿Donde esta la biblioteca? Right here, in a series of beautiful photos.[Via]  Some of the shots could have benefitted from HDR, and it’s too bad they don’t include pix of the rad new Seattle Public Library (or maybe ND’s Touchdown Jesus). Still, it’s a great collection.
• "This seems more like a John Nack item…" writes John Dowdell, and so it is, but I’ve been delayed in posting it (dang actual job slowing me down): Little People is "a tiny street art project" that leaves tiny figures around London. [Via]  It makes me think of the miniature food sculptures of French pastry chef/photographer team Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle.  For my part, I used to carry around a GI Joe head that I’d photograph in all kinds of situations (say, the middle of Death Valley).  I named him Sgt. Goldbug, after the little Richard Scarry creation who’d hide somewhere on every page.
• Speaking of food, Worth1000 features some deeply unappetizing Photoshop food mash-ups.  (Of course, these are not quite as nauseating as that McDLT ad with Jason Alexander.)

Non-carbonized British photographer Kane Quinnell is lucky to be alive after snapping this rather spectacular photo of lightning near his home. He tells the Daily Mail about being launched several feet into the air as lightning connected with the house next door. [Via] For his trouble he’ll be featured in an Australian weather calendar.
Elsewhere in the Daily Mail you can find an extremely cool shot of the International Space Station and shuttle Atlantis silhouetted against the sun. Be sure to click the image to see the shapes in more detail.
[For more lightning photography, see previous.]

• What blanco niño doesn’t like to to don a rasslin’ mask and live the life of a luchador? (Call me El Tryptophan, master of the sleeper hold.) Er, maybe it’s a Jack Black/Jack Nack thing. In any case, Lucha Loco is a set of more than 120 portraits of masked Mexican wrestlers, complete with biographical bits. (“I teach Tae Kwan-Do. I’m black-belt. And I’m also in sales,” says Dr. Muerte. See also Super Porky and others in the gallery.) [Via]
  
  For more lucha goodness, check out these pix from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema (viva El Santo!).

• Night photographer Troy Paiva (aka Lost America) has posted a beautiful gallery of shots taken at an airplane boneyard at El Mirage Dry Lake. Joe Reifer has another good set from the same spot.
  Meanwhile TerraServer hosts a satellite photo of the place the AMARC boneyard. [Via] And Flickr features a photoset of a derelict communication outpost, remnants of the Cold War DEW Line. [Via]

• Okay, this has nothing to do with anything besides pointy metal things flying through the air, but FYI in case you’re planning to judge any javelin competitions: you may want to wear some sturdy insteps.

I’ve mentioned some unusual cameras before, but this one takes a Special Jury Prize for Weirdness: The Pileus System is a functioning umbrella that can also capture still images and video, upload them to Flickr, and project other users’ creations onto the umbrella’s skin. Uploads are automatic, and twisting the grip browses Flickr and YouTube for related tags.
Marginally related: UMBRELLA.net is an art project that links umbrellas via Bluetooth, making them light up in one another’s presence. And the iBrella consists of “a Pic Microcontroller, a 2-Axis Accelerometer, Hall-Effect Sensors and a Gyroscope”–all so that you can gesture wildly and thereby control your iPod.

Having borrowed some nice photo gear from the Photoshop QE locker this weekend, I’m getting acquainted with the travel pains it brings. New TSA rules mean anything from hassle (at best) to smashed glass, lost lenses, etc. This state of affairs drives quite a bit of commentary from photogs, culminating with a rather brilliant suggestion: why not ensure the safety of checked gear by packing a starter pistol in each camera case? Check out the post for full details, and happy shooting (ba-dum, tssch!). (Hmm, I wonder if a Jerky Cannon would suffice?) [Via Andrew Shebanow & William Gregory]

As in-camera processors get faster, what can they be used for besides grabbing more and more pixels? HP has one answer: apply slimming right in the camera. Heh–I wonder what else they could do with this (maybe reverse the effect to make me look yoked on the beach?). [Via Tom Attix]
Of course, doing too much in camera can alienate some photographers. Earier this summer, Fuji’s in-camera facial recognition feature earned the comment “If You Think You Need This, Kill Yourself” from The Online Photographer. Then again, some purists still swear that no significant work has ever been done with a zoom lens, so what can you do?

Maybe the photography gods are trying to tell me to suck it up & buy a decent zoom lens already: after looking at this 1700mm f/4 monstrosity from Carl Zeiss, a 70-200 f/2.8 looks positively svelte. “Developed for long distance wildlife photography,” says Zeiss, this 563lb (!!) warhammer ain’t playin’. As my boss Kevin said, “You don’t lug that thing around; you put an engine on it and drive it home!” [Via Chris Quartetti]
[Update: As Bryan notes below, the side of the lens contains what appears to be Arabic script. Folks at T.O.P. offer more detail & comments.]

Earlier this year, tilt-shift photography & its Photoshop-simulated cousin drew considerable attention. Both approaches can be used to provide a narrow depth of field, making large subjects (e.g. Vegas) seem small and toylike.
Now a pair of photographers have brought that technique to bear in portraits of tragedy. Fred R. Conrad’s image provides a different perspective on the pit at Ground Zero. I find the sense of miniature Fisher-Price innocence unsettling. Meanwhile David Burnett renders the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. (The latter shots are much more impactful viewed larger, in case you have a copy of the print edition handy.)
On a related note, illustrator John Mavroudis provides an rare glimpse behind the scenes of creating a New Yorker cover–in this case the 9/11/06 cover. [Via]

• Flickr features Desolation Row, B&W shots from a “futuristic”–and now abandoned–housing development in Taiwan. [Via]
• Speaking of futures that never were, here’s the late Braniff Airways’ view of what air travel could be, circa 1975. (If you wore the tinfoil pants, would the TSA then let you carry a Coke on board?) [Via] Oh, and related to retro, never-quite-happened air travel, have you seen the Goodyear Inflatoplane?
• A sort of Flickr of the past, Square America bills itself as “A gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography.” Odd finds include “Defaced,” a gallery of photos with faces scratched out. [Via]
• Among other surprises from the past, I had no idea that color photography existed in World War I. Kottke links to this and other collections.
• Ah, the days before medical malpractice, when you could wire up a guy’s face & shock the crap out of it… In the 1850’s neurologist Guillaume Duchenne combined electricity & photography to record the creepy The Mechanism of Human Facial Expressions.

When not enslaved in some email gimp-dungeon, Photoshop/Lightroom folks like to fire up the ol’ cameras:

• Sporting a heeuuge craaanium as I do, I figured I’d fit right in at the Highland Games in Pleasanton^*. So I did, and I came away with this gallery of caber tossing^**, a “hairy coo” (w/drawing of same), birds of prey–oh, the obligatory white guys showing some leg.
• Adobe pro photography evangelist George Jardine (of Lightroom podcast fame) just returned to San Jose with terrific galleries of China and Tibet. Sadly, at least one Tibetan hairy coo didn’t fare as well as its Scottish counterpart.

^* The Games’ site seems about as archaic as the games themselves.
^* It’s tough not to make it look like the tossers are getting gored by giant cigarettes; apparently someone at Worth1000 agrees. My wife suggests the games be sponsored by a new brand of smokes, “Pall Maul.”

When not enslaved in some email gimp-dungeon, Photoshop/Lightroom folks like to fire up the ol’ cameras:

• Sporting a heeuuge craaanium as I do, I figured I’d fit right in at the Highland Games in Pleasanton^*. So I did, and I came away with this gallery of caber tossing^**, a “hairy coo” (w/drawing of same), birds of prey–oh, the obligatory white guys showing some leg.
• Adobe pro photography evangelist George Jardine (of Lightroom podcast fame) just returned to San Jose with terrific galleries of China and Tibet. Sadly, at least one Tibetan hairy coo didn’t fare as well as its Scottish counterpart.

^* The Games’ site seems about as archaic as the games themselves.
^* It’s tough not to make it look like the tossers are getting gored by giant cigarettes; apparently someone at Worth1000 agrees. My wife suggests the games be sponsored by a new brand of smokes, “Pall Maul.”

Sometimes I feel that Adobe is a bit like the guys who make radar guns and radar detectors–with one hand working on tools for detecting image manipulation, and with the other enabling ever more seamless manipulation. Cartoonist JD Frazer finds humor in the latter with the “Photoshop Tool Palette for ‘Creative’ Freelancers.” (As it happens, a while back at least one large newsroom used ResEdit to hack tools out of Photoshop–not, of course, that there’s a technical cure for human/ethical problems.) [Via Mike Richman]

Thursday’s NYT covers the growing interest in high dynamic range photography (HDR). Though the field and tools are in their adolescence, HDR techniques are enabling photographers to create some unique visuals. The article quotes Photoshop engineer John Peterson, who helped bring HDR support to CS2, and whom we’re keeping busy moving forward. For more examples & tutorials on HDR, see this previous entry. [Thanks to everyone who passed along this article.]

Photographer and author Ben Long has released version 3.0 of his Photoshop Action Pack, leveraging Automator & AppleScript on Mac OS X. v3 includes 11 new actions – Add Layer, Add Empty Adjustment Layer, Add Graphic Watermark, Channel Mixer, Duplicate Current Layer, Paint Daubs, Photo Filter, Resize to File Size, Scale to X by 10%, Swap Colors, Exposure, and Reduce Noise – while improving batch processing with Camera Raw. If you like the scripts and find them useful, please kick Ben some bucks through his online tip jar.

As a kid I loved the books of David Macaulay (Castle, Pyramid, etc.), and his Underground opened my eyes to hidden worlds that lie deep beneath city streets. Now photographer Joe Nishizawa reveals the huge, otherworldly spaces below Tokyo in this photo essay for PingMag. Additional images are available on Joe’s site.
In a similar vein, I used to love visiting the captured U-505 submarine on display in Chicago, and now a Russian photographer reveals the subterranean world of a former Soviet submarine pen. [Via]
Ostensibly related:

• If all the underground/undersea imagery gets you down, clear your palette with some beautiful Atmospheric Optics [Via David Metzger]
• On the Russian front, an illustrator has interpreted modern movies as Russian folk art [Via]

A fair bit of what I post here is somewhat tangential to Adobe, but this time the subject is literally, physically tangential to the company–or just about. Sunday saw the second annual running of the San José Grand Prix and featured Champ cars screaming past our downtown HQ at a buck 80, rattling windows, dental work, and everything else with their 750hp turbocharged engines.
I walked around the building with my Rebel XT, and though no one from SI is going to fear for his or her job, I came away with a handful of shots I liked. My 17-85mm glass left me thinking–to paraphrase Roy Scheider in Jaws–“We’re gonna need a bigger lens.” Note to self: sell left kidney, do more curls, and then step up to a suitable monstrosity. You can see more images courtesy of Adobe engineer Winston Hendrickson and his 300mm lens. [Update: Craig Schamp, also part of Adobe engineering, used Lightroom to produce this gallery.]
By the way, a word to the wise: If you ever find yourself spinning out in a Grand Prix, then attempting to re-enter the race & getting T-boned, do not try to punch the other dude while he’s still wearing his helmet. Watching all this transpire down below, someone remarked, “We went to a car race and a hockey game broke out!”

A fair bit of what I post here is somewhat tangential to Adobe, but this time the subject is literally, physically tangential to the company–or just about. Sunday saw the second annual running of the San José Grand Prix and featured Champ cars screaming past our downtown HQ at a buck 80, rattling windows, dental work, and everything else with their 750hp turbocharged engines.
I walked around the building with my Rebel XT, and though no one from SI is going to fear for his or her job, I came away with a handful of shots I liked. My 17-85mm glass left me thinking–to paraphrase Roy Scheider in Jaws–“We’re gonna need a bigger lens.” Note to self: sell left kidney, do more curls, and then step up to a suitable monstrosity. You can see more images courtesy of Adobe engineer Winston Hendrickson and his 300mm lens. [Update: Craig Schamp, also part of Adobe engineering, used Lightroom to produce this gallery.]
By the way, a word to the wise: If you ever find yourself spinning out in a Grand Prix, then attempting to re-enter the race & getting T-boned, do not try to punch the other dude while he’s still wearing his helmet. Watching all this transpire down below, someone remarked, “We went to a car race and a hockey game broke out!”

Life’s not much fun if you can’t laugh at yourself a bit. (Heck, I used to call LiveMotion Crouching Vector, Hidden Bitmap.) In that vein…

• The crowd at Yay Hooray has fun reinterpreting famous logos according to the lickably gradiated, bloopy “Web 2.0 look“. (And they remember to drp some vowls while they’re at it.) [Via] [Update: Hah–even Adobe couldn’t escape.]
• Night of the Living Photoshop Books: Tongue firmly in cheek, Mike Johnston takes aim at some of the less-than-excellent titles out there (e.g. “How To Create Totally Alarming and Incredibly Tasteless Pastiche Monstrosities Using Photoshop”). Later he lists some titles he actually does recommend.
• Same dude, different screed: Mike eviscerates know-nothing photoblog commentators in this wicked parody.

Life’s not much fun if you can’t laugh at yourself a bit. (Heck, I used to call LiveMotion Crouching Vector, Hidden Bitmap.) In that vein…

• The crowd at Yay Hooray has fun reinterpreting famous logos according to the lickably gradiated, bloopy “Web 2.0 look“. (And they remember to drp some vowls while they’re at it.) [Via] [Update: Hah–even Adobe couldn’t escape.]
• Night of the Living Photoshop Books: Tongue firmly in cheek, Mike Johnston takes aim at some of the less-than-excellent titles out there (e.g. “How To Create Totally Alarming and Incredibly Tasteless Pastiche Monstrosities Using Photoshop”). Later he lists some titles he actually does recommend.
• Same dude, different screed: Mike eviscerates know-nothing photoblog commentators in this wicked parody.

A fistful of photography:

• Photographer Michael Bath has been capturing severe weather for almost twenty years and has posted hundreds of photos, as well as a range of tips, on his site. In a related vein, the Daily Mail features the interplay of lightning & a rainbow. [Via]
• “Using such varied subjects as parliamentary sessions, soccer games, outdoor military exercises, and erotic unions,” long-exposure photographer Atta Kim “suggests that it is possible for us to perceive the passage of time in radically different ways. The NY Times features an article on Kim’s work, and the International Center of Photography discusses the show and offers a gallery of Kim’s images
• Few customers keep Photoshop honest quite like the Times. When you’re pumping 2500 images a day through the newsroom, you have zero tolerance for hiccups and incompatibilities, and the staff have shared a lot of valuable perspective over the years. In “Talk to the Newsroom,” photo editor Michele McNally tackles readers’ questions on everything from the gear used to what staff are (and are not) allowed to do in Photoshop.
• Slate & Magnum continue their excellent Today’s Pictures series. I’d call this one “Old Women on Rascals with Battleship” (from the “America, Americana” series).
• “If You Think You Need This, Kill Yourself”: Er, well, that’s not pulling any punches. Mike Johnston takes a rather dim view of in-camera facial recognition.
• Having your work ripped off sucks, but I guess I’d be pretty flattered if an image I took became African currency. [Via]

Following up on the announcement that Adobe is acquiring Pixmantec, we’ve posted an FAQ document (60KB PDF). A couple of key points:

• Registered customers who purchased RawShooter Premium will be able to download the shipping version of Lightroom 1.0 for free
• Although RawShooter Essentials & RawShooter Premium are being discontinued, there will still be an update to add support for the Canon 30D.

For convenience, I’ve included the text of the FAQ below:

Q: Why has Adobe acquired Pixmantec?

A: One of the great advantages of working with raw images is that, as the technology for raw processing continues to improve, the quality you can bring out of even your older images continues to improve as well. It is for this reason that Adobe continues to invest in our own raw processing technology. The acquisition of Pixmantec will allow Adobe to accelerate our rate of improvement and sets us up to deliver the world’s best raw processing solutions. Combining the best of Adobe’s existing raw technology with the best of Pixmantec’s technology will deliver noticeable improvements to photographers. More importantly, the expertise of Pixmantec founders Kenneth Tang Laerke and Michael Jonsson—developed through their work creating the RawShooter products as well as through their work on Capture One software—will be a great complement to our own expertise and promises substantial technology advances in the future.

Q: What are the plans for the RawShooter line of products?

A: The RawShooter | Premium product has been discontinued and is no longer available for sale. The free RawShooter | Essentials product will remain available as a download from the Adobe Web site until shortly after Lightroom 1.0 is released as a shipping product. The RawShooter | Color Engine will be taken off the market as soon as existing obligations to partners are fulfilled.

Q: Will there be special pricing for those who have invested in RawShooter | Premium?

A: We have listened closely to the opinions shared by customers on the Pixmantec forums and although Lightroom will provide a much broader range of functionality than RawShooter | Premium and will be offered at a higher price point, we will be offering a free downloadable version of Lightroom 1.0 to all customers who have purchased RawShooter | Premium.

Q: Why does Adobe plan to discontinue the RawShooter products?

A: Pixmantec has strong technology which has significant value for making Adobe’s own raw processing solutions better. Adobe already offers multiple workflows for processing raw images. Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw—both included with Adobe Photoshop® CS2—allow for efficient processing of images within an environment that supports a wide range of graphics file formats. The new Lightroom software—currently in public beta for Mac and soon available for Windows—provides a photography-centric environment that will handle the full workflow from import, sorting, developing, and storage, through to presentation and output. In addition, some level of raw support is also available in Adobe Photoshop Elements and in the free Photoshop Album Starter Edition. The Raw Shooter products do not offer any significant functionality that is not already, or will not be shortly, offered in these other products, so continuing this product line would only cause confusion for our customers.

Q: What level of support will Adobe provide for existing RawShooter customers?

A: Pixmantec’s primary customer support offering has been an online forum where customers can post questions to be answered by other customers or by Pixmantec staff. We will support these forums for the foreseeable future.

Q: Lightroom is currently available only for the Mac platform, and RawShooter is available on Windows. Do you plan to turn RawShooter into your Windows version of Lightroom?

A: No. Our Windows version of Lightroom is already well under development and will be available as a public beta shortly. We will be taking the best technology in RawShooter and incorporating it into both the Mac and Windows versions of Lightroom, as well as into Adobe Camera Raw as it appears in Photoshop and other products. Incorporating RawShooter technology will take development time and may not be available within immediate versions of Lightroom. Customers who would like to be notified when the Windows beta of Lightroom becomes available should visit http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/ and click on the “sign up” link.

Q: Will Adobe continue to provide camera compatibility updates for the RawShooter products?

A: No. Because these products will be discontinued, we will not be focusing our efforts on any updates. Based on strong feedback from the community, Adobe will make an exception for the Canon EOS 30D and will add support for this model to the RawShooter | Essentials product this summer.

Q: After the discontinuation of the RawShooter products, which Adobe product will be the right choice for RawShooter customers?

A: Of course, customers can continue to use the existing RawShooter products for as long as they like, but they may want to move to another product to gain compatibility with raw formats from future cameras. The most appropriate Adobe product for RawShooter users will be Adobe Lightroom, because it provides efficient raw processing within a photography-centric environment. With its image management and flexible print and Web output options, Lightroom provides a more complete workflow than what is currently offered by RawShooter, and its modular architecture will allow it to expand to do even more in the future. Current RawShooter customers are encouraged to participate in the free Project:Lightroom beta program, so that they can make sure that the features they like most about RawShooter are included in the shipping version of Lightroom. Though only the Macintosh beta is currently available for download, the Windows beta will be available soon, and Windows customers are already encouraged to participate in the online forums to have their wishes known. To participate in the beta, customers can visit http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/.

Q: Will Adobe support the effort I’ve put into editing images in RawShooter Premium with their current line of raw processing software?

A: Adobe is investigating the technical possibility of providing a conversion of RawShooter | Premium settings to match those of Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Lightroom as closely as possible. Because the controls are different between applications, the results may not produce an exact match to the original.

Author/photographer Ben Long has created Camera Raw Version Control, a “simple package of droplets and Automator actions [that] let you easily create and manage multiple versions of your raw images.” Since ACR edits are stored as tiny, easily portable XMP files, this method lets you create versions with almost no hit to your disk space.
Ben has been busy elsewhere as well, updating his Photoshop Automator Actions to v2.2 (offering full compatibility with Intel-based Macs as well as 2 new actions) and producing an excellent Digital Camera Buying Guide for CreativePro.com:

• Part 1: Budget, SLR vs. point-and-shoot, and resolution
• Part 2: Exposure controls (program modes, shutter speed, aperture, white balance, and ISO)
• Part 3: Light meters, lenses, image stabilization, autofocus, and flash.

Though by now you may have seen the news elsewhere, I’m happy to report that Adobe has announced plans to acquire the raw image processing technology of Pixmantec. (More details are in this FAQ.)
Adobe Camera Raw is already the overwhelming favorite raw converter (see p.23), and we’re delighted to have one of the world’s best raw-processing developers, Michael Jonsson, joining Thomas Knoll, Mark Hamburg, & the rest of the ACR/Lightroom team. It’ll be great to see what this incandescent group can do together, and we’re looking forward to being joined by business-savvy Pixmantec co-founder Kenneth Tang Laerke as well.
Welcome aboard, guys!

Maybe it’s because dachshund-sized moths like to lay eggs on the side of my apartment, or because I used to draw the occasional beetle, but I find the photographic project Angels & Insects arresting, though far from comforting. [Via] In a similar vein, Attracted to Light, from Brooklyn-based twins Doug & Mike Starn, explores the interplay of light, darkness, and these airborne sweater-wreckers. You can flip through the book and check out images from the project online. [See also previous entry on PS & insects.]

Maybe it’s because dachshund-sized moths like to lay eggs on the side of my apartment, or because I used to draw the occasional beetle, but I find the photographic project Angels & Insects arresting, though far from comforting. [Via] In a similar vein, Attracted to Light, from Brooklyn-based twins Doug & Mike Starn, explores the interplay of light, darkness, and these airborne sweater-wreckers. You can flip through the book and check out images from the project online. [See also previous entry on PS & insects.]

Sure, you can upload images from Bridge & Photoshop Elements to create custom stamps, photo books, and more, and Neighborhoodies & co. let you customize just about anything. But–and I know you’d been hankering for this–the long national nightmare of not being able to print your photos on furniture is finally at an end, thanks to ClothUK. Better start saving those shekels now. [Via]

Sure, you can upload images from Bridge & Photoshop Elements to create custom stamps, photo books, and more, and Neighborhoodies & co. let you customize just about anything. But–and I know you’d been hankering for this–the long national nightmare of not being able to print your photos on furniture is finally at an end, thanks to ClothUK. Better start saving those shekels now. [Via]

Jimmy Smits, Geraldo Rivera, and a pair of us pasty ex-Midwesterners rubbed elbows with a couple million jubilant New Yorkers this Sunday at the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in NYC. I’ve posted a gallery of some of our snaps. We didn’t see this dude, but the giant papier-mâché heads and skull-faced kid (see gallery) more than made up for it.

Mike Johnston & co. at the consistently excellent Online Photographer blog have been posting a great series, Top Ten Greatest Photographs Ever Made. In the latest entry, Mike examines the interplay of gritty real life (a migrant mother, a deformed child) with classical imagery (the Madonna, the pietà), and he discusses the ways that photographers like Eugene Smith compose images that transcend the story at hand. It’s an unusually literate blog & well worth a read.
Representing the ongoing efforts of conscientious photographers, The Press Photographer’s Year showcases some of the most arresting photojournalism from the last 12 months. The slideshow interface makes it tough to navigate/link to specific image, but stick with it; there’s much that demands to be seen. [Via]

Launched a little over a year ago, the Adobe Photographers Directory is continuing to grow into a great resource for pairing photographers with designers, art directors, and anyone else wanting to commission work. According to the APD team, every month some 2,000 photographers are getting contacted for business as a result of the directory. They also report that:

• The directory is now available in 5 languages: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish
• 3,500 pro photographers have joined the directory representing:
  • Partnerships with 28 pro photography associations in 10 countries
  • Photographers from 35 countries
  • 36% of the invited photographers
• 43,000 (on average) unique visitors a month go the directory, with the majority coming from the link in Adobe Bridge.

The Webby Awards have dubbed the directory an Official Honoree in Services Category–nice props that follow a WebAward it earned last year. If you’re a pro photographer, or if you’re in the market to hire one, we hope you’ll find good things via the directory. As always, feedback is most welcome.

A macro lens made from a Pringles can? Someone’s been there, done that. A pinhole camera made from an airplane hanger? Sorry–beaten to the punch. So how’s an enterprising photo geek to distinguish himself? How about taking photos through a lens made of ice? Evidently unimpressed with Scientific American’s challenge to light a fire with a lens made entirely of ice, photographer Matthew Wheeler fashioned his own very cold lenses and has posted a gallery of images. I couldn’t find a demonstration or other info on the gear used, but some googling did turn up an article and video depicting the “excruciatingly painful” lens-making process. [Via]