StrongMocha

Imagine yourself beneath the Eiffel Tower or in the heart of Times Square. Now imagine being able to see that exact scene in an amazing new way. With Photosynth, you can look up or down, pan from left to right, zoom in, or pull back to reveal the full sense of where you were. Photosynth provides incredibly realistic close-up detail of a place as seen in the collaboration with National Geographic. Exclusive synths of some of the world’s most renowned locations, such as Machu Picchu and the Parthenon, were created using photographs taken by National Geographic.

From the Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment. Photosynth is a potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.

Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point the photos were taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.

Providing that experience requires viewing a LOT of data though—much more than you generally get at any one time by surfing someone’s photo album on the web. That’s where our Seadragon™ technology comes in: delivering just the pixels you need, exactly when you need them. It allows you to browse through dozens of 5, 10, or 100(!) megapixel photos effortlessly, without fiddling with a bunch of thumbnails and waiting around for everything to load.

Photosynth is a radically new way to use your photography. To help you get the best results we’ve prepared the The Photosynth Photography Guide (1Mbyte pdf)

Using Photosynth

Getting started with Photosynth is easy:

• To begin, just take a few dozen digital photos — 20 to 300 photos are required, depending on the size of the place or object — with overlap between each shot, from a number of locations and angles.
• Next, download a small, free software application to your computer from http://photosynth.com. This software works in concert with the Photosynth Web site, which is also a free service.
• Build your synth in just two easy steps: First, from the Photosynth Web site, click on Create and select the pictures you want to use. Then, give your creation a name and click on Synth, and Photosynth automatically creates and uploads your synth. In about the same amount of time it would take to upload the pictures to a photo-sharing site, you can enjoy your pictures in dramatic and detailed 3-D.
• The finished synth can be accessed from any Windows XP- or Windows Vista-powered computer with a broadband connection. If you want to comment on other people’s synths or create your own, you’ll also need a free Windows Live ID.
• Once created, synths can also be embedded on Web sites, blogs and social networking sites or virtually anywhere HTML can be edited.

Lightroom 2 is now available

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the immediate availability of Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 2 software, the photographer’s essential toolbox for managing, adjusting and presenting large volumes of digital photographs.  According to Adobe Lightroom 2 should come with new enhancements such as dual-monitor support, radical advances in non-destructive localized image correction, and streamlined search capabilities. As Adobe’s first application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Macintosh computers with Intel® processors and Microsoft® Windows® Vista® 64-bit operating systems, Lightroom 2 also provides improved memory performance for dealing with large scale images.

Photoshop Lightroom 2: Smarter, Faster and More Accurate

The enhanced Library module in Lightroom 2 helps streamline and accelerate photographers’ workflows. With the ability to visually organize images across multiple hard drives, Lightroom 2 and its powerful Library Filter Bar makes it easy for users to quickly find the images they need. The Suggested Keywords feature helps photographers keyword their images by making intelligent suggestions based on their own previous efforts. New dual-monitor support allows users to expand their workspace, giving them flexibility to edit and organize images in a way that maximizes an additional display.

In the Develop module, the new Local Adjustment Brush lets photographers fine-tune specific areas of an image to precisely adjust color, exposure and tonal range without affecting other areas of the image. The new Graduated Filter expands the toolbox in Lightroom, allowing for edits to larger areas by applying gradually diminishing or increasing adjustment effects such as exposure, clarity, and saturation, alone, or in any combination. Lightroom 2 also helps photographers print more efficiently by quickly arranging photos of multiple sizes on one or many pages with flexible and customizable templates to maximize paper and ink. Intelligent algorithms automatically determine optimal sharpening for screen or print, producing crisper images faster. Developers can further extend the Lightroom workflow with Web, Export and Metadata Software Development Kits available at the Adobe Developer Connection, http://www.adobe.com/devnet/ .

Ground-Breaking Innovation in Raw Technology

New raw technology gives photographers access to flexible camera profiles. Camera profiles are the visual starting point for the raw processing workflow, but image preferences vary for every photographer. To minimize surprises, Adobe is supplying default camera profiles that closely emulate the visual looks that photographers are used to seeing from their favorite camera, while also providing the ability to create highly customized profiles to suit different tastes. Camera profiles are available for immediate download on Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com ) for use with Lightroom 2 and Camera Raw 4.5, along with the DNG Profile Editor for the community to test and create their own profiles.

The Adobe Camera Raw 4.5 plug-in and DNG Converter 4.5 are also now available on Adobe.com and support over 190 camera models including the Olympus E 420 and E 520 models.

The NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) has launched their Lightroom 2 Learning Center.

New in Lightroom 2.0

(Source: Lightroom Journal)

Library

Streamlined Organization and Worfklow

Layout: The entire Library layout has been revisited to provide a more intuitive image organization experience.  The left hand panel of the Library has been streamlined to include only the most relevant image sources: the folders the images are physically stored in and collections of images that the photographer creates.

Folders: Photographers working across multiple hard drives will find that the enhanced volume and folder layout will make it a much more intuitive experience to manage images on one or many hard drives.  The volume indicators clearly indicate the hard drive that you’re working with and provide the option to show the online/offline status, the amount of space available, the number of photos you’re working with and there’s an indicator light that migrates from green to red as your hard drive fills up.  Now it’s visually much easier to move your images from hard drive to hard drive and understand where your images are stored when a external hard drive is no longer connected.

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Donnie takes you in his latest PhotoShop Video Tutorial through “Displacements”

Smashing Magazine did compile a list of 70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials

Dirk Metzmacher from Smashing Magazine writes: “

Beauty retouching is probably one of the most popular application areas in which Adobe Photoshop is used extensively. There are two simple reasons for that. First, Photoshop offers a variety of advanced tools to smooth out skin and hair, optimize body proportions and emphasize some beautiful details. And second, if you have some experience with Photoshop it is easy to learn the basics and quickly produce very impressive and beautiful results.

…”

These 70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials show you how you can:

• Beautiful Skin
• Smooth Skin
• Beauty Retouching
• Remove Freckles
• Dark skin - bright skin
• Change Hair Color
• Remove Hair Roots
• Trimm weight
• Digital Nose Job
• Enhance Iris Color
• Whitening Teeth & Eyes
• Apply Eye Make-up
• Whitening Teeth
• Use Smart Filters
• Beautify a Face
• Phoenix Hair Effect
• Make Nails Longer
• Give Models a New look
• and many more

Bloggers told Iran, “You Suck at Photoshop,” when news broke about doctored photos of Iranian missile tests.

Season 2 rolls on as Donnie Hoyle explores the measure of a man while teaching you about the Measurement Log.

I get many questionsfrom friends and readers about good PhotoShop books they should read or which Tutorial sites they should use to learn more about PhotoShop.

I keep a list of PhotoShop books I recommend under PhotoShop books, mainly books I bought myself, read and successfull used in some projects .

Some PhotoShop books I recommend (available at amazon.com):

You find many great Tutorial websites that offer either printed or video tutorials for PhotoShop. As there are so many great ones here a small (and not complete) selection:

• psdtuts.com
• lynda.com (you need to subscribe to get access to the most, but really great Tutorials)
• www.tutorial9.net
• pshero.com
• tutzor.com
• photoshopstar.com
• tutorialdog.com
• photoshopguidesign.com
• dgrin.smugmug.com
  
• photoshopsupport.com
• The Radiant Vista
• RetouchPRO
• Photoshop User TV

Deke McClelland shares with you a stunning PhotoShop Tutorial. In 5 minutes you learn 101 PhotoShop Tips. Starting with how you can copy a layer, How to Zoom, Selection, Move around to copy and paste Tips.

Deke has some great products available on Amazon.com