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Visigami paints a pretty picture (of pandas!)

Posted on Apr. 30, ’08, 8:57 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

VisigamiThose nutty folks over at the GOOG are up to it again. One of the company’s policies is that it’s employees are encouraged to work on open source projects, either full time or in the 20% time that they can work on personal projects. One of the latest Mac-based projects to hit Google’s Mac Developer Playground is Visigami.

It’s an application! It’s a screen saver! It’s a—okay, actually, that’s pretty much it. Enter a search term and choose your picture source (currently, Flickr, Picasa, or Google Image Search) and you’ll be barraged with images. You can pick how you want them displayed (in a grid, a fan, or a carousel), and alter the speed, spread, and zoom until your little heart is content. Do be aware that the animation takes up a decent amount of horsepower on some machines (it totally slowed my Growl notifications to a crawl, for example).

I also made the fatal mistake of specifying “baby panda” as my search term. The resulting overdose of cuteness almost sent me into convulsions—do not mess around with baby pandas, folks. I’ve already been contacted about doing a PSA on the subject.

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photography

Microsoft hires away Photoshop veteran

Posted on Apr. 29, ’08, 5:00 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Photography

Mark Hamburg Mark Hamburg is one of those people that were instrumental to the success that Photoshop is today, particularly in the early days. He joined Adobe in 1990 to work on Photoshop 2.0. His contributions vary from working on paths, to raising the minimum RAM allocation, to promoting a user interface redesign for 4.0, to being the eye in the splash screen for 5.0, to the history palette, free transform, screen caching, and shapes.

So, yes, he was important to the Photoshop project. More recently, he worked on Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom. All that is at an end though, as he’s about to start working at Microsoft. What’s his assignment? The next Photoshop killer? Maybe… but current word is that he’ll be working on “user experience”. Good luck on trying to improve that at Microsoft. He’ll need it.

[via Valleywag, photo courtesy of Lightroom News]

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software

Plug into Aperture’s architecture

Posted on Apr. 22, ’08, 8:28 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

Aperture Plug-inWe know that Aperture 2.1 activated the vaunted plug-in architecture that we’ve been hearing so much about, but what if you want to actually create a plug-in for Aperture? No worries, mate: Apple’s finally posted info on the SDK for developing Aperture plug-ins on its Apple Developer Connection site, which you can download from there as well (you’ll need to be an ADC member in order to do so).

The SDK allows you to create two types of plug-ins: an Edit plug-in that can have a custom UI, add metadata to images, manipulate image data of Aperture photos, and an Export plug-in that can submit photos to stock agencies, store images online, sell images online, use a custom UI, provide users with custom export presets, etc. Both also allow you to have crazy fun, even though Apple doesn’t specifically note that. Besides the SDK, the download includes sample plug-ins, and complete documentation for your reading enjoyment. We look forward to plug-ins galore in the near future.

If production isn’t your style, you’ll be psyched to know that a bunch of Edit plug-ins for Aperture have been released, including such time-honored classics as the Dfx Digital Filter Suite from the Tiffen Company, and Power Stroke, Light!, and Ozone from Digital Film Tools, with more to come soon. Get plugging, folks.

[via Infinite Loop]

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video

Flickr adds moving pictures support

Posted on Apr. 9, ’08, 8:35 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Video

Flickr videoI remember the first time I ever saw video on a computer. It was on a friend’s Mac back in the early ’90s, and not only was it about the size of a postage stamp. It was also about the quality of a flipbook made out of postage stamps. That there might be a day when everybody would watch video on their computers was about as ridiculous as suggesting that there might come a day when MC Hammer was not cool.

But now, as the kids say, everybody’s doing it. Even photo-sharing site Flickr has gotten into the act, now allowing its pro users to upload 90-second movies right into their photostream, right alongside their pictures. Why 90 seconds? The Flickr crew sees it more as adding “long photos” rather than, say, narrative, or the kinds of things that You Tube uses. We say, bring on the creative constraints. They’ve already started their first meme, Fridgets.

Though uploading video requires a $25/year pro account, Flickr has also upgraded their limits on how much data users can upload, raising the limits to 20MB per photo for pro users, and 10MB per photo for free accounts.

Anyways, to celebrate, I’ve uploaded a short video of me hard at work. As you can see, things here at MacUser HQ have never been more exhilarating.

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updates

Adobe sheds some Lightroom 2.0

Posted on Apr. 2, ’08, 8:27 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Updates

Lightroom 2.0Sometimes, the back and forth between Adobe and Apple’s professional photography products makes me feel like I’m stuck in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. At least it’s keeping everybody on their toes. This morning, Adobe announced the beta for Lightroom 2.0, including new features like Suggested Keyword, which tries to figure out which keywords you often use in conjunction—say, “family get-together” and “madness”—and suggest keywords you’re likely to use.

There’s also a Smart Collections feature that lets you build a collection based on criteria you specify (sounds…familiar), dual monitor support, the ability to tweak photos non-destructively, and a Develop module that lets you apply changes to isolated areas of an image without affecting the entire picture.

If you’re already a Lightroom 1.0 beta user, you can download the new version for free from Adobe Labs. If not, well, you’d better get friendly with someone who does use the current version—they’ll be able to invite friends to join in on the beta process, which lasts until August 31st of this year, or until Aperture releases another update (zing!).

[via Macworld]

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photography

Photoshop Express is Adobe’s massively multiplayer photo-sharing site

Posted on Mar. 27, ’08, 8:42 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Photography

photoshopexpress.jpgWhen we first started hearing whispers of an online version of Photoshop, our imaginations went a bit, well, crazy. But now that Adobe has drawn back the velvet curtain on the Photoshop Express Public Beta, we find ourselves potentially intrigued by the services on offer.

The idea is one-part Photoshop, one-part Flickr, all wrapped together in a Flash tortilla. Adobe will give you 2GB of free storage space to upload your photos (or suck them down from another site like Facebook, Photobucket, or Picasa). Once you’ve put up your pics, you can edit them with the suite of non-destructive built-in tools, and share them with other users either via Photoshop Express or by sending them back to the afore-mentioned sites.

I’ve only been mucking about with it briefly, and while it seems pretty slick, the Flash overhead is a little slow at times. I also made the mistake of uploading a bunch of full-resolution pictures—whoops. Also, there’re no printing options as of yet; the focus at the moment is on online photo-sharing, though Adobe suggested that they’d be working with third parties to bring printing services in the future.

Photoshop Express will remain free even after it’s out of beta, but Adobe plans on adding premium features in the next few months, including more storage space and more photo-editing features and effects.

I don’t know if this will be a major challenge to the likes of Flickr and Facebook for photo-sharing, but if you’re not thrilled with your current photo-sharing arrangement, it might be worth checking out.

[via Macworld]

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photography

Introducing the iHole: thinking inside the box

Posted on Mar. 25, ’08, 9:34 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Photography

ihole.jpgI know what you’re thinking. When my colleague Peter Cohen sent me an IM directing me to something called the “iHole,” you can imagine that I too was somewhat trepidatious about clicking on the link (I’ve learned the hard way of Peter’s habit of sending me links to disturbing YouTube videos, a tactic I’ve dubbed “Cohen-rolling”).

But such fears proved to be unfounded. The iHole, created by blogger Scot Hampton, is a pinhole camera built out of an iPhone box. Using nothing but the box, a small piece of foam, tinfoil, tape, a screw, and an Allen wrench, Scot made a perfectly functional camera. Sure, it may not have the megapixels of even your iPhone’s built-in camera, but this, my friends, is art.

Using the box provided one additional feature Scot hadn’t considered: because of the way the top and bottom and box fit together, it creates an impromptu set of bellows. Pretty nifty. If nothing else, it should give you an appreciation of just how futuristic the iPhone is: so advanced that you can even turn its box into an entirely separate piece of technology.

My only disappointment is that I was not able to work “Shut your iHole” into the title of this post. I suppose you can’t have everything, though.

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photography

Lightroom 1.4 released

Posted on Mar. 14, ’08, 7:15 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Photography

Lightroom Adobe has updated its photo asset management software to version 1.4. The primary change in the update is support for a host of new cameras. Going along with that change, there is an update for the Photoshop Camera Raw plugin.

Lightroom also exhibits some bug fixes for printer drivers included with Leopard. That’s all good and well, but why do I keep hearing some guy from New York telling me to in a strained, excited whisper to “manage those assets”? It’s creeping me out.

[via John Nack]

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photography

Photonic makes Flickr snaps a, um, snap

Posted on Feb. 26, ’08, 10:59 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar
Category | Photography

Photonic.jpgThe Mothership reports that there’s a new app afoot for the Flickr set. (Get it?)

Based on the screen grabs, this just might be the new app for me, given that Flickr Uploadr seems to constantly give me problems. I often find that when I try to toss up some new pics, it will just give a sickly cough and say that there was an upload error.

But I won’t be able to use Photonic for awhile as it’s Leopard-only, and I still haven’t upgraded. Why? Because Digidesign still doesn’t have their act together, and hasn’t made Pro Tools LE—a program I use nearly every day—Leopard-compatible yet.

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software

Aperture 2.0 to get third party extensibility?

Posted on Feb. 20, ’08, 12:00 PM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Software

Aperture outputAperture users everywhere, rejoice! Apple has sneaked in a great feature in the latest version of its premier image-management and enhancement application. David Schloss, of the Aperture Users Professional Network, brings us word that Aperture 2.0 includes support for third party editing plugins.

This is good news in terms of what Aperture holds for the future—kind of in the same vein as the introduction of Core Animation before Leopard’s launch, the only difference being that Apple chose not to advertise the former.

As soon as Apple makes it clear how to create plugins for the application (or even before that), we can hopefully look forward to third parties developing a host of amazing plugins that take the editing capabilities of the application to new heights. Now, all you have to do is pray for Apple to release the details before late February, 2011.

[Via TUAW]

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