Adobe has released Photoshop CS6 Beta

Adobe Labs has released Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta. Download it here. You can read all about it here.
You can check out Russell Brown’s 6 Favorite Features at Youtube. Here are Julianne Kost’s 6 Favorite Features, and Terry White’s 6 Favorite Features.

Interesting that it has serious video features now, though I would rather just have more feature integration in After Effects.

This will obviously be down once CS6 comes out, which is likely soon, and will available within the cloud before too long.

Adobe Releases Lightroom and Drops Price

Adobe has upgraded Lightroom to version 4.0 and dropped the price to $149 for the full software or $79 for an upgrade. Of course this will also now be part of the Adobe Creative Cloud released later this year, so many might be waiting for that to come out even though from the beta it is a vast improvement over the previous version. This is worth the upgrade for the superior image technology alone which we saw a beta of recently that blows the old versions out of the water.

New Features Include:

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Highlight and shadow recovery
Bring out all the important detail that your camera can capture. New technology brings in more image detail from dark shadows and bright highlights than ever before. Now you’ve got more power to create great images in challenging lighting conditions.

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Photo book creation
Create beautiful photo books from your images with a variety of easy-to-use templates included in Lightroom. Upload your book for printing with just a few clicks. Receive 20% off from Blurb on your first book created using Lightroom 4 software.*lr-organize-by-location-147x83


Location-based organization
Find and group images by location, easily assign locations to images, or plot a photo journey. Automatically display location data from GPS-enabled cameras and camera phones.lr-white-balance-brush-147x83
White balance brushGet more consistent color across your image in scenes with mixed lighting sources. A flexible brush lets you refine and adjust white balance in targeted areas of your shot.lr-additional-brushes-147x83


Additional editing brushes
Expand your creative control by targeting particular areas of your images using new local editing brushes for noise reduction and moiré removal.lr-extended-video-support-147x83


Extended video support
Organize, view, and make adjustments to video clips. Play and trim clips, extract still images from them, or adjust clips with the Quick Develop tool.lr-publish-videos-147x83
Video publishingEasily share video clips in HD format on Facebook and Flickr. Or save HD clips formatted for phones, tablets, TV, and more.1lr-soft-proofing-147x83
Soft-proofingSave time and ink and ensure your prints meet your expectations. Soft-proofing lets you preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.lr-enhanced-online-sharing-integration-147x83
Enhanced online sharing integrationEasily post images to social media and photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr®. With selected sites, online comments about your images are visible within Lightroom.1lr-email-lightroom-147x83
Emailing within LightroomEmail images directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.lr-import-libraries-other-software-147x83
Import of other librariesBring the power and elegance of Lightroom to all your images, new and old. Easily import photos from other applications.

Magic Bullet Denoiser 2 Released!

This was announced by Red Giant today. After losing the technology license behind Magic Bullet Denoiser they had to pull it earlier this year from their site, and promised a ground up re-write, and this is it, and even better it is a free upgrade.

Here is a list of features:

  • We’ve developed Magic Bullet Denoiser II from scratch (completely new code) to bring you the quality of Denoiser 1, but with more stability. Red Giant owns this code 100% – which means the product is not going anywhere.
  • We have spent lots of time developing the default settings for Denoiser II to give you the best possible look as soon as you apply. There’s is always room to tweak setting, but often you won’t need to.
  • Currently Denoiser II is only available for After Effects, but it will support multiple host apps in the future (readTHIS FAQ for more info).
  • Denoiser II is a Free Update for all Denoiser 1 and Magic Bullet Suite users. I repeat: If you already owned a license of Denoiser or bought the Magic Bullet Suite after Denoiser was discontinued, you get Denoiser II for FREE.

If you own it, or the Magic Bullet Suite, download it here. If you are new to the program, you can buy it here.

I love Denoiser, and used it extensively on my latest the Misadventures of Bear short, but did find it a bit buggy, so I can’t wait to try out the new version and see what it can really do.

Adobe has released Photoshop Touch for the iPad 2

Scott Kelby has a goof article on adobe’s release of Photoshop Touch for the iPad 2 (not for the iPad 1, which I have so I can’t check it out).
PhotoShopTouch

It has Levels. It has Curves (it has CURVES!). It has Shadow/Highlight, there’s a Gaussian Blur Filter, you can add text, the Layers have blend modes (Screen, Multiply, Overlay, etc.), and you can show/hide them — change their opacity — create blank layers, duplicate layers, all that stuff. There are effects filters, there’s noise reduction, you can make selections (and you will love how they implemented them). You can share images direct to Facebook, and a whole bunch of other stuff I didn’t think would be there….but is.


Of course, it doesn’t have everything the desktop Photoshop has (or there is no way it be able to run on a tablet), but I think you’ll be surprised at the cool stuff it does have.

Sounds pretty cool, and I would love to try it out

PHYX releases Defocus for FCP, Motion and After Effects

Creative Cow has the press release on this new defocus tool that works with Noise Industries FX Factory.

Some Features are

  • Chroma Aberration – Editors can simulate chroma aberration – the imbalance of RGB color channels that can occur with camera lenses.
  • Fast Defocus – This effect can be used to simulate ‘bokeh,’ or out-of-focus lens effects. Editors can create depth of field with the use of a depth mask, rack-focus effects, and more.
  • Pan / Tilt – A popular effect used in many motion pictures and music videos, users can create a tilt-shift setup for still and motion picture cameras, with smooth, defocused gradients.
  • Vignette Vision – With two effects options, editors can defocus either the outer edge or the center of the image. Defocusing the outer edge simulates POV shots, vintage lenses and more. Defocusing the center of the image allows editors to censor images, create hallucinations, etc.

You can read all about it at Noise Industries Site.

Adobe Creative Cloud

PCWorld has the article on this, but Adobe has announced a very cool new service that is going to get subscriptions out of a lot of us, and you can actually read about it at Adobe’s own web site.
AdobeCreativeCloud

It seems in the first half of 2012 there will be a new way to get Adobe Apps. Instead of upgrading the Master Suite, or which ever version of the creative suite that you use, you can do a $49.99, which comes to about $600 a year, and you get access to not only the full all of the Creative Suite Desktop Tools now including Adobe Lightroom (which was always separate), as well Adobe Edge and Muse online web creation tools, all the new Adobe Touch Apps for iPad and Android. You also get Device and PC Sync, 20GB of cloud storage, Adobe Typekit for cloud based web fonts, the digital publishing suite, and the community.

And of course that is not all. The coolest things is that you get aces to betas of all the new software before it is released to the public with the latest new technology previews in it. No longer waiting for new features, you can try them out right away!

Very cool! I think that is where I will be heading!