Apple kills Aperture, really getting out of Pro Apps

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The Loop has the story.
Since iPhoto is being replaced with Photos in Yosemite, they are killing Aperture. Looks like Adobe Lightroom (always the better program) is the only solution, but it loses the great integration that iPhoto had with Aperture.
Seems pros have less to trust in Apple. Is Logic next to go? Will Apple kill FCP X after that? I wouldn’t mind that, but for a company that has killed so many great Pro Apps, they are making less trust for Pro users. They already killed Shake and Final Cut Pro 7. What is next?
I love Apple computers and OS X, but I don’t trust them. The new MacPro is powerful, but not expandable enough. Are they pushing pros to Windows? Or do they want us to make Hackintoshes?

RedShark on Panasonic FX1000 4K Camera for $899

RedShark has a great article on the exciting new Panasonic Lumix FX1000 Camera.

Sure it is a fixed lens DSLR (though it is a Leica), but one that can record in 4K for $899! And clean output over HDMI, even better! Wow. Now the audio is supposed to be very subpar, but the picture awesome if only 30FPS at 4K (and even cooler is the 100FPS at 1080) Not the flagship GH4, but still a very impressive camera!

Honestly I want one just for shooting video. I mean 4K at that price. Wow.

This is a revolution and will push 4K better than much else would.

Red Giant has Updated Universe to 1.1 with 3 new Free and 6 Premium Effects!

Red Giant has updated Universe to 1.1 with 3 new Free and 6 New Premium Effects. And 3 updated Effects.


What's New in Red Giant Universe 1.1 from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Very cool. Lets hope they keep pouring out updates this quickly. The great thing about the subscription model is if they keep getting in money they can keep updating.

iCloud iOS bookmarks are messed up again

Well it seems to have happened again. My iOS Bookmarks are totally screwed up again, and I can’t seem to get them to clear up.

I will explain my situation again, which has changed slightly. I run Firefox as my primary browser (used to be Chrome, but I am starting to not feel comfortable with Google having dominion over everything I do on the web), but I still use Chrome for some things. To keep my Bookmarks in sync I run Xmarks, and to get my bookmarks on iOS I run Xmarks for Safari, but it doesn’t seem to do the trick.

Even though my bookmarks on my Mac in Safari match my bookmarks in both Firefox and Chrome, this doesn’t seem to make it over to my iOS devices.

In the past I have run Chrome in Windows 8.1 in Parallels. I would download the latest bookmarks with Xmarks, and the Chrome iCloud plug in seemed to overwrite the iCloud bookmarks with clean ones, but this doesn’t seem to be working currently.

I just wish Apple would go back to allowing direct bookmark overwrite via iTunes. They used to allow this, and have gone back to allowing it for Contacts and Calendars, but not for Bookmarks! If they aren’t going to give you settings to overwrite things on iCloud, they need to at least let you just overwrite from your computer!

PLEASE APPLE, LET ME OVERWRITE BOOKMARKS WITH MY COMPUTER! PLEASE!!!!

After Effects CC 2014 New Features

Adobe has update After Effects in the Creative cloud subscription to version CC 2014.

Built in keying has been enhanced with a Key Cleaner to fix compression artifacts in a key. And Advanced Spill Supressor does an impressive job of removing spill. Won’t touch Red Giant’s keying suite, but will improve Keylight in certain situations.

You can now link individual masks to effects on a single layer, and dissolve effects to lessen effect. This will clean things up by letting you so different masked effects on a single layer and track each mask individually. And you can get those masks from layer masks in Premiere Pro.

You can create Live Text Templates to leave individual text editable in premiere, especially great for lower thirds.

I/O has now been replaced by the Mercury Transmit engine from Premiere Pro, which should be faster.

Like the rest of creative cloud, there is Type Kit desktop font integration.

The iOS Kuler is now integrated into an After effects Panel.

Curves have been improved.

Mocha has been updated to version 3.2.1.

Not as big of an update as Premier Pro, but impressive nonetheless.

What’s new in Premiere Pro CC 2014

PremierePro

Adobe has released a full document on what is new of Premiere Pro CC 2014.

They have videos to demo the new major features, such as Masking and Tracking within Premiere Pro, Live Text Templates from After Effects for editable lower thirds and title cards, the awesome Master Clip effects which are added to master clips and show up everywhere the clips show up.

Other less publicized features are you can set up automatic project backup to creative cloud. Reverse Frame Matching! Set clips to Frame Size from a drop down menu, and they don’t rasterize, so you are always going to the original to get the best image! AWESOME!

You now have some choice when importing projects, and can import just sequences and create folders and have the choice of duplicating media or automatically using media already in your project.

You can also browse after effects projects in the Media Browser, so you can preview compositions before importing.

A feature that should have always been there in every program is to Maintain Audio Pitch while scrubbing and playback either slow or fast! YES!!

There are Voice Over enhancements. All effects are now cross platform, which means we have lost many effects (though none were that great anyway).

And the most awesome for speed is Cross Dissolve transitions can be saved as Presets! So you can have multiple length effects set up already, and you can change multiple transitions at once!

••••

Premiere is really improving, and at this rate will easily be the best editor choice around. AVID is going to have to learn that they need to upgrade quickly now that they are also doing the subscription model or they will fall behind really fast!

Adobe needs to do something about 3rd party Plug Ins to make it easier to upgrade

With the release of Adobe Creative Cloud 2014, we have yet another set of programs installed in our computers, which is nice, as the last version will keep working for old jobs (and when plug ins have not been rewritten yet), but it makes for a pain in the ass in getting plug ins working again.

After Effects has so many places plug ins can be installed. In your Library folder and in the Plug ins folder in it’s application. So you have to painstakingly either re-install all your plugs in or go through and copy plug ins over between versions.

Photoshop used to do this well, with a 3rd Party plug-ins folder. So when you installed a new version you could just point Photoshop to this folder, and all your 3rd Party Plug-Ins would be there. Of course in true idiotic fashion they removed this feature.

And sure, some old plug ins will not work, but they could do a browser style plug in checker, which checks if your version works, and you could have a way to force them to work (or at least try to work) if it doesn’t know (as is possible in browsers like Mozilla Firefox).

This would just make everything so much easier and smoother with every upgrade! And since all CC users are in Creative Cloud, they will getting all the new updates, and likely implementing them!

Please Adobe do something about Plug-In Management and do it soon!