Lightroom for iPad briefly appears on Adobe’s website, coming soon with $99/year cloud subscription | 9to5Mac

The benefit of the $99 service will be that users will not need to store several hundred megabytes or gigabytes of high-resolution photography on the iPad. They can just store it in the cloud or synchronize from their Mac. These photos will still be able to be edited and managed on the iPad, and changes will be synchronized back. Yes, it’s very much like an “iCloud” for Lightroom. A video of the prototype app is above at around 19 minutes in.

 

Hmm.... this is actually the first good idea I have heard from Adobe for awhile.  If I could edit my personal work on my ipad and get away from the computer that would be a huge plus to me.  This could possibly get to me to actually break down and subscribe instead of owning if it works as described. Screw the cloud though, lol, I'll use my NAS thank you. 

I would probably buy tomorrow if they made Lightroom support .PSBs (if anyone at Adobe is listening). There is not a single DAM solution out there that supports it.  I have to make jpgs with big text saying JPG of PSB so I can find it in there. 

Source: http://9to5mac.com/2014/01/17/lightroom-fo...

Adobe creating a cycle of Continuous Customer Disappointment.

 I was chatting with photographer Mike Powell the other day and he was asking about the new rental model Adobe is using now.  While I am on the record as being fully against it, I found a nice break down with a more concrete business view on why it is such a bad idea.

 Adobe

While creating a predictable revenue stream from high-end users, Adobe has created two problems. First, not all Adobe customers believe that Adobe’s new subscription business model is an improvement for them. If customers stop paying their monthly subscription they don’t just lose access to the Adobe Creative Suite software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) used to create their work, they may lose access to the work they created.

Second, they unintentionally overshot the needs of students, small business and casual users, driving them to “good-enough” replacements like Pixelmator, Acorn,GIMP for PhotoShop and Sketch, iDraw, and ArtBoard for Illustrator.

The consequence of discarding low margin customers and optimizing revenue and margin in the short-term, Adobe risks enabling future competitors. In fact, this revenue model feels awfully close to the strategy of the U.S. integrated steel business when they abandoned their low margin business to the mini-mills.

Money is something people live on. Exposure is something people die from.

 If you own a small business or are self-employed, sooner or later you will be asked to work for free. The more successful you become, the more requests you’ll get.

But with the right response, you can turn these freeloaders into something positive.

You may want or need to work for free, especially when you’re just starting out to build a resume, client list or broaden your skills. At any time, you may be happy to donate your time and talent to good causes or very good friends.

Here are some ways to respond to common requests:

I can’t pay you, but you’ll get great exposure

  • What exactly is the nature of the exposure? How will my name and description be used? Will you have a link to my website?
  • How many people will be there?
  • I’ll need a testimonial from your company for my website and brochures.
  • Thank you, but I obviously have enough exposure since you contacted me.

Couple more examples in the link. Great advice here for anyone in a creative field.  

Link: What to say when you’re asked to work for free.

Some new CGI work

Just thought I would post some CGI projects I have been tinkering with.  The Lebron shoe was for Nike and was never published so I just added that to the front page.  I tweaked on it to add the "Lava" texture the other week which I thought made it more interesting.  Shoe is from a photo shot by Ryan Unruh.

The text piece is a interior study where I am working on getting the floors and lights working right.  Having a issue where I can't get the light working right in the bottom left. The abstract is just a study in making abstract art in CGI that I banged out yesterday. Both of these are entirely CGI.

Happy Holidays

Genius!  Not my work BTW.

Credits Agency: Victors&Spoils Music: Trans-Siberian Orchestra Original Content: globaldemocracy.com

Creativity is rejected: Teachers and bosses don’t value out-of-the-box thinking.

It’s all a lie. This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

 

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.  

 

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_s...

Sculpting with Light

For 35 years, I’ve been a fine art and commercial studio photographer and for 24 of those years, I’ve used Light Painting (I like to refer to it as “Sculpting with Light”) as my method of lighting subjects. Many years ago, I discovered that light painting was not only a great tool for solving problems (which was initially the reason I started experimented with it), but it also was a way to enhance, reveal and celebrate certain aspects of subjects that weren’t visible to me under normal lighting conditions! There is a transformational quality to the light, and ordinary objects can become extraordinary when seen in this “new” light.

Vermeer’s Secret Tool: Testing Whether The Artist Used Mirrors and Lenses to Create His Realistic Images

David Hockney and others have speculated—controversially—that a camera obscura could have helped the Dutch painter Vermeer achieve his photo-realistic effects in the 1600s. But no one understood exactly how such a device might actually have been used to paint masterpieces. An inventor in Texas—the subject of a new documentary by the magicians Penn & Teller—may have solved the riddle.

the images in most kitchen, bathroom and bedroom catalogues are computer-generated but "no-one has realised"

"Many furniture manufactures are using this medium to put together their catalogues and such," said Richard Benson, creative director at digital imagery studio Pikcells. "The technology can now make these wonderfully realistic images as good as photography, and in some cases better."

Benson said the rapid advances in digital image-making were leading to the mass closure of photography studios that specialised in interior and product shoots for brands. "It's quite a big deal as lots of photography studios have been uprooted," he said. "Over the past five years, there's been a few studios that have really come to the end of their time doing room sets and have seen CGI coming through and packed up shop and called it a day really."

Other photography studios have embraced CGI and turned themselves into digital studios. He added: "We've been brought in to produce what the photographer was doing anyway. The end if the same but the means is different."

 

New Work In The Wild: MEGATRON RISES

New Project for Nike was recently released, "Megatron Rises." Nike Football and Hasbro honor Calvin Johnson, Jr. with special edition CJ81 Trainer and TRANSFORMERS action figure.  Darien Birks from Nike Football reached out and asked if I would like to work up some illustrations for this limited launch.  Megatron toys? How could I possibly say no?!  Had just about a week to work these up from sketches to the final illustrations for wall murals and store front displays. Used Modo for most of it and post in Photoshop. Thanks Darien!

New Work in the Wild: Adidas 2K for Champs

New project went live in 11 cities just recently for Champs.  The goal was to show the tie in between the Jerseys in NBA 2014 and the real ones you can buy in the store.  Matt Davis from NonBox came up with the concept and reached out to me to help piece it all together. Had to also shoot and swap all the uniforms for each team on the original Athlete photo shot by Aaron Hewitt.  Added in some techy illustrations on the athlete as well.  Jersey Photo by Ryan Unruh that is used in the POP stands in the stores.  Background shot Rendered by 2k. 

New Work in the Wild: Lebron 11 Forging Iron

New Project for Nike Basketball just was released, Lebron 11 Forging Iron: Heat Tested.   Ryan Unruh shot the shoe and we went back and forth on a few ideas and this is where it ended up.  Glowing floor was a bleary eyed late night idea that brought a great vibe.  Super fun project and really happy with the end result.  Have one more file from this project just as CGI intensive that hopefully is released soon.  Used Modo, Blender and Photoshop for the post work.  I'll make a portfolio and Behance posting after a few months showing how it was all put together.  

Adobe Hacked. Check your CC accounts and credit cards.

Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems. We also believe the attackers removed from our systems certain information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers, including customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders.

 

Still have not upgraded to CC and this makes me happier that I have not.  

Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2013/...