OnOne Software, one of the premiere Photoshop Plug-In makers is offering an EXCELLENT FREE version of their Photographic Effects Plugin software for Photoshop. On the same page, they also offer several presets for Lightroom, Aperture, and Camera Raw.
This is FREE, people! And the effects and interface are very flexible and very cool!
Check them out at http://www.ononesoftware.com/free/
According to John Nack’s blog (the Adobe Evangelist and Blogger) If you own a CS3 or later Adobe app, you can subscribe to Creative Cloud & get all the CS6 apps, 20GB of storage, and more at a huge discount ($29.99/month instead of $49/month in the US)–but note that the offer ends August 31st.
Check it out: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2012/07/40-creative-cloud-discount-ends-in-one-month.html
I just received this announcement. Not only are there links to purchase the software, but also some information on upgrade pricing and date limitations. Take a look!
NEWS: Adobe® Creative Suite® 6 is Now Shipping
Two weeks after its official introduction, Adobe this morning has released Creative Suite 6 in twelve languages, with major upgrades across the product line…
All CS6 suites and individual tools are available immediately for Windows and Mac, with delivery via boxed shipment or instant download. Discounted upgrades are offered from earlier versions, including CS3 and CS4 until the end of the year.
One big change: Starting with CS6, upgrades are only available direct from Adobe in most major geographies.
The company has also released all CS6 free trials for download and installation. These trials are fully-functional and will work side-by-side with any previous version(s) of the Creative Suite, including CS5 and CS5.5. We’ve got a complete list of trial direct download links for easy access.
The CS6 Student & Teacher Editions are now shipping as well. These offer up to 80% off the regular prices for education customers including students, teachers, and staff.
Today, I got an email from a rep from JourneyEd.com, one of my vendors. Her message states:
Adobe has a current promotion with the release of CS6. Adobe is giving a free copy of CS6 to anyone that purchases CS 5.5 now until May 6! Please see attached promotion and contact me today for pricing!
Here’s her contact info:
| Shelly Bishop | HigherEd Sales-Digital River Education Services, Inc. |
| sbishop@journeyed.com | www.JourneyEd.com | www.AcademicSuperstore.com |
| Office: 800.876.3507 x12513 | Mobile: 214-907-7310 | Fax: 972.481.2100 |
| Digital River, Inc | 5212 Tennyson Pkwy Suite 130 Plano, TX 75024 |
Last year, I made a tutorial on how to use Adjustment layers and masks to Create Green Beer for St. Patrick’s Day.
I thought this would be a good time to pull that one out again! Check it out at:
http://aym4training.com/2011/make-green-beer-for-st-patricks-day-using-photoshop/
When I don’t get a chance to make my own tutorials, I still appreciate the work of others. Graphics.com has posted a nice tutorial on using the History Brush to control where Filter Effects…um… affect your image. Check it out!
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=1007
Great workflow app for anyone who does digital photography. New version released today.
$149, or upgrade for $79, Educational Price is the same as the upgrade price.
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201203/030612AdobeLightroom4Available.html
Today, Dealfind.com is offering a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch Tablet for $70!
As my graphics students know, I’m a big advocate of using a pressure-sensitive tablet for precision masking, vector drawing control and tons of other functions. This is the smaller version of their tablet – which makes it quite portable as well. check it out at:
http://www.dealfind.com/products/los-angeles/brightlightbusiness2?a=16589f8ddd39
Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch
My students know that one of my Photoshop class mantras is that “Ain’t Nuthin’ Real Anymore”. Well, this excellent video by Jesse Rosten spoofs the use of Photoshop in a hilarious manner. I highly recommend viewing this one!
Demo image made in 4 minutes with Fumy and Photoshop
Here’s a little program I love! I bought a program named Smoke some time ago, at a discounted price. I thought it looked like a cool, fun toy of a program, but it’s so much more! Smoke underwent a name change. It’s new name is Fumy, and the newly released version is Fumy 2.0.
Painting in Fumy is like painting with smoke, or waves, or patterns or light. Version 1, with all it’s point updates was very cool – choose a style and some colors and then paint. You could place the end results into Photoshop documents (or simply create a stand-alone graphic). The only “real” limitation was that the end-result image was opaque. You could use any color background, but you created an opaque image for which you might have to use Blending Modes in Photoshop to influence the result.
Now, with version 2.0, we have layers! This means that not only can we create images with transparent backgrounds, but we also have some limited blending modes inside the program, and we also have the ability to export individual layers of our image.
The names of the controls present a bit of a learning curve: names like “Flow”, “Range”, “Intensity”, “Density”, “Fluency”, “Gravity”, and “Quality” may not make immediate sense, but that’s part of the idea of working in this Fumy. It’s all about experimentation (you all know that’s a BIG teaching point of mine anyway, right?)
Version 2.0 just came out a few days ago, so there’re still a few “issues” to resolve. For example, the tooltip names don’t align and so you have to trust the icon more than the name of the tool. Also, there seems to be a bit of a problem with the function of exporting individual layers, but you should also be aware that the developer is extremely responsive. I’ve had a few questions over the past couple of versions, and I received response emails the same day!
On top of all this coolness and fun, here’s the real kicker – I’d originally bought this program for $6 via Maczot.com. It was also included in a software bundle I’d purchased at MacLegion.com. But I never needed the new version. Every update has been free – and the recent UPGRADE was ALSO FREE! Any developer with such a cool product, who is so responsive, and has such generous upgrade policies should be commended! I encounter so many programs with ridiculous and draconian upgrade costs, I’m especially impressed by this (see Adobe’s new upgrade policies, for example!)
Despite the few bugs in this new version, I highly recommend it – and the developer. If the regular $19.99 seems a bit much, wait… you’ll see it in a bundle, I’m sure. Also, Neatberry (the developer) seems to have a slew of other cool programs. I’m looking forward to checking them out.
Oh, and the image you see in this post was done using a stock image from stock.xchng, and a quick image from Fumy 2.0, created and composited in about 4 minutes using Photoshop.
Check out Fumy 2.0. Let me know what you think!