For those of you who have been itching to try the new Content Aware Fill and Puppet Warp features in Adobe Photoshop CS5, today’s your lucky day. CS5 became available for purchase through the Adobe website, and you can now download a 30-day free trial of the software just to play around with the amazing new features if you’re not sure yet you want to upgrade.
If you’ve tried it out already, do you think the new features live up to the hype?
British newspaper The Guardian has teamed up with Canon on a new app for the iPad that features the most recent 100 photographs from their award-winning Eyewitness series. In addition to simply viewing the photographs, they’re also including “Pro tips”, or short blurbs written by the photography team on the “technical and artistic merits” of each image.
If you love good photography and would like to have a steady stream of photography tips (as well as have an iPad), you can grab the app for free from the App Store.
No word on whether the pro tips will ever be available for those who don’t own iPads.
Update: The pro tips are available online on the Eyewitness website.
If you’re yearning to take photos of the great outdoors, the BBC Wildlife Magazine website now offers free downloadable Masterclasses.
Each PDF contains a simple, topical lesson written by a pro wildlife photographer who provides tips and photo techniques, gear recommendations, and beautiful example photos.
The Masterclasses are archived pages from past issues of the magazine, but the tips they offer are timeless. These lessons are an inspiring read for photographers of any level.
(via Nature Magnified)
Well, that was fast.
Just a day after removing Version 2.0.3 of the 5D Mark II firmware due to a bug, Canon has released firmware Version 2.0.4, which simply fixes the bug in Version 2.0.3.
We apologize sincerely for the inconvenience caused to our customers by suspending the availability of the Version 2.0.3 firmware.
We are now introducing the Version 2.0.4 firmware. This firmware corrects the malfunction that occurred in the previous Version 2.0.3 firmware, in which the manual recording level changed and made recording impossible.
Customers who have the Version 2.0.3 firmware on their cameras should update the firmware to Version 2.0.4.
Hopefully Canon got it right this time.
Thanks for sending in the tip Jonathan!
Photo Magician is a free and lightweight (less than 1MB) program for Windows that allows you to batch convert a directory of photographs. It’s similar in functionality to Photoshop’s “Image Processor” feature, with one difference being you can’t select the output quality like you can using Photoshop.
The program also features a “Quick Convert Mode”, which minimizes the program to a little box onto which you can drag and drop folders of images. If you’ve been looking for a quick way to resize images in Vista (like the Image Resize PowerToy allowed you to do in XP), then you might want to check out this program.
Download Photo Magician 1.0.0.3 (via Lifehacker)
P.S. For a more powerful free program that’s even more similar to Photoshop’s Image Processor, you can check out BIMP Lite.
If you’re looking for a way to “upgrade” your flash unit without spending money on real gear, the Los Angeles Digital Imaging Group (LADIG) has a nice bounce card cutout you can use to create your own free bounce card. Simply download the template (link to PDF below), print it out on cardstock, follow the instructions for cutting, and attach it to your flash with a rubber band (or velcro if you’re feeling fancy).
Download the Whacky Hack Bounce Card PDF (via Make)
Image credit: Photograph by Adam Flaherty and used with permission
We’re not sure whether it’s worth it in terms of cost, but here’s a way to print your own gigantic photograph posters using your ordinary photo printer. Easy Poster Printer is a free program by GD Software that automatically prints out a poster of any size (maximum is 20×20 meters) in individual pieces using your photo printer.
Obviously you could do the same thing using an ordinary program like Photoshop, but this program takes all the work out of the process, doing all the slicing and printing for you. The 6MB program is for Windows only (sorry Mac people!) and can be downloaded by clicking here.
